Kenneth Coghill & David Spratt

Comment on Proposal 1, APS Review Priorities for change by Ken Coghill & David Spratt

Proposal 1 Build a flexible operating model: comments.
The Independent Review of the APS invites people to “visit our website, challenge our

assumptions, test our thinking, and have your say.” This invitation is severely qualified by the

structure of the website which channels comments into five (5) “proposals” (Box 1),

Box 1. Screenshot < https://www.apsreview.gov.au/> as at 19th April 2019.

Our comments will go to broader, over-arching issues which do not fit neatly into these proposals but

are fundamental to ensuring that “the Australian Public Service is fit-for-purpose in the decades

ahead”1 and answering the three (3) questions:
■ How can we strengthen each proposal?
■ What are we missing?

1 Message from the chair, Priorities for change p. ii.

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Comment on Proposal 1, APS Review Priorities for change by Ken Coghill & David Spratt

■ How do we ensure lasting change?2

Somewhat confusingly each webpage opens to a proposal with a title different from that of the

webpage. Further adding to confusion is the incomplete correspondence between the Priorities and

the Proposals.
The four (4) Priorities listed in the text are:
❖ Strengthen the culture, governance and leadership model
❖ Build a flexible APS operating model
❖ Invest in capability and talent development
❖ Develop stronger internal and external partnerships

whereas the five (5) proposals are:
➢ Build a flexible operating model (Networked enabling systems and common
processes across the service)
➢ Secretaries Board driving outcomes across government and APS performance
(Culture, governance and leadership model)
➢ Genuine transparency and accountability for delivering outcomes for
Australians (Culture, governance and leadership model)
➢ Empowered managers accountable for developing people and teams (Invest in
capability and talent development)
➢ Dynamic ways of working and structures to empower individuals and teams –
making collaboration the norm (Build a flexible operating model)

These comments are submitted to each of the proposals but should be accepted as relating to

broader, over-arching issues.

2 Priorities for change p. 23

2
Comment on Proposal 1, APS Review Priorities for change by Ken Coghill & David Spratt

Comments on proposal: Build a flexible operating model (Networked enabling systems and

common processes across the service)
The introduction to Priorities for Change makes the point that making the APS “fit for purpose” …
“means investing in the APS and setting it up to succeed – not for its own sake but for Australia’s.”
This is a limited view of Australia’s role in the world. Australia is more than just a middle power

arguing and defending its own national interests. Australia is recognised as having leading

knowledge, skills and abilities to contribute to the international community. It has the potential and

indeed a moral responsibility to apply that leadership in the global interest. The APS should have the

human resources to enable it to do support such roles.
The section Adapting to a rapidly changing world (p. 10) is remarkable, indeed lacking credibility,
for its failure to even mention the existential threats posed by climate change – a somewhat more

significant global trend affecting Australia and the APS than:
• rapid and profound change in technology and connectivity
• declining trust
• changing work and career paths
• geopolitical instability is increasing, characterised … by trade tensions or conflict, affecting
many Australian markets

This deficiency extends to the scenarios described in Priorities for change Box 2.
In this context, we strongly endorse the observation that
There are strong concerns the APS’s underlying capacity has been weakened over time. This
is commonly reflected in suggestions about latent skills, talent leaking to the private sector,
and missing capability and connections with Australia, the Asia-Pacific and the rest of the
world. The risk is that Australia will find itself with an APS that, in coming years, struggles to
provide successive governments with integrated advice and support – informed by a deep
understanding of the needs of the Australian people – to best tackle complex problems.
This observation must be reflected in the reforms necessary for the APS to be fit-for-purpose in the

decades ahead, in particular that it must be orientated to the existential threat to civilised society
(Australian and world-wide) posed by climate change.
The responses in respect of the first Proposal are summarised in Box 2 (next page) and discussed in

the following narrative.

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Comment on Proposal 1, APS Review Priorities for change by Ken Coghill & David Spratt

Box 2. Summary of responses to questions

Question Response

How can this proposal • The APS should recognise the limitations of policy-relevant

be strengthened? climate change research in exhibiting scientific reticence.1

What is missing? • An analytical focus to the role of near-term action as a
determinant in preventing planetary and human systems
reaching a ‘point of no return’ by mid-century, in which the
prospect of severe reductions in food production and large areas
of the Earth becoming uninhabitable for mankind leads to the
breakdown of nations and the international order.
• Urgent examination of the role that the national security sector
can play in providing leadership and capacity for a near-term,
society-wide, emergency mobilisation of labour and resources, of
a scale unprecedented in peacetime, to build a zero-emissions
industrial system to protect and sustain human civilisation.
• Recognition of the current and prospective impacts and
potential for mitigation of climate change

How can lasting change • The APS should adopt a scenario approach giving specific

be ensured? attention to high-end warming possibilities in understanding
medium-range (mid-century) climate-security risks, particularly
because of the existential implications.

This is explained in detail in the following text (Existential climate-related security risk: A

scenario approach) by lead author Spratt3.

