“Accelerating climate disruption is the greatest threat to the human future: our safety and well-being, our homes and communities, and how and where we live and work,” a group of leading Australian military and security experts says.

The Australian Security Leaders Climate Group (ASLCG) warns in a new report that climate impacts are accelerating faster than expected, at a time when global military alliances are ‘in turmoil’, creating a far more dangerous world.

“This risks Australia being dragged into a war with China on the losing side,” the Group, which consists of former defence and intelligence top brass, said with devastating bluntness.

“Australia needs a contemporary framing of security that places the biggest threat to our future — climate disruption — at the centre of defence and foreign policy,” it said in "A climate-first foreign policy for Australia",

The report is one of the most honest statements to emerge from the traditionally circumspect security hierarchy anywhere in the world. It applies not only to Australia but to most countries.

It follows “ Too Hot to Handle", the Group’s previous admonition on the security threat posed by climate, released in May 2024. This was cold-shouldered by the Albanese Government, which has recently sanctioned a further 1.6 billion tonnes of carbon emissions from coal.

The ASLCG leadership mounts a serious broadside. It includes former Australian Defence chief Admiral Chris Barrie, former Department of Defence preparedness director Cheryl Durant, former deputy chief of the Royal Australian Air Force John Blackburn, and Ian Dunlop, the former chair of the Australian Coal Association.

“We are heading towards levels of warming that will not support humanity as we know it. There will be widespread food insecurity, economic destabilisation, large-scale people displacement, war, failed states and social collapse for which Australia and the world are almost totally unprepared,“ they say.

“Climate risks are global, cascading and systemic, and not containable within borders, so the response requires unprecedented international co-operation and a collective mobilisation of resources unprecedented in peacetime to protect humanity’s future.”

The Australian study stands in strident contrast to developments in the US where Trump has gagged the Pentagon, along with other government departments, from even mentioning the word climate. In previous studies, US security and defence agencies saw climate as a major security threat. Now there are warnings that the US is arming itself for a world that does not exist in reality. These are augmenting perceptions among its former allies that the US is now an untrustworthy friend – and global relationships need to be rethought.

Europe, by contrast, is far more open in acknowledging the military threat posed by climate change, and building it into its defence and diplomatic strategies. “Climate change is an accelerator and multiplier of disasters, instability and conflict, requiring European forces to adapt to operations in a changing climate. The increasing risks from climate change mean that it is shifting from being solely a human security threat to a national security threat, both to Europe and to its strategic interests,”  the International Institute for Strategic Studies said.

These postures point to the possibility of a major global strategic realignment, with the climate-denying axis led by the US, Russia, Saudi Arabia and other petrostates on one side and the “realists” led by Europe, Canada, Australia, Japan and China on the other. Thus, a new Cold War between the Fossil states and a Green Alliance looms – a fight for the human future.

Setting aside the old political friction points for a moment, China is now the unchallenged global leader in green energy, having installed about 40% of global capacity so far. In 2024, its green energy investment topped US$818 billion. Electric cars, trains, batteries, panels, devices, drones and robots are the bow wave in its transformation to a green, low-carbon electro-economy that will leave the fossil-run US beached like a Basilosaurus.

China is often criticised for continuing to burn coal. It remains the world’s largest coal burner and carbon emitter – but that is changing, fast: coal supplies about 56% of grid power now, down from 88%, and renewables are up to 41%. The Chinese oil and gas giant Sinopec anticipates Chinese coal consumption to peak this year and carbon emissions to peak before 2030. Parallelling this is spectacular growth in the country’s hydrogen economy.

Whether this track record is enough to make China hegemon of a global green alliance is still open to question – but one fact is unarguable: China is the world frontrunner in electric cars, photovoltaic cells and batteries. Anyone who wants to transform to the low carbon economy (as well as save money) will find Chinese technology essential.

China’s switch to green energy will also reduce its dependence on imported Russian oil, and India is likely to follow suit, placing both giants increasingly in the green camp. This will strike a heavy blow to global coal and oil exports – and any country that depends on them.

The ASLCG report correctly reads the tectonic shifts now taking place in global geopolitics. Its formula for a climate-first foreign and defence policy is one that every country now needs to absorb:

1. Commitment to deep co-operation with nations that prioritise climate disruption risks, with climate-focused agreements on tax, trade, technology, finance, equity and the like.
2. Diplomatic leadership in high-ambition alliances, such as agreements: to phase out fossil fuel subsidies and international financing; to phase out the fossil fuel economy; and for a regional economic climate mobilisation.
3. Understanding the risks with mandated and regular climate-related security risk assessments, with outcomes shared with neighbours.
4. Full integration of climate risk into defence and security planning, humanitarian response, and conflict prevention efforts.
5. Greater support for vulnerable and frontline nations, increased climate finance and leadership legal frameworks to address climate displacement and migration.

The ASLCG report is a trailblazing vision of where an enlightened, informed and caring humanity might go in the face of the brutal escalation in climate impacts. It does not canvass the full catastrophic crisis facing humanity by any means. But, on its ground, it is a realistic and pragmatic call for a new way to envision our future – and a new global order to bring it about.

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.