Transcript

(This is transcript is partly AI-generated and the information provided may not be entirely error-free). 

Dr Danielle Ireland-Piper

There's some common themes emerging there in terms of consumption and leadership and sort of responsibility and interconnectedness.

General (Retired) Tom Middendorp AO

You cannot stick to the fossil fuel era if the whole world is moving to a new era.

National Security Podcast

You're listening to the National Security Podcast, the show that brings you expert analysis, insights and opinion on the national security challenges facing Australia and the Indo-Pacific. Produced by the ANU National Security College.

David Andrews

Welcome to the National Security Podcast. I'm David Andrews, Senior Policy Advisor at the ANU National Security College. Today's podcast is being recorded on the land of the Ngunnawal and Ngambri people, and I pay my respects to their elders past and present. This episode was delivered as a public lecture examining the impact of climate change on national security hosted by the National Security College on the 9th of October. It features Tom Middendorp, Chris Barry, Cheryl Durant, and Sophie Lewis in conversation with NSC's academic director, Associate Professor Danielle Ireland Piper. The event was delivered in partnership with the Australian Security Leaders Climate Group and the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. General retired Tom Middendorp is the chair of the International Military Council on Climate and Security and a senior visiting fellow at the Klingendal Research Institute and the Hague Centre for Strategic Studies. He previously served as the Chief of Defence of the Netherlands until 2017. Admiral retired Chris Barry AC is the Australian Chair of the Global Military Advisory Council on Climate Change, a founding and executive member of the Australian Security Leaders Climate Group, and he previously served in the Royal Australian Navy for 42 years, including spending the final four years of his career as the Chief of Defence Force. Cheryl Durant is the former Director of Preparedness and Mobilisation in the Australian Department of Defence, where she led on defence and interdepartmental climate risk assessment initiatives. Prior to her civilian career, Cheryl served for 15 years in the Australian Army and is also an executive and founding member of this trans security leaders climate group. Dr. Sophie Lewis is the ACT Commissioner for Sustainability in the Environment and the 2019 ACT Scientist of the Year. Prior to this, she researched the connection between climate change and extreme weather and climate events at the University of New South Wales, the University of Melbourne and the Australian National University.

Before we proceed to the episode, I would also like to take this opportunity to flag that the National Security Podcast is currently running a listener survey to better understand our audience and their preferences. A link will be in the show notes. But for now, on with the recording.

General (Retired) Tom Middendorp AO

This blurry picture is the picture of the world we are going to live in, which is a different picture from the world we have been living in. And we have been living in a period that's quite unique. We have been living in a period of about 80 years of freedom, stability, which gave us the opportunity to further develop our freedoms, but also our prosperity. And we have grown our prosperity to unprecedented levels. Never in our history, speaking from Europe, have we seen such a long period of peace and stability and such a high level of prosperity. This is unique in history. But the world is changing. We got used to this. We got used to freedom. We got used to all the liberties that we have. We got used to prosperity. For us, it's normal, but it isn't and it comes with a price. And the price is what we leave to our children. And that's what drives me. I'm concerned about the legacy that my generation, the generation above me leaves behind for our children. And that's what I wanted. I want to do something about that. And I'm going to talk to you about that.

I'm going to talk to you about that from a security perspective. I'm not a climate expert. There are other experts who know much more and want to hear about climate but I look at the scenarios, at the IPCC scenarios, at other scenarios, and I look, okay, what does that mean? What does it mean from a security perspective? How is that going to change our world? And I am quite concerned when I look at those consequences, and I've seen it happening already. This is not future music. This is about what we see nowadays and what's happening in different regions in the world. And I've seen it happen in...in different mission areas. I've been involved in more than 20 crisis areas as a commander, as a director of operations and as a chief of defence. And I've seen the world changing. In Afghanistan, left below, you see a small picture. We had been fighting for long periods to free a village, a district centre. And in the end, we succeeded in driving the Taliban out, but only to find out that we hadn't solved the problem, and we found out that the problem was all about water scarcity. They're all farmers, they need water and there was very little water. They couldn't agree on how to divide that. So that gave tensions and the Taliban used those tensions to gain leverage over the people. Small example of something that we witnessed all over the world.

And once we realized that, we were able to negotiate a solution on how to divide the little water that was there. And they accepted that solution. Then it became quiet. And a year later, I could walk through the main street of that village with our current king with very limited protection, which showed the enormous turnaround that happened there. But not because of our fighting, but because we understood what the root cause was and we were able to address that root cause.

And that was very helpful. For me, that was kind of an eye-opener that in many missions, we are fighting the symptoms. And the example you just gave is another example of it. We are fighting the symptoms of a problem. The military has been sent to conflict areas as kind of a reaction to what's going wrong in those areas. But it's a very reactive way of doing business. And we are responding to the symptoms of what's happening there.

In Somalia, we saw we were fighting pirates, but the pirates that we caught were all poor farmers and poor fishermen who didn't have a choice anymore, who were driven into the hands of piracy. In Iraq, we witnessed how Daesh occupied the Mosul then, controlled the distribution of water in the region, and used that as an instrument. The people got a choice. They either cooperate or they didn't get any water.

Now, what choice is that? So it became an instrument of power. And in Mali, we saw how the droughts triggered a lot of fragility that was already there, but especially in the north of Mali, opened the avenues for extremism to come up and created an internal conflict that became bigger and bigger. So in all these regions, I increasingly realized that climate is one of the drivers behind the scenes.

And once I became Chief of Defence, I made the connection with climate change because if it already has such an impact in crisis areas and climate is changing for the worse, the impact will become bigger. So we identified climate change as one of the drivers of change also from a security perspective. And I'm not saying it's a military problem. It certainly is not, but it does have a big security dimension to it.

And let us go a bit deeper in this. There are five reasons I would like to give you why climate is important from a security perspective. And the first is on more global level, because climate change is not a standalone issue. I think we need to regard climate change in the context of a few other big trends. You see them here on this slide. And one of them is population growth. We are moving to a world with 10 billion people. That's an average UN scenario.

10 billion people. started this century with 6.2. So that's almost a doubling in size. That's huge. Which means doubling in demand for water, for space, for food, for resources. And that conflicts with the other trend of increasing resource scarcity. And we see a widening range of resources becoming scarcer and scarcer.

And together, these two trends mean that we are facing a global gap between demand and supply, that gap is growing. So the big challenge for this century is how are we going to sustain a doubling world population? And for me, the solution is certainly not that we should double the production in the way we are producing now, because then we will only deplete resources more quickly. The solution is in becoming less resource dependent, which requires also a lot of innovation, different kinds of innovation than we are doing now. But the less we succeed in bridging that gap, the more it will lead to strategic competition, the more it will lead to frictions, and that can easily turn into conflicts. History has shown this over and over again. And climate change makes it harder to bridge that gap because climate change reduces the livable space in the world, reduces the arable space in the world and reduces the availability of many of those resources. And another big trend is, of course, the geopolitical change from a globalizing world to a more fragmenting world. And this is affecting our ability to bridge the gap because this geopolitical fragmentation means that we have power blocks in the world that compete with each other. And scarcity can be an enormous source for competition.

Geopolitical fragmentation also affects our ability to come to global solutions because it kind of paralyses multilateral mechanisms. UN mechanism, the World Bank, all these mechanisms are built after the second world war when we all agreed this should never happen again. And these mechanisms are based on consensus and consensus is very hard to achieve in a fragmenting world. So it makes it more and more difficult to come to global solutions while we are facing more global problems. So the challenge is how can we revitalize those multilateral mechanisms or maybe create new ones, new kinds of mechanisms. And on the background, you see a fifth trend, which is technology. And technology is also a game changer. It can be a force for the good, but it can also be a force for the worse. It can play both ways.

Let me give you an example of this more global level with the impacts. You mentioned the Arctic. In the north, the Arctic is melting, which opens up a new arena with resources. Many big powers are wanting to get that part of those resources. That creates competition in that arena. It also opens up new trade routes between China and Europe over the north, over Russia, which also puts Russia on a new spot and it enables Russia to access both oceans from the north directly, which militarily gives a certain change because now they have the whole fleet in the Black Sea and it has to go through the Mediterranean to access the Atlantic Ocean, which is a long way. But when they can move it to the north, they can access both oceans immediately. And that's a game changer also in the political more military sea. This picture is of the Himalaya mountains, you recognize it probably, which is called the third polar cap in the world. And why is this interesting? Because all of the rivers in South Asia come from this plateau, come from this mountain area. And it's completely Chinese territory. And we know China's building all kinds of dams to control that water because they also have a water problem, they also have droughts. But at this moment, there are plans for an additional almost 100 dams.

Which means – looking through security eyes – that in a few years’ time, China can control the distribution of water in the whole region, which gives China also a leverage over the countries in the South of Asia. This is also important because the region is struck by other impacts of climate change. We see the enormous temperature rise. India had temperatures up to 50 degrees, I believe. Pakistan, enormous flooding a few years ago. One third of the country was flooded. So the impacts of the changing climate are enormous in this region and they are facing with extremes, extremes in water fall and flooding, but also extremes in temperature. And these rivers are the lifelines, are the lifelines of many of these countries. Of course they have monsoon rains, but that's only periodically, but throughout the year, they depend upon those rivers. And building all these dams affects the ability to live along those rivers because it holds the sediments back, the life in the rivers will be reduced. And if you open a dam, you get a flush of water downstream, which also creates problems.

But what's also interesting is that this region contains most of the mega cities in the world. And these are cities with 10, 20, 30 million people in one city, enormous cities. And they're all located at coastal areas and at rivers. Just imagine the increasing risks of flooding of rivers, but also sea level rise, how that will impact those cities. So what kind of humanitarian disasters can appear? This is a ticking time box. And this is also the factory of the world. So it creates enormous supply line disruptions once these kinds of events occur. And that makes it important for all of us, because it immediately has an economic impact on our countries. It has a destabilizing impact on the region and that also has all kinds of spin-off effects for us.

 So this is not a faraway show. This is not something for an exotic country to happen. No, this is something that really can hurt all of us. And that's happening at a global level. And I can give you more examples, but I won't do that.

The second...impact of climate change is more on a regional level. And here we witness climate change having two effects. You all know that, of course, the temperature rise. And on the left, you see the map of the World's Over-Resources Institute showing the areas that are most severely affected by droughts and have the highest temperature rises. And especially fragile areas, developing areas around the world are hit hardest by the increasing droughts.

On the right-hand side, you see the areas vulnerable to flooding. And the area I just mentioned, the Himalaya and the rivers of South Asia, dark red colors, highest risk of flooding. And this is also the area that is maybe mostly confronted with that risk. So for me, this is a very high impact area when we look at climate change, also from a security perspective. And in all these areas, Climate change really affects the life of people. I have been traveling through Somalia this year, through Iraq, through Bangladesh for the filming of my book. And I've seen how the inlands are being deserted, how the rural areas are running empty. People just cannot survive there anymore. In Somalia, they only had two rain seasons in five years. And they live from livestock, they live from agriculture. How can you live with three years without rain. It's impossible. So they have to move. They move to the cities. In Africa, the cities, and also in Asia, cities are booming. It was in Muzul in Iraq, the city has doubled in size in two years' time, from one and a half to three million people. And these are mostly people coming from the rural areas, seeking work in the cities. And in these cities, they can hardly find work. There is no work. So they become desperate.

How do you sustain your family if there is no work? If you cannot work on the lands that your ancestors have been working on for centuries? And the large parts, especially North Africa, large parts of the population is very young. I believe 60, 70 % is minor, very young, and they don't have a perspective. So they become desperate, or what do they do? They migrate, they want to move out of there or they join other groupings, extremist organisations or organised crimes. So it has all kinds of spin-off effects that change the world, that impact the world on a wider range that also affect us. Not a rosy picture, to say the least.

In Iraq, I ran into this girl. And it's just one example of many, many examples. And what she's wearing is all she possesses. As she's living in this tent, it's winter time here. So in night it's freezing, if it rains it goes right through the tent, they live in the mud, with the whole family they sleep on the ground and that's where they are. And her father was standing next to her and her father had tears in his eyes. He was explaining how he was a very rich farmer. He had large farmlands, he had a lot of cattle, but because of the increasing drought he couldn't grow his crops anymore. He had to sell his cattle one by one to sustain his family and in the end he ended up in this tent. And this is happening to hundreds of thousands of people. The World Bank predicts migration flows triggered by climate change up to 50 million people. Enormous. These are enormous movements that we are going to witness.

A third impact of climate change is of course – the severe weather events. You know more about it than I do here in Australia. You have your peace. But if you look all over the world, they're impacting in one or the other way. They are affecting vital infrastructure, which affects our economies and the stability of our countries. In the middle, see an island in St. Maarten, a Dutch island. Completely the whole infrastructure was destroyed in one hurricane.

All the vital infrastructure was gone. You need to rebuild the whole island, the whole population. And you know all about the wildfires, et cetera. Every year we see new records. In the Netherlands, we have one of the most moderate climates in the world. And even we feel it. Even we aren't safe. We are confronted with floodings. We live in a delta area. We are confronted with sea level rise, which is existential for us.

We have been fighting disease for centuries. Two-third of our population lives below the sea level. So just imagine few meters of sea level rise, what the impact of that will be. It's really existential. But at the same time, in the summertime, we are also confronted with droughts. We have to hold on to the water and we are confronted with salination of coastal areas. So it affects us in many ways as well. And I think every country in the world is feeling those kinds of effects in different ways, which results in all kinds of disasters. Last year we had a record year and I'm sure we will see more records there building up every year. Last year, 66 natural disasters on a global level with more than $1 billion in damages. Overall, $350 billion. So it's becoming an economic factor as well. And only one third is insured, which means that two thirds has to be paid by us, has to be paid by...by the communities, by the people who have to pay for their houses if they are damaged or by governments, but they are not insurable anymore. And this is a big debate going on now to what level can we insure things? And the insurance companies are backing out because they say, yeah, we can never sustain this, we can never do this. So it becomes a risk factor for all of us.

The fourth reason is that we are designing all kinds of new policies which also drive change around us. And this is more positive change, but it also creates new dependencies. But globally, 130 countries are now moving to net zero, which is a big movement that's now going on. The world around us is changing very rapidly. In Europe, 2035, the whole automotive industry will have to produce electrical cars and they are now struggling with making that change. Companies like Volkswagen are in big trouble at this moment to enable that. The trucking will be five years behind, then the shipping, and last, the aerospace, which is of course a very hard area to make that change, but technology is evolving very rapidly at the moment. And all of these countries also accepted to move to a more circular economy.

So that's a huge transition that we are going through worldwide. And other countries who have not complied with this, they cannot lag behind. You cannot stick to the fossil fuel era if the whole world is moving to a new era. So we have to go along. This is becoming very forceful because in the EU and also in other regions, this is increasingly being translated in laws and regulations. So companies that don't comply, are standing in court and increasingly they are being put on the stand, which is also quite a negative one, but also a driver of change. And what I also see in the security sector is that more and more militaries around the world are now implementing climate strategies into their policy development. So we don't have to reinvent the wheel, we just can look at how others are doing that and copy it.

And for the military, it's very interesting because the new technologies that are connected with, for instance, the energy transition, can also help the military to become more self-sufficient. So it gives all kinds of new opportunities. You've got the remote diagnostics can help you to reduce the number of engineers that you have to bring to mission areas. Robotics can help do the same. And we can do much more services on the distance.

The energy can be independent, can be created locally so that you don't have to have large convoys full of fuel. You can produce water on the spot. all kinds of different technologies can help you to reduce that footprint. And that's very important because for the military, logistics is the largest cost driver of any military mission. It's the largest risk factor of a mission. So the more you can reduce it, the more you can put your money in where it should be and that is your readiness. But same technologies can help towns and villages and cities to do the same. They can also become more self-sufficient, which helps them to become less dependent. And in Europe, we just had an energy crisis because of the Ukraine war. And suddenly everybody understood...how nice it is to be independent. So suddenly on all the roofs in the Netherlands, you saw solar panels. It accelerated the energy transition because that was a means to reduce the energy bill and to not be affected anymore by these kinds of disruptions. So self-sufficiency is the positive side of the change that's going on, can help us become more independent, can help us become less vulnerable. But this is what's happening. Now what to do about that?

What can we do? It's not only doomsday, I already described several opportunities, but one thing is needed, and Darwin already said it. It's not the strongest, not the most intelligent to survive, it's the one most adaptable to change. And that's what is required from all of us. If we are not adaptable to change, we will suffer the consequences.

And the world will continue, nature will survive in one or the other way, but the question is, will we survive?

So we have to adapt, we have to change and we are not doing that quick enough. We are not on the Paris Agreement, we are not on one and a half degrees, we are even not on two degrees. We are now on a scenario going above the two degrees, which is very impactful. Now, what can we do? And I just give you a few lessons learned. These are not solutions, but these are more avenues that we should use. One is about building understanding, it's about starting to understand why climate change is so important, what the impact is of climate change. You cannot solve something that you don't understand, so you have to build knowledge. if I look at history, never before did we have so much foresight, so much in-depth knowledge of what we are facing as this time – that gives us a responsibility to be prepared. With many thanks to the IPCC and all these other people who've done all that work, I think we should now take that under our arms and translate that into our daily practice. And that requires also that we use the knowledge that's out there, build new kinds of ecosystems, new networks of knowledge. And this is a network that I'm honoured to lead.

This is the International Military Council of and Security. What it does, it connects experts from around the world. We have experts, have military leaders from more than 40 countries in the world. And they exchange experiences, best practices, which is already powerful. But they also provide that to the research institutes. So we have a nucleus of four in the US and in Europe, but there's a whole network of other institutes connecting now, 26 other ones.

So there is a very big scientific base now building up that helps us to better understand the climate security nexus. And the outcome of that, I can take towards the government officials, towards institutions, to make them aware that climate change is not just an environmental issue, but also a security issue. And to help them design policies around it. So I'm certainly not securitizing the topic, but I'm only stressing that it has a big security dimension and that we should be ready for that. Another example is the power of innovation. And I'm not saying that technology will solve everything. It's about our behaviour. We have to change our behaviour. But technology is a big enabler in this and can help us to become less dependent on resources.

 This resource independency has many faces and I hope that you...with all the research that you're doing can help us make that shift to become more resource independent. I'll give you one example, which is an example of the power of one person. We don't need multinationals to bring new ideas to the tables. We need bright young people to do that. And we need the courage to do that. And this is an example of one man. see him on the top up. He came to me in a conference that I gave. And he said, “General, our great story is here in this conference, but I have the solution for the world water problem. I want to extract water from desert air. And I want to do that with very limited electricity, with one solar panel.” And there are many companies around the world who try to do that, but they don't succeed. They need a lot of power. They need a lot of electricity to do that. And there is more water in the air than in the ground. And it's fully circular. All the water that you extract at some moment, it will go back into the air. So it doesn't damage anything.

He was inspired by a cold can of Coke that he put on the table in the summer. And what happens? Condensation. The can gets wet. And he said, “If that can of coke can make water out of the air, I can do the same.” And I want to use that principle.

And it was a fantastic story. At the end, I wanted to congratulate him and move on, but something in me said, well, what if this works? Just imagine the enormous impact that this can have. If you can extract water in the desert with such limited electricity, self-supporting, you can sustain families living in those areas. They don't have to move. They don't have to migrate. They can stay where they are. They can build a new future there. So what if this works? Decided to give him a chance. And I offered him the opportunity to go to the desert in Mali in a base that we have. said, next week, you jump on a plane and we will bring you there. We will accommodate you. You can test your designs. And he did that. That picture is from there. And that was the first prototype. And after several days, he succeeded in extracting water, but only one glass per day. So it's not much. But he kept on working on this and a few years later, and we kept on supporting him, a few years later, he made this tabletop device able to produce 20, 30 litres of water per day. And now it becomes very interesting because with such a device, you can sustain a family in the Sahel region. And he kept on doing that. This building here is in the deserts. It's in the World Expo in Dubai. And you see people walking there. So it's a big building.

It's a Dutch pavilion and it's all about circularity. All the materials here are reusable in some way another way. And in the middle you see a big pyramid and it's all covered with vegetation. Below you see people with umbrellas in the desert. And they're walking through, here in the middle you see kind of a shower of water. And also that vegetation needs water. And you can guess who did that. That was he. And up is here on the roof in that white container. And here he produced 1000 litres of water per day. 1000 litres. Enough to sustain a whole village in this whole region. Enough to sustain a farm in those kinds of regions. And this is low tech. This is cheap technology. You need a water pump, a cooling element and you need a solar panel, that's all. And you can fully recycle everything, every element of it. Just to show you the enormous potential that's there, if we give people with good ideas a chance. And Ab is a man, he takes his chances, and he doesn't give up. All the scientists told Ab, “what you want is not possible. This is scientifically impossible to create water with so limited electricity…not possible, stop, this is against all the scientific laws.” And Ab said, “Well, I will try it anyway.” And he succeeded. So we can change laws. And I challenge you to do the same.

With that, would like to close and I think we have a good panel discussion ahead of us. Thank you very much.

 

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Dr Danielle Ireland-Piper

Thank you for that. Challenge accepted anybody? We need some outside the box thinking. I might start and please forgive me, I'm going to be very Australian about this and just use everybody's first names rather than titles. I prefer warrior goddess, empress, princess myself. Cheryl, I'm going to start with you. Although I'm a lawyer here at the National Security College, the subject I teach in our Masters of National Security Policy is ‘Climate, environment and national security’.

 

And I had you along as a guest once and you said in response to a student question that, “One of the challenges that we face is that our problems are essentially born of a capitalist system in which individual interests are often promoted and we're not very good at doing collective interests.” But of course, responding to the existential threat that is climate change does require an element of self-sacrifice and an extensive collectively.

And I guess having heard you say that and also being aware that you're the former director of preparedness and mobilisation, what does that mean for mobilising in a broader sense?

 

Cheryl Durant

Well, thanks for the question. And I guess I'm old enough to remember my parents' stories about World War Two. So for me, the mobilisation that occurred during that's a sort of touchable lived thing. And for those that haven't studied it, it was a massive transformation occurring in a very, very short time – to respond to what was perceived pretty much by everyone as an existential crisis. Although at the start of the war it wasn't perceived as an existential crisis, was thought that we could, you know, sort of not go there, but Winston Churchill managed to show leadership. He got up, he was decisive. It took him, I think, as soon as he was Prime Minister, the next day he had his cabinet, it was across both sides of government.

Within 48 hours they had a plan, they reorganised all the ministries and they started to get on with stuff. We just don't have that here. So Tom has beautifully, I think, outlined the challenges and also pointed at some of the opportunities. But it's really where I see the need for quite radical change is in the political and social and economic parts of our societies, which are still carrying on as business as usual.

And even with the wonderful innovative examples, a lot of its consumption, like our response to what is essentially a crisis of overconsumption and waste, where the circular economy is trying to remove the waste side of it, but we're still overconsuming, is to consume. So let's buy a four-wheel drive big EV using materials that we could desperately need in Africa to solve problems. so often there's really ...a maladapted response where we need to look at the whole planet, we need to cooperate and we need to sort of have a mobilisation at planetary scale because really that's the only thing I see that's going to be adequate to address it with a good path out of this problem for most of the people of the world.

 

Dr Danielle Ireland-Piper

It's an interesting point that you make about the EV in a way that's guess a type of greenwashing. So in a way you're saying it's not enough that we all just in our personal lives recycle more or get an electric car, but we need to do this more globally where those resources are most needed. Is that sort of what you mean?

 

Cheryl Durant

Yeah, well, if you think about the material consumption of a, if we all brought in the West massive EVs and one for our wife and one for our kids and solar panels on our house, our batch, our third property, there isn't enough to put these things in Africa, which desperately needs it. Or in Asia, where Thomas said there's heaps of problems. And of course it gets harder and harder each year because unless we sort of prioritise the use of it. The military got critical path planning. What's the critical path out of this? Where do we most need the electrification and the decarbonisation? And even just the EV, well some factory probably not solar powered is producing that car, particularly if it's, and that factory may well be using fossil fuels. So your choice, which seems good, is actually driving up consumption somewhere else. So it's just got, it's really a big, global interconnected crisis that needs big global interconnected solutions as well as solutions in that, and that can get big and overwhelming, but there's the every little solution that helps as long as it's not one of consumption and that we often mischaracterise this as a climate crisis where it's a consumption and waste crisis.

 

Dr Danielle Ireland-Piper

And that point about interconnection is a really important one, which I think crosses all your fields.

 If I can move to Chris now. You've clearly had a very distinguished military career, including as chief of the Defence Force. And you've also published a report, I understand, Climate Change, Security and the ADF. Given the time and expertise you've developed in this space and your leadership experience, what is the main things that you think that leaders in national security right now should be doing to respond to the threats posed by climate change?

 

Admiral Chris Barrie AC (retd)

I see the issues being humongous because time has resonated with me in a lot of ways over the last few days. And the first point I want to make is a question of principle leadership. I frankly think there are a lot of people who are leaders today that are wasting their time and energy enjoying a business as usual approach to doing things and stirring up money.

And frankly, that's not good enough. The second thing that Tom, I think, has unveiled for me is the use of examples in terms of what you see should be a source of reflection on how could things be better and what does this mean for other people.

He pointed to the 10 billion people on the planet and I've been banging on about what I call the ‘burden of population’ now for, well, probably 10 years. I haven't solved the problem. But I think of it this way. Every one of those human beings is an energy consumer. Every one of those human beings wants to be fed. Every one of those human beings wants water.

And every one of those human beings, unless they're very different, wants the kind of life that a lot of us enjoy. But the fact of the matter is, you know, my career, was born in 1945. There were two and a half billion people on the planet in 1945, after two world wars.

So to come back to the point that he made about space, competition, all of those kinds of issues, the world is very, very different. So going back to what we did in 2015, we decided that we needed to put out some sort of document that made people think about the issues of security. And four of us wrote the document. The science bit was done by Will Steffan, is one of the stellar scientists, you know? Earth science, in my opinion, and it's Will who said to me before he died, in 2030 we will know the answer, survival or extinction. On 2030 is only five and a half years away. It's not very long. And for all of us as Australians, let's think of it this way.

We're talking two federal elections between now and then. And I'm very thinking about seriously, how do we make the 2025 election the climate election? Or action, not talk, not papers, not reviews, et cetera, action to try and solve the problems that we're confronting. And potentially to show a lead to the rest of the world.

 

Some of you may remember Tony Abbott's prime ministership. What did Abbott say about climate change? “It's all a bunch of hooey and nonsense. And in any case, why should we take a leap?” And if you take the view that why should we take a leap, none of us are ever going to solve this problem. And so I go back to Will. 2030, extinction or survival? Means we've got to do this. In 2015, I don't think our eyes will be nearly open wide enough to what was in front of us in terms of complacency, not taking a proper risk perspective to the worst of the scenarios we can think about, being in the comfort zone and saying, well, they've thought middle of the curve looks all right, it'll be okay.

If you lived in Florida right now, you're probably on the road, part of the sort 10 million people now looking out of Hurricane Milton's way, and they've run out of petrol in the gas stations. You know, these are the sorts of things that are happening to us and they shouldn't have. So going back to 2015, it was called climate change, security and the Australian Defence Force. Our mistake was we targeted just what it did mean for a military force that you know what, it's actually a community and global problem in which militaries play quite a small role, actually, if you look at the big numbers. But what does the military give us when we're doing this? Well, in my terms, and I'm short, we always look at things and start to think about what if this goes wrong? What do we do? How do we prepare for the things that look very ugly if they do go wrong?

In my day, you used to call it the weather eye. Always look at the weather and think in advance of what this is going to be like. And so did the other two. So military thinking has always been about risk. Minimising the amount of risk, making sensible decisions based on information and a proper intelligence assessing, and trying to reduce the risk to the minimum of. Very successful militaries, of course, never have to fight.

I mean, this is a no-brainer. And this is the kind of world that we need to be thinking about. I don't think we've got any examples out there now of what will the world need to look like to be self-sustaining. know, Tom's stories, and I urge you all to read the Climate General, is full of terrific stories. All my stories are old…old hand, know, these two or 9-11, those sorts of things. Tom's stories are all up to date and they really resonate because he was reflective about what he observed and it meant something for what he's now doing.

 

Dr Danielle Ireland-Piper

I think, yeah, if there was ever a time where the world needed a climate general, it's now and it is a great read. Chris, I know you've got some questions for Tom, so we'll come back to those a bit later, but...just for now, we might just sort of go from the global for a moment back to the local. And of course, not only are we a nation state in a world of other states, but we also exist in a federal system where we have federal governments and state governments and local governments in Australia. And sometimes that can be a really good check and balance on the way power is exercised. But in other ways, sometimes it can cause problems, particularly when responding to natural disasters.

And so in that context, Sophie, you've been the ACT Commissioner for Sustainability in the environment for almost four years now. In your view, what are the challenges posed by federalism in a system like Australia when we're trying to make, or when we should be making, a meaningful effort to address climate change?

 

 

Dr Sophie Lewis

Yeah, thanks for that question. And I think some of the discussion that Tom laid out for us around natural disasters or environmental disasters is a really useful way to explore some of those challenges where we have those powers and responsibilities being shared between multiple levels of government.

So if we think back to, for example, the Black Summer bushfires, that was a time when we had environmental hazard affecting large parts of Australia. And that's where we saw some of these really big challenges where we had differing responsibilities and capabilities across those different tiers. So for example…

 

Dr Danielle Ireland-Piper

…who holds the hose?

 

Dr Sophie Lewis

Yeah, or apparently no one sometimes. So we might have, you know, different capabilities, different resources sitting with the federal government and the state governments. But we also have different resources required across multiple jurisdictions.

And all of these challenges really came out in the Royal Commission into Natural Disaster Arrangements, where we saw that when we have multiple jurisdictions requiring resources and having different capabilities and different knowledge about what was occurring, that's when we see really impairment in our ability to respond and protect communities. So for example, we might have multiple jurisdictions requiring commonwealth assistance, potentially through ADF assistance.

And that's not always able to be provided to every single jurisdiction. We have the state governments responsible for emergency management. And at times that saw expectations and planning around bushfires literally ending at state borders. And we know that our environment and natural disasters don't end at state borders. And we also see increasingly expectations on local government and our local government workers to be the most frontline responders to our climate crisis where they don't have potentially the financial resources or the knowledge to respond to those crises. So we're seeing huge challenges in terms of coordination and responsiveness or the agility to respond when we have those multiple bureaucracies engaging with each other and all requiring the same, potentially the same resources and not having understanding of what's occurring. But I think it's really important to recognise that that is now. So I've discussed the Black Summer bushfires where we had those fires occurring over large parts of Australia. So that's nearly five years ago now. And that was when we'd had about one to 1.1 degrees of climate change. So during those Black Summer bushfires, my daughter was two and Tom's indicated that the IPCC scenarios put us well above limiting climate change to one and a half or two degrees of global warming. We're in fact tracking to more like three degrees by the end of the century, when it's more than likely my two children will still be alive. So that's within their time, their timelines, within their likely histories that we're expected to exceed three degrees of climate change.

So we struggled with that event in 2019-20 and the royal commissioners were very clear that even though it was unprecedented, it was not unexpected. That is something that we should have had an understanding that could and would occur. And when we layer on every single increment of warming, we're seeing an increase in pressure and challenge. So you talked about federalism and that sharing of responsibilities and powers across the different tiers of government within Australia, but we're also seeing that that is occurring in that regional and global context. So the very evocative photos that Tom had up of Somalia and Mali and those other huge security challenges that he has faced, they were also under one degree of warming. But when we're talking about the summers of my children's future, when they're hitting their point of retirement, that is going to be occurring in an increasingly warm and more extreme world. So when we add those layers of warming onto that, we're seeing that that challenge of resource allocation across states, across Australian jurisdictions is going to be ever more challenged by what's occurring regionally under that increased climate change, and there's going to be less potentially available for each of those jurisdictions.

 

Dr Danielle Ireland-Piper

Yeah, I mean, it's a common theme, isn't it? The issue of responsibility passing, whether it manifests as federalism or whether it manifests as not in my backyard or however. you know, I'm interested to hear you say that and make some observations on the passing of time. I must say as someone who's a constitutional lawyer, I feel an innate rage every time I hear someone say, but disaster management belongs to the states. The constitution says that. Well, it doesn't actually say that. It's far more nuanced than that.

And where there's political will, there's certainly constitutional mechanisms for addressing that. So if anyone wants a lecture on constitutional law, come see me afterwards. But for now, I've got more interesting people to talk to. Do you get a sense, just before I move to Tom, Sophie, do you get a sense that that sort of buck passing sentiment is changing? Are we being more cooperative with the advent of NEMA, for example?

 

Dr Sophie Lewis

Yeah, I think there's certainly a real desire to learn from the Black Summer Bushfires and what didn't go well and implement those lessons. But I also think that it has been extraordinarily hard for us to think in terms of that future that is going to be at times very bleak and at times very difficult. It is hard for us to push ourselves into that thinking around what is unprecedented but not unexpected. And that's really when we're starting to think about this idea of kind of compound extremes.

I mean, we know the extreme weather and climate events, environmental disasters don't wait in line and take their turn in an orderly fashion. That's when we're going to have an increase in co-occurring events. So whether it's extreme storm and extreme heat in one location or our resources being stretched across areas because we're experiencing these extremes on a huge scale or occurring out of season. So we talk about the Black Summer bushfires, but they started in winter, literally in winter. Or we might be talking about cascades of events across regions. So we have seen a change really in the way we are talking about that kind of coordination and interoperability, but we are still really limited in thinking about responding to something that has already happened rather than thinking about what our future will be like and what we have to be doing now to prepare for that.

 

Dr Danielle Ireland-Piper

So that reactiveness rather than preparedness. In a way, that's a nice segue, Tom. You talked a little bit about in your presentation this evening and certainly in your book about us treating symptoms rather than causes and in a way missed opportunities to avert armed conflict and other types of disasters. What do you see as the sort of biggest challenges and opportunities in that context for being a little bit better at cause over symptoms?

 

General (Retired) Tom Middendorp AO

I think we need to redesign resilience. And we need to be aware that we all can contribute to that. It's not just governments. It's also us. If you pick a spot for your house, think about it. Is this spot vulnerable for flooding? Is this spot vulnerable for... And we need to take that kind of risk factors more into considerations in our daily life. And that would have a huge...impact on our resilience and also on the damages that will be inflicted. But it's also a leadership issue. And I don't use my country often when it comes to leadership, but I have one example. It's about an enormous flooding we had in 1953, where a large part of our country was flooded. And it was right after the Second World War. And we were in very economic poor times and we had to rebuild the country. So in that flooding, was very tempting for politicians to do as less as possible, to fix the dykes and get on with it. But they didn't. They decided to put a lot of additional money in building a future proof system that is defending us now for two generations. And we are very grateful that they did that. They kept us safe.

So they took away resources from all kinds of other areas that were also in big problems, but they prioritized and they said, no, we want to look ahead. We want to look at future generations. And I think that is what is needed. When I talk to private sector, I tell them, put the picture of your children in your boardroom and every decision you make, look at that picture and wonder, is this helping my children or not?

And I think that's what we all should do. In every decision we make every day, think about the consequences. We are not aware that every t-shirt we buy has an enormous price. There's a lot of cost in water, in energy, in all kinds of issues. So it's also about our behaviour. And I think we need to become more aware of that. So it's from two sides. It's from the top side in government, but also in our own behaviour.

 

Dr Danielle Ireland-Piper

Yeah, there's some common themes emerging there in terms of consumption and leadership and sort of responsibility and interconnectedness. I'm mindful that we are at time, but I'm just going to ask for a very brief comment from each of you, just your final message, perhaps your final opportunity, very briefly, because I'm being really cheeky and going over time to do this. Sophie.

 

Dr Sophie Lewis

Well, I am also a very optimistic and hopeful person. I did have a baby after the Black Summer bushfires, which is a huge act of hope. And I just want to say I completely agree with Danielle that I think most powerful climate change adaptation that we can undertake isn't a plan or a policy. It's our connection to each other and caring for each other.

 

Dr Danielle Ireland-Piper

Thank you, Sophie. Tom.

 

General (Retired) Tom Middendorp AO

I agree. We can all make a difference. And there's a Chinese saying, many drops are a river. So we can all be a drop and shape that river. Let's be that. River making. I like it. Cheryl.

 

Cheryl Durant

I just say focus on potential and opportunity rather than threat.

 

Dr Danielle Ireland-Piper

 Chris?

 

Admiral Chris Barrie AC (retd)

We just need to change, we've to go forward and all of us are involved in that. So let's just do it.

 

Dr Danielle Ireland-Piper

And quite literally I'm reminded of the old adage that society grows great when men, or women, plant trees in whose shade they will never sit and we take actions for the future and for each other. Thank you.

 

National Security Podcast

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