3 David Spratt is Research Director for Breakthrough National Centre for Climate Restoration, Melbourne, and co-author of
Climate Code Red: The case for emergency action.
4
David Spratt: Existential climate-related security risk: A scenario approach

Abstract

Analysis of climate-related security threats depends significantly on understanding the strengths and

limitations of climate science projections. Much scientific knowledge produced for climate policy-
making is conservative and reticent. Climate change now represents a near- to mid-term existential

threat to human civilisation. A new approach to climate-related security risk-management is thus

required, giving particular attention to the high-end and difficult-to-quantify ‘fat-tail’ possibilities. This

may be most effectively explored by scenario analysis. A 2050 scenario is outlined in which

accelerating climate-change impacts pose large negative consequences to humanity which might not

be undone for centuries. To reduce such risks and to sustain human civilisation, it is essential to

build a zero-emissions industrial system very quickly. This requires the global mobilisation of

resources on an emergency basis, akin to a wartime level of response.

Introduction
The true worst-case scenario might be one where we don’t venture out from our safe harbors of
knowledge to explore the more treacherous shores of uncertainty. —
Dr Gavin Schmidt, Director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies 4

Climate change intersects with pre-existing national security risks to function as a threat multiplier

and accelerant to instability, contributing to escalating cycles of humanitarian and socio-political

crises, conflict and forced migration. Climate-change impacts on food and water systems, declining

crop yields and rising food prices driven by drought, wildfire and harvest failures have already

become catalysts for social breakdown and conflict across the Middle East, the Maghreb and the

Sahel, contributing to the European migration crisis.
Understanding and foreseeing such events depends crucially on an appreciation of the real

strengths and limitations of climate-science projections, and the application of risk-management

frameworks which differ fundamentally from conventional practice.

Scientific reticence

Climate scientists may err on the side of ‘least drama’, whose causes may include adherence to the

scientific norms of restraint, objectivity and scepticism, and may underpredict or down-play future

climate changes.5 In 2007, security analysts warned that, in the two previous decades, scientific

4 Schmidt, G. 2018. ‘The best case for worst case scenarios’, Real Climate, 19 February 2019, accessed 18 March 2019,
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2019/02/the-best-case-for-worst-case-scenarios.
5 Brysse, K., et al. 2013, ‘Climate change prediction: Erring on the side of least drama?’, Global Environmental Change,
23(1), 327-337.

5
David Spratt: Existential climate-related security risk: A scenario approach predictions in the climate-change arena had consistently underestimated the severity of what actually

transpired.6
This problem persists, notably in the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC), whose Assessment Reports may be termed ‘regulatory science’ (as opposed to pure

research science) which straddles the border between science and policy, and in which ‘science is

seen neither as an objective truth, nor as only driven by social interests, but as being co-produced

through the interaction of natural and social orders’.7
IPCC reports exhibit a one-sided reliance on general climate models, which incorporate

important climate processes, but do not include all of the processes that can contribute to system

feedbacks, compound extreme events, and abrupt and/or irreversible changes. 58 Other forms of

knowledge are downplayed, including paleoclimatology, expert advice, and semi-empirical models.
IPCC reports present detailed, quantified, complex modelling results, but then briefly note more

severe, non-linear, system-change possibilities in a descriptive, non-quantified form. Because

policymakers and the media are often drawn to headline numbers, this approach results in less

attention being given to the most devastating, difficult-to-quantify outcomes.
In one example, the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report in 2014 projected a sea-level rise of

0.55-0.82 metre by 2100, but said ‘levels above the likely range cannot be reliably evaluated’. By

way of comparison, the higher of two US Department of Defence scenarios is a two-metre rise by

2100, and the ‘extreme’ scenario developed by a number of US government agencies is 2.5 metres

by 2100.9
Another example is the recent IPCC 1.5°C report, which projected that warming would

continue at the current rate of ~0.2°C per decade and reach the 1.5°C mark around 2040. However,
the 1.5°C boundary is likely to be passed in half that time, around 2030, and the 2°C boundary

around 2045, due to accelerating anthropogenic emissions, decreased aerosol loading and changing

ocean circulation conditions.10

6 Campbell, K.M., et al. 2007. The Age of Consequences: The foreign policy and national security implications of global
climate change, Washington DC, Centre for Strategic and International Studies /Center for New American Security, 9.
7 Dooley, K., et al. 2018. ‘Co-producing climate policy and negative emissions: trade-offs for sustainable land-use’, 5
Global Sustainability, 1, e3, 1–10.
8 Wuebbles, D.J., et al. 2017. Climate Science Special Report: Fourth National Climate Assessment, Volume I, Washington
DC, US Global Change Research Program, 411.
9 Thieler, E.R. and Zervas, C. 2017: Global and Regional Sea Level Rise Scenarios for the United States, NOAA Technical
Report NOS CO-OPS 083, Silver Spring MA, NOAA/NOS Center for Operational Oceanographic Products and Services.
10 Xu, Y., et al. 2018. ‘Global warming will happen faster than we think’, Nature, 564 (7734), 30-32; Henley, B.J., and King.
A.D. 2017. ‘Trajectories toward the 1.5°C Paris target: Modulation by the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation’, Geophysical
Research Letters, 44(9), 4256-62; Jacob, D., et al. 2018. ‘Climate Impacts in Europe Under +1.5°C Global Warming’,
Earth’s Future, 6(2), 264-285.

6
David Spratt: Existential climate-related security risk: A scenario approach

Existential risk

An existential risk to civilisation is one posing permanent large negative consequences to humanity

which may never be undone. It is an adverse outcome that would either annihilate intelligent life or

permanently and drastically curtail its potential.
Taking into account the commitments by nations to the 2015 Paris Agreement, the current

path of warming is 3°C or more by 2100. But this figure does not include ‘long-term’ carbon-cycle

feedbacks such as the weakening efficiency of both land and ocean carbon stores, which are

materially relevant now and in the near future due to the unprecedented rate at which human activity

is perturbing the climate system. Taking into account these system feedbacks, the Paris path would

lead to around 5°C of warming by 2100.11
Scientists warn that warming of 4°C is incompatible with an organised global community, is

devastating to the majority of ecosystems, has a high probability of not being stable, and may reduce

the global human population to one billion people. The World Bank says it may be ‘beyond

adaptation’.12
In other words, 4°C or more of warming is an existential threat to human civilisation, but that

threat may also exist for many peoples, nations and regions of the world at a significantly lower level

of warming. In 2017, 3°C of warming was categorised as ‘catastrophic’, with a warning that, on a

path of unchecked emissions, low-probability, high-impact (‘fat tail’) warming could be catastrophic

by 2050.13
The Emeritus Director of the Potsdam Institute, Prof. Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, warns that
‘climate change is now reaching the end-game, where very soon humanity must choose between

taking unprecedented action, or accepting that it has been left too late and bear the

consequences.’14 He says that if we continue down the present path ‘there is a very big risk that we

will just end our civilisation. The human species will survive somehow but we will destroy almost

everything we have built up over the last two thousand years.’15
Unfortunately, conventional risk- and probability-analysis becomes useless in these

circumstances because it excludes the full implications of outlier events and possibilities lurking at

the fringes.16

11 Reilly, J., et al. 2015. Energy and Climate Outlook: Perspectives from 2015, Cambridge MA, MIT Program on the
Science and Policy of Global Change.
12 Spratt, D., and Dunlop, I. 2018. What Lies Beneath: The understatement of existential climate risk, Melbourne,

Breakthrough National Centre for Climate Restoration, 14.
13 Xu, Y., and Ramanathan, V. 2017. ‘Well below 2 °C: Mitigation strategies for avoiding dangerous to catastrophic climate

changes’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 114(39), 10315-10323.
14 Schellnhuber, H.J. 2018. ‘Foreword’, in Spratt, D., and Dunlop, I., op. cit, 3.
15 Breeze, N. 2018. ’It’s non-linearity, stupid’, The Ecologist, 3 January 2019, accessed 18 March 2019,

https://theecologist.org/2019/jan/03/its-nonlinearity-stupid.
16 Schellnhuber, H.J. 2018, op. cit., 3.

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David Spratt: Existential climate-related security risk: A scenario approach

Prudent risk-management means a tough, objective look at the real risks to which we are

exposed, especially at those ‘fat-tail’ events, which may have consequences that are damaging

beyond quantification, and threaten the survival of human civilisation.
Global warming projections display a ‘fat-tailed’ distribution with a greater likelihood of

warming that is well in excess of the average amount of warming predicted by climate models. For

example, a ‘fat-tail’ distribution shows that while the most likely results of a certain level of

greenhouse gases may be 3°C of warming, there is a ten percent risk that it will exceed 6°C.17
What were lower-probability, higher-impact events are now increasingly likely. This is

because ‘long-term’ climate system feedbacks are now becoming mobilised, so that the ‘fat-tail’ risks

are of a higher probability than would be expected under typical statistical assumptions. More

importantly, the risk lies disproportionately in the ‘fat-tail’ outcomes (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Schema of climate-related risk. (a) Event likelihood and (b) Impacts produced (c) Risk. Lower likelihood events at
.
the high end of the probability distribution have the highest risk (Credit: RT Sutton/E Hawkins )

This is a particular concern with potential climate tipping-points—passing critical thresholds

which result in step changes in the climate system that will be irreversible on human timescales—
such as the polar ice sheets (and hence sea levels), permafrost and other carbon stores, where the

impacts of global warming are non-linear and difficult to model with current scientific knowledge.

17 Wagner, G., and Weitzman, M.L. 2015. Climate Shock: The economic consequences of a hotter planet, Princeton NJ,
Princeton University Press, 53.

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David Spratt: Existential climate-related security risk: A scenario approach

Recently, attention has been given to a ‘hothouse Earth’ scenario, in which system feedbacