381: The Weaponisation of Disaster: Inside the New Security Thinking

[01:33] Tom Rivett-Carnac

Is this the moment? Yeah.

[01:35] Christiana Figueres

Paul?

[01:35] Paul Dickinson

Yeah, I mean, I definitely think it's a very kind of febrile time. There's been all the kind of extreme weather, which is just striking and so many people see it with their own eyes. And then you have everyone's talking about kind of rogue AI is going to wipe out humanity. There's war in Europe and the Ukraine increased intensity. There's war in the Middle East, and maybe the wars are starting to connect. Oil above $100 a barrel and this kind of poly crisis, if I want to be positive about it for a minute, is it also possibly going to grow a poly awareness, poly education, and we start to think more kind of holistically about connected problems. So yeah, frightening, but also maybe a teachable moment, I think they call it.

[02:16] Tom Rivett-Carnac

Yeah, and as you say, Paul, I think that point, this poly crisis is meaning we have to connect issues much more, national resilience, national security. So I think that's a place for us to start. Between January and July this year, militaries in 49 countries have deployed more than 110 times to fight fires.

[02:38] News Clip

As flames race across tinder dry fields and grassland, Britain has turned to the military for help, sending troops into the heart of the fire.

[02:46] Tom Rivett-Carnac

In June and July alone, European armies went out more than 30 times. Spain sent 1,200 soldiers and 400 vehicles to a single fire outside Madrid.

[02:58] News Clip

Helicopter footage shows thick smoke and flames racing toward communities as Spain's Military Emergencies Unit joins the fight.

[03:07] Tom Rivett-Carnac

Resources normally associated with defense are increasingly being used to manage climate disruption.

[03:15] Simon Stiell

Climate is sometimes seen as a partisan issue.

[03:19] Tom Rivett-Carnac

Just a few days ago, Simon Steele, the Executive Secretary of the UN Climate Convention, told the European Parliament that this summer shows that the climate crisis is now a continent-wide economic security emergency.

[03:32] Simon Stiell

This summer's extremes will cost Europe 180 billion euros.

[03:40] News Clip

The extreme weather, the intense heat and the lack of rainfall, his crops are withering. The wheats, the barley, the...

[03:47] Tom Rivett-Carnac

Globally, food prices have climbed three months running.

[03:50] News Clip

Of course, it's not just this farm, you know, if it was just this farm, food wouldn't increase in price, but it's right through the UK, right through Europe.

[03:58] Tom Rivett-Carnac

The UN's index hit a four-year high on the 4th of September, with sugar up to 12% in a month, cereals at a two-year high. Of course, climate isn't the only reason for this. In the Black Sea, the Russian War in Ukraine is still impacting wheat. Hostilities in the Strait of Hormuz continue to impact fertilizer. However, the World Food Programme has stated that El Nino alone could push at least another 49 million people into acute hunger by the end of 2027. And this summer happened before the El Nino peak. The World Meteorological Organization said on the 3rd of September, it is on course to be very strong, peaking at the end of the year, with effects usually worst in the year after it develops.

[04:44] News Clip

Forecasters warn the naturally occurring climate pattern could drive temperatures higher in some parts of the world that will increase the risk of drought, flooding and extreme heat.

[04:54] Tom Rivett-Carnac

Then three weeks ago, devastation hit Nepal.

[04:57] News Clip

In Nepal, families scramble up the mountainous terrain, one man filming, Yalza Bui. I'm scared.

[05:05] Tom Rivett-Carnac

A glacier collapsed and killed more than a thousand people. The financial damage is estimated at $2.6 billion. But that number is now expected to rise.

[05:16] News Clip

I've been teaching here for 18 years and I've never seen anything like this here before.

[05:23] Tom Rivett-Carnac

Speaking in the country's House of Representatives, Prime Minister Balendra Shah stated that the time has come for us to strongly present to the international community the disasters we are facing because of climate change, something he is expected to raise at his first appearance at the UN when he travels there to New York next week. Despite this unequivocal statement, which was supported by the UN, the Red Cross and Red Crescent and the World Bank, within days a claim was circulating that a Chinese dam had either broken or water had been deliberately released. It was not true. Climate Action Against Disinformation tracked the Northern Summer and found the same narratives arriving as if on cue. In Canada, arson conspiracies and posts calling for American strikes on Canadian cities.

[06:17] News Clip

As soon as a wildfire emerges or wildfire season even begins, the conspiracy theories and the misinformation and disinformation start increasing.

[06:27] Tom Rivett-Carnac

In Portugal and Spain, geoengineering and weather manipulation theories spring up seemingly out of nowhere. 29 of the top 100 posts in Portuguese about the heatwaves carried denial narratives. In the UK, where I spent this summer, of the roughly 10,000 mentions of wildfire in the press, 4,280 linked the fires to Net Zero and 1,620 to arson. The climate and the crises that we're seeing are already being weaponized. So to bring this back to a chat, we've been watching these fires, these floods, this extreme heat for a long time, but this summer has felt different with some of these different crises, really reaching a point where they can no longer be ignored. Do you think this is the moment at which this pivots from being seen as an environmental issue to being more of an existential security resilience issue?

[07:23] Christiana Figueres

Paul, I'm sure you have prepared the answer to that very predictable question.

[07:30] Paul Dickinson

Thank you, Christiana. I'll do my best. I think we've all been looking for the meta-issue, and a lot of people have talked about health, for example, as a unifying issue that links together all the different aspects of climate change. But in the end, if I had to explain to somebody from another planet what I think my job was, I would say public safety. I do think this is a national security issue, it's a global security issue, and maybe what's happening is it's graduating to that level. But I also just wanted to point out that that doesn't mean the military run everything. If you think about a longer war, I don't know, like Ukraine, actually entrepreneurs and technologists got involved in the military campaign as time went by. So national security, I don't think should be seen just as kind of like the armed forces. It should be seen as a way for a society to organize itself, to protect itself.

[08:29] Christiana Figueres

Yeah, I guess I've just been thinking a lot about systems lately and becoming more and more aware when you say national security, Paul. Yes. And it's also international security. It's also local security at the local, local level, families, communities. It is a security risk at large. It is not just, and we will talk about or focus on national security. But as long as we understand that this is systemic, that all levels of the system are nested into each other, and that when we say security, we actually mean it writ large, all the way to security of life on this planet, and all the way down to individuals on a coastline, and everything in between. So just for us to really expand our thinking and understand that this goes across all levels.

[09:34] Tom Rivett-Carnac

I think that's really important that you create that definition there, Christiana, because that's a new way of understanding this topic, and I think we have to move into it. I mean, the first duty of government is to protect its citizens, and that has historically meant protect them from other people who wish to cause them harm and take their land. Now, it means something quite different, which is to protect them from changes that will irreversibly affect their way of life, and or affect their happiness and ability to live peaceful, prosperous lives. I do think that there is more attention now being focused on this. We've seen folks from the UN, from the EU, from elsewhere, begin to call this a security risk. And once you have it, as you said, your very helpful definition, Christiana, this is individual security, planetary security rather than necessarily national security.

[10:24] Christiana Figueres

And everything in between.

[10:25] Tom Rivett-Carnac

And everything in between. But it raises all sorts of questions. I mean, whose security? Is this security for everybody? That's a very dark and dangerous path. Are some people going to get more security than others? Are we protecting some communities more than others? So I think one interesting question would be, these questions are being thought about inside some institutions. And we have an excellent guest today who can take us inside to think about how that sense of rising risk and security is really being addressed. So shall we now go to our conversation with Erin Sikorsky?

[11:01] Christiana Figueres

Let's do.

[11:02] Tom Rivett-Carnac

Okay. So Erin Sikorsky, we've wanted to have on for a long time. She's the Director of the Center for Climate and Security, which is a program of the Council on Strategic Risks. She's a former US Intelligence Officer, led long-range strategic analysis at the National Intelligence Council and sits on the UK's Climate Security Team. Erin, thank you so much for joining us on Outrage and Optimism. It's a huge pleasure to meet you. For years now, my colleagues and I have been listening to people describe climate as a threat multiplier. But I'd love to hear you define what does that really mean in practice from your perspective, and also if you can to describe what is the chain of events between a climate shock and what can become a security crisis.

[11:42] Erin Sikorsky

Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me. The threat multiplier model, as you said, has been around for a long time. Security actors and nation states already have a long list of things they're worried about from a national security perspective, whether that's terrorism, attacks from enemy states, instability in parts of the world. When you layer climate shocks on top of that, it can often exacerbate those problems or make them worse. I spent a lot of my career in the US intelligence community focused on East Africa and counter-terrorism. You have Al-Shabaab, a terrorist group there. When you layer in climate-driven drought and food insecurity, that presents opportunities for that terrorist group to undermine governance, to win over supporters in the community who may be no longer have the ability to make a living from subsistence farming. It allows them to control humanitarian aid that might be coming in to address that drought. It makes the threat from that group worse. It isn't climate change alone that drives the challenge, but it's climate change on top of. That's just one example that we see. I would argue though that we're moving into an era where it's not just a threat multiplier, climate itself is the threat as extreme weather grows and impacts intensify.

[13:03] Tom Rivett-Carnac

Interesting. One impact of this must be, now that militaries are responding so much more regularly to climate risk. Some of your research, I understand, said that 49 countries have deployed their military more than 110 times to fight fires just in the first seven months of this year. Particularly given that, as you're talking about, this creates disruptions that can be societal disruptions and there can be many more societal problems as a result of that. Talk us through all of that additional demand on militaries. What does that do to their capacity to do their normal job?

[13:37] Erin Sikorsky

Yeah. It interrupts their ability to do their core duties. When you have to deploy to fight wildfires, you're not training for other missions. It also interrupts their own facilities and critical infrastructure. When you have to evacuate your military base because wildfires are approaching or you have to evacuate, as we've seen in the US, because of hurricanes along the Gulf Coast, which has caused billions of dollars of damage in recent years. That's all an opportunity cost for militaries. You've seen that play out in Canada, for example, where military leaders have said, look, the number of days that we're fighting wildfires is really detrimental to our core capacity. You've seen it in Australia as well. But you've also seen some militaries say, actually, this is growing as a threat. It's putting our citizens' lives and livelihoods at risk, and it's something we need to actually prepare for and be more proactive about. You see this in Spain, for example, where they actually have a dedicated military unit whose whole job is to respond to extreme weather and disasters. So climate is actually changing the entire conception of security in some ways and what we have militaries and security actors for. It's not just state threats. It's what the former director of the CIA called Problems Without Passports.

[14:57] Tom Rivett-Carnac

That's so interesting. I mean, so if you take the original conceptualization of a military to protect a government's highest duty of a government is to protect its citizens, the nature of that role is now changing. It's not just from each other. It's from these other shifts.

[15:10] Erin Sikorsky

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, like I said, I spent a lot of time in my career focused on counterterrorism. If you look over the past year and what is actually killing Europeans, for example, it's extreme heat, right? You had tens of thousands of Europeans who died because of extreme heat this summer. The number who have been killed by terrorists? Very, very small, right? It's all about re-conceptualizing how we think about the threat. Maybe the other thing I'll say here though is, it's not either climate or more traditional threats. It's now, in some cases, both as well. I think when you think about the conflict with Russia, for example, and the uptick in Russian hybrid threats or gray zone threats that we've seen in Europe over the past year, attacking critical infrastructure, disinformation, they often do that at the same time that there are climate hazards emerging. So you see disinformation about extreme weather events, say in Poland, for example, blaming the government for not responding correctly to precipitation. Or you see attacks aimed at the electrical grid. At the same time, the grid is already strained because of extreme weather. So again, not either or, you have to think about them at the same time.

[16:27] Tom Rivett-Carnac

Fundamentally connected. I definitely want to get into the disinformation piece because this is so important and interesting. But just to stay on this for a moment, obviously other security threats, you have a reactive piece to that, but you also have a proactive diplomatic and outreach piece to try to prevent escalation. Is there an equivalent version of that in this new definition of security? Because it must be very easy to just always be on the back foot as a military. There's another drought, there's another fire. What does it look like to be on the front foot?

[16:58] Erin Sikorsky

Yeah, that's so important to think about. I do think actually more and more militaries are thinking about that. I already mentioned Spain and their unit that trains to do this ahead of time. I think it's also about adaptation and resilience investment. NATO right now is focused on spending, all NATO member states are supposed to spend 5% of GDP on defense investments. 1.5% of that can be on broader resilience investments. I think it's absolutely critical that climate resilience and adaptation is a part of that 1.5%. So your roads, your transportation, your rails, your rivers are able to be used in case of extreme weather events. I think that's important for militaries. It's also about training. Even here in the United States, where obviously climate has been discounted by this administration and many tools have been destroyed. The US Congress last year included a provision in the National Defense Authorization Bill that required both the Army and the National Guard to be more proactive and prepared in terms of stockpiling equipment, training its people to fight wildfires. And I think it's that kind of proactive action that you'll see more and more of. And the militaries and countries that do it are the ones that will have an upper hand on other security challenges.

[18:24] Christiana Figueres

Erin, you just referenced the US, but you also are part of the UK efforts on this. And I'm wondering whether you see a difference between the approaches of the two countries, whether you see a difference now, and whether that difference has actually changed over the past, I don't know, five to ten years.

[18:49] Erin Sikorsky

Yeah. I mean, I think for a long time, the US and the UK worked very closely together on this topic and saw it in a similar fashion, right? That climate was a threat to militaries and security. They both took leadership at the UN at different times on this, at NATO. Now there's been a divergence, of course. And I think it's been great to see the UK continue to step up Foreign Minister Miliband on his first foreign trip. In his position, he went to Spain, where he launched a joint declaration with the Spanish Foreign Minister calling climate a national security threat to Europe. He said he's going to be convening foreign ministers in New York next week on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly to talk about climate security. So I, for one, appreciate that the UK is leading on this in the absence of the US and trying to continue to push this forward because it is a threat in the UK's own backyard, right? They had a national security assessment from their intelligence agencies on ecological and nature security that was released earlier this year that talked about all the ways in which these changes will threaten their country. So that leadership is absolutely critical.

[20:02] Tom Rivett-Carnac

I mean, speaking of the UK, it's interesting in talking about getting ahead of these things. There was a communication that came out from the UK government recently, and I wonder if you would think of this as climate related. Obviously, we've had this drought over the summer, El Nino is now coming, and the message to all citizens was, you need to make sure you got a couple of weeks of food in your house. How do you interpret that kind of communication from a government? Because that's not something we've seen a lot of before, absent COVID.

[20:27] Erin Sikorsky

No. I think it's absolutely an example of where the combination of the threat of climate change and more traditional hybrid threats are coexisting. The threats that we see emanating out of Russia against the food system in Europe, and undermining food security combined with the ongoing climate threat, and this El Nino, I think, are why that kind of message. This is a type of defense and security that we've seen quite a bit in the Nordics previously. They have this concept called total defense, which is about civil preparedness and foreign and security preparedness. And you've seen Nordic countries warn their citizens to stockpile food as well in the face of Russian security threat. So yeah, I think it's shocking, frankly, in some ways to see that, but also positive that they're getting ahead of this challenge. The one thing I'll say though too is, I think it's really important for the UK and for Europeans to understand that their domestic food security in the face of climate can't be separated from the global food system. And thinking about supply chain shocks elsewhere, thinking about all of the cuts that have been made to development assistance and to climate finance, those are really important for ensuring UK domestic food security as well. So it's not just about individual stockpiling, it's about thinking about how you make the whole food system resilient also.

[21:53] Christiana Figueres

Erin, your January report does put food at the center. I'm really interested in knowing why you chose that. Is it because it is so strategic, as you have just said now? Is it also because it may be the easiest way for all of us to understand what the threat is? Are you feeding us information that is easier for us to absorb and understand?

[22:29] Erin Sikorsky

I do think the food security issue is one that is very understandable and visceral to policy makers, to actors. I think we all have, frankly, the experience of the Arab Spring, where rising food prices contributed to instability and conflict. So that's a pathway that policy makers understand. And I think it's frankly the most acute risk. When I think about El Nino and the next six months to a year, food insecurity is my top worry right now, because you have a global food system that is already weak because of climate shocks, because of conflict in Ukraine, conflict in Iran, the straight-up war moves, fertilizer can't move through there, because of the diminished humanitarian aid system, and then you add El Nino on top of that. I think the food system is where we're going to see a lot of this risk show up first. By no means the only pathway, but one of the clearest pathways to me of climate and insecurity.

[23:34] Christiana Figueres

Yeah.

[23:35] Tom Rivett-Carnac

Erin, I'd love to ask you about a really pernicious issue across all of our society, but it's so significant when it comes to extreme weather, which is disinformation. Heartbreakingly, we saw, of course, this flood in Nepal just a couple of weeks ago, and there was a claim soon afterwards that this came out of China. That turned out not to be true. Your own report has found significant rises in disinformation in certain parts of the world after storms. To just start off with, why would somebody lie about and deliberately spread disinformation about these sorts of events? Just help us understand the motivations there.

[24:11] Erin Sikorsky

Yeah. I think it's because these events, as they grow in intensity and frequency, are recognized by bad actors as an opportunity to advance their own political goals. Whether those are geopolitical goals in regular traditional geopolitical competition, countries use any advantage they can, and I think some countries see an opportunity there. Whether it's Russia, like I mentioned, with Poland after flooding there a few years ago, or China. We had wildfires in Hawaii here in the US a few years ago. They launched disinformation that they were started by a US military weather weapon. Anything to undermine confidence in your competitor or enemy's government, right? Anything to try and sow kind of discord. I think you also see some of the disinformation arising when governments feel a lot of pressure to respond to climate hazards and they're not doing a very good job, right? So they're trying to deflect some of that blame. We've seen that when governments launched disinformation about minority groups are already ostracized parts of society. You saw this in Turkey a few years ago with wildfires, where the government blamed them on Kurds starting the wildfires there. We've seen it where there's been blame on migrant communities in Italy and Greece for starting wildfires, right? So again, divisions to deflect that blame. You've seen the president here in the United States with the wildfire smoke from Canada recently talking all about how we needed to increase tariffs on Canada. And it was all their fault for this wildfire smoke, right? So it gets caught up in existing geopolitical conflicts and contestation.

[26:02] Tom Rivett-Carnac

And presumably, I mean, at a human level, people suffer more than they otherwise would need to, as a result of this disinformation, which makes it more complicated to respond. You don't have a unified societal response as a result of it.

[26:13] Erin Sikorsky

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, in the US after Hurricane Helene, which was happened kind of right during the middle of the presidential campaign here in the US, there was a lot of disinformation blaming FEMA for poor response saying the US government didn't have enough money because we'd spent all our money in Ukraine, for example. And that created a lot of distrust of FEMA. It created threats against emergency responders, which made the, you know, much more complicated to provide good services on the ground and end up hurting the people who are suffering the most. Absolutely.

[26:46] Paul Dickinson

Erin, thank you so much for your work. And, you know, I've been, I had the pleasure to study a little bit recently, talking particularly, for example, about food problems driving migration, which I think is extraordinary because, you know, it's not really about the borders, is it? It's more about kind of causing people to not want to. To get up and move. But actually, my main question for you was really, it seems like we're coming to this new understanding. And if we were in the editorial office of some media organization, what do we call this? Is the name climate security? Because I think it would be a wonderful thing if we could begin to embed some real shared understanding of this issue, so we can know what we're talking about and build on this critical area that you're pioneering.

[27:29] Erin Sikorsky

Yeah, I do think climate security is a good tagline for it, right? I also think in terms of the actions we need to take, I often talk about stability multipliers, right? That investments in the transition to clean energy, investments and adaptation and resilience, those all are not only good for the climate, but they're good for security also, and they multiply the stability that countries have. They provide more resilience and resources. I think when you talk to military and security actors, they don't frankly care about the climate piece of it, they care how does it make my core duties easier, how does it make my job easier? There are plenty of ways we can show that these investments have real security benefits. I like to talk about the positive side too, not just the threat, but also the opportunity.

[28:18] Paul Dickinson

Thank you.

[28:19] Christiana Figueres

Very interested that you took it there, Erin, because I've been sitting here wondering, is this unprecedented threat to security at all levels, is this actually going to lead to better decisions, more urgent decisions? I'm sitting with a knot in my gut that tells me no. That's tragic. That's absolutely tragic if that were to be the case. At the same time, your second part of the answer of military people trying to figure out how is this going to make my life easier, that to me is the sliver of hope. I just think we are, as a species, so incapable of moving forward with the perception of risk, if that risk is perceived to be completely unmanageable and larger than we can possibly do. But if it is cast as an opportunity at my own little level for me to do better or some advantage, reduce my costs, reduce my bills, reduce my effort, then that for me may be the opportunity that we might be able to grasp. Am I just being completely cynical? I would love for you to tell me, yes, you're way too cynical. I'm going to correct you.

[29:57] Erin Sikorsky

I mean, you can't tell a former intelligence officer not to be too cynical. I'm sorry. But no, I mean, I think here's what I think. I think we've been doing, for example, a lot of work this past year in South Korea and Japan on the security benefit of investment in renewable energy. I do think the straight-up Hormuz crisis has made it very clear that moving to clean energy is not just about cutting emissions, it's about providing that domestic resilience and reducing your external dependencies in such a way that makes your country more secure. So I do think there's an opportunity right now. Also, at the end of the day, military and security leaders play a huge role in overall government decision-making. They have a veto often on government action on a variety of issues. If they say, no, this doesn't help our security, then governments won't move forward. The more you can get them on-side saying, look, these investments actually do really help me. Transitioning to clean energy provides me all sorts of security benefits over here. Investments and adaptation prevents conflict in all these places. That's a win because they're going to be voices within governments pushing in the right direction. I think this is a moment we need all hands on deck. We can't just have this in the energy ministry or the environment ministry. It needs to be expanded quite a bit and we're seeing that happen.

[31:26] Tom Rivett-Carnac

I hope this isn't too naive a question after having Christiana ask that it might be too cynical.

[31:31] Erin Sikorsky

Poor Erin.

[31:33] Tom Rivett-Carnac

If you look, the history of security analysis, most famously encapsulated by the Thucydides trap, is that one country's gain is another country's loss. That actually the nature of security is that countries have to fight each other for supremacy and by definition, another country is your enemy because you need to fight them for resources. This reframing of security that we're talking about here is completely different. Actually, there is a much clearer intellectual case to be made for the fact that all countries are on one side of this and there is a collective endeavour to actually try to continue to enable flourishing human life. Do you see that narrative taking root? Do you see the possibility of through this reimagining of what security is, the broadening of the lens, that there could be more of a collective coming together towards shared endeavour between nations?

[32:24] Erin Sikorsky

Yes, I do.

[32:26] Tom Rivett-Carnac

Thank you, Erin.

[32:27] Christiana Figueres

I was going to give you a little, you better say yes.

[32:34] Paul Dickinson

Okay, carry on now.

[32:36] Tom Rivett-Carnac

No, you would have had a real doubt about that.

[32:38] Erin Sikorsky

No, I think absolutely yes. I think it is in everyone's security benefit to address the climate risks. I think at the same time, you can make the case that addressing climate risks helps you in a more traditional security approach also. I think the countries that get ahead of this and get this right and make the investments and take leadership stand to gain in a whole host of other security ways. The United States traditionally has cared about allies and partners around the world. It needs allies and partners to get done what it wants to get done. Many of those allies and partners, climate is at the top of the list. Talk to any Pacific Island state, anyone in the Indo-Pacific. If we want them onside, we want them working with us, we need to engage what they care about the most, which is climate. So yes, I think you're right, Tom, but I also think that if that doesn't move you enough, as a military or security, there are other things that can move you too.

[33:41] Tom Rivett-Carnac

Two things are true. Yeah. Erin, thank you so much. This is such a critical issue. We really appreciate you are such a deep thinker on it. Your comment that the US needs friends and allies to get what it does reminds me very nostalgically of days gone by and maybe days to come. So thank you for ending on that as well.

[33:58] Erin Sikorsky

Yeah. Fingers crossed. There's a lot of us working for it.

[34:02] Christiana Figueres

So, all right.

[34:03] Tom Rivett-Carnac

Thank you.

[34:03] Christiana Figueres

Thanks.

[34:04] Erin Sikorsky

Nice to meet you all. Bye-bye. Thank you.

[34:06] Paul Dickinson

Thanks, Erin. Thank you.

[34:13] Tom Rivett-Carnac

So such an important and interesting time to think about this issue of security, which I know we've come back to many times, but it feels like the intellectual basis of it is really moving on, so Erin is a good person to guide us through that. We'd love to start off maybe with you, Paul. What did you think of that and has it moved your thinking forward?

[34:30] Paul Dickinson

I find that the discussion that was perhaps most shocking for me was kind of obvious, but I hadn't really grasped the way disinformation is in a sense related to undermining confidence in governments. And I think that the old world of a sort of cold war where there were these kind of great armies and missiles all pointing at each other, but it kind of never really started has been replaced with a kind of warm war, I would call it, where there's all sorts of kind of social media and disinformation playing out within a context where the public, going back to our early discussions, are sort of much more disturbed by kind of AI and wars and climate, and it's all sort of, there's this kind of slightly toxic nexus. And so it is actually a very good time for a rather liberating theory, which is the sort of things that increase security and the interconnections. I've actually come across in other countries, ministries that are connecting ministries. Perhaps it is time for us to have more linkage in government. So we can begin to look at our sort of these cross-society problems in a sort of a challenging context, but out of the silos that I think sort of limit our response to these, the poly challenges, if that makes sense.

[35:54] Tom Rivett-Carnac

It does. Christiana, any thoughts?

[35:56] Christiana Figueres

I just thought it was very sobering to hear that these are the same arguments that military people were making five years ago. That just, to me, God bless her, right? Because she's passionate about this. She's knowledgeable and she's really trying to move the needle. But I just think that until, I remember, for example, the Munich Security Conference has had several sessions on climate change and the threat to both national and international security. NATO has had several discussions. The UN Security Council has asked for several briefings. But my point is, they have always been briefings and discussions. None of them have resulted into a dramatic decision. And therefore, we're going to do XYZ. And I just think that until we reach that point, and I don't know how much damage has to occur and how many lives we have to lose, until that reaches that degree of clarity on the part of those institutions that sit at that top of international security, or in fact national security, because the same argument can be made for national security. Are we going to be having the same conversation five years from now? I'm just, honestly, I'm just sitting with that in my stomach.

[37:34] Paul Dickinson

One thing, Christiana, just one detail, I think that she does bring in is the increased involvement of the armed forces in disaster response.

[37:44] Christiana Figueres

Yes, good point.

[37:45] Paul Dickinson

Rather than it being intellectually led, like the theory, it's now, look, so many of our troops are actually in action.

[37:52] Christiana Figueres

Yes, good point, Paul. Very good point.

[37:53] Paul Dickinson

That could be the bridge.

[37:55] Christiana Figueres

That's a very good point.

[37:56] Tom Rivett-Carnac

Yeah. I mean, what that could lead to, interestingly, with all these NATO discussions, is countries spending more of their GDP on their military, but actually they spend it protecting their citizens from natural disasters rather than what NATO thinks they're going to spend it on. But, Christiana, I'd love to ask you, based on that, because I have the same stone in my stomach, what's your level of confidence that this summer, which is where we started this episode, is going to make things different?

[38:20] Christiana Figueres

Well, this summer or next year, right? Because it's the same phenomenon will continue, sadly. And so maybe it will peak by the end of the year, but the long tail of the heat and lack of precipitation is going to have a very long tail, precisely because the baseline upon which Nino operates and has an impact has changed. It's a higher baseline now. It's hotter and more dry. And therefore, the tail is a much longer tail. So I don't know, Tom. I mean, like I said during the conversation there, I honestly, and I so hope that I am wrong. I very often hope to be wrong. But this one, I really hope that I am completely wrong. My sense is that it's not that we are completely paralyzed on climate action. I'm not saying that at all. I'm just saying that climate action is going to become more out of the logic of opportunity than out of the threat and concern about defending life. So I think obviously we need both because just the opportunity probably won't move as fast and as deep as it needs to. We need both. But I just think that to begin with, financial decisions will be taken much more through the lens of opportunity than through the lens of defending ourselves against a threat.

[39:54] Paul Dickinson

Yeah. But there have been these extraordinary scenes. A few years ago, we put a link into the South African fire crews arriving in Canada to help countries supporting each other. It's actually a very beautiful image. And I think we would be moving there quite quickly and collectively, potentially, if it wasn't for this sort of hyper politics and extreme politicization, which certainly Antoniega has got an interesting new book on. It's sort of the best of times in terms of us possibly finding a spirit together and the worst of times in terms of people trying to throw a spanner in that kind of collective will. Yeah.

[40:31] Christiana Figueres

Your example there, Paul, is so interesting because it's a country way south, way, way, way south, there's, you know, other than, other than the Antarctica, you can't get much farther than South Africa. Helping a country, why north? Canada. And so that really is a reversal of our usual thinking, right? That is the global north that always has to come out there and help the global south. That was a total reversal.

[40:58] Tom Rivett-Carnac

But it does, I mean, your point is very good, Paul, because what it illustrates is that the potential which is created by this shared threat for common humanity coming forward for collective action is being fundamentally undermined at a critical moment by disinformation and by bad actors taking advantage of difficult situations. I mean, that's the reason why we can't create a sense of collective purpose over something as unifying as or should be humanizing as a disaster and seeing human suffering. There should be collective outpourings of compassion and empathy to do something about that. But there's always this little niggling, well, was it this and what about this? Didn't this people cause it deliberately? Is it all true and are they AI generated? That way lies madness for society. It really gives me enormous amounts of sympathy for the people who say, you can no longer solve these issues in isolation. You can't solve this issue of climate without looking at disinformation and AI sovereignty and ownership of the channels and all these other different things. It goes much deeper than the few points I've just made. Because you just keep getting stuck in a loop.

[42:05] Paul Dickinson

One tiny point, Tom, is we can't yet, not that we can't at all. So I just wanted to offer that up to you.

[42:12] Tom Rivett-Carnac

Thank you.

[42:13] Christiana Figueres

Good point. Thank you, Paul.

[42:16] Paul Dickinson

We're getting there. We're trying. Kissing a lot of frogs.

[42:21] Tom Rivett-Carnac

I think that probably draws us to the end. Any final thoughts from either of you about the threat multiplier, the polycrisis we're facing, and little nuggets of how we can find our way through?

[42:31] Christiana Figueres

Well, oddly enough, Tom, despite the fact that we don't have a clear way forward, the fact is we can't just sit and twiddle our thumbs, because we could reach the conclusion of, okay, well, we're not going to get anywhere. That's just not acceptable. We have to be able to push forward as much as we can and do so in the absence of any guarantee, in the absence of any success. And that is a pretty sophisticated human reaction that we have to cultivate.

[43:13] Tom Rivett-Carnac

Yeah. Before we come to Paul, I have a shocking thing to reveal to you there, Christiana, based on what you just said. Young people don't know what twiddling your thumbs is. I know this from being around young people. Would you like to explain it to younger listeners who spend more time on their phones than doing what we used to do? Christiana, forget it.

[43:29] Christiana Figueres

Well, I have another one, Tom. I recently took a photograph that I thought Alex, your child would like, I sent it to Alex. The response was, sick. And then I wrote, like, are you sick? And Alex says, no, sick means really cool. So, yes, we are definitely not talking the same language. I need to update myself.

[43:58] Paul Dickinson

That's kind of the idea.

[43:59] Tom Rivett-Carnac

So do we want to put how to twiddle your thumbs in the show notes? That's probably the best way.

[44:02] Christiana Figueres

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We can make a little video of explaining what it is.

[44:07] Tom Rivett-Carnac

Wonderful. All right. Thank you both. Lovely to see you. Talk to you soon. Bye. Thanks for listening, everyone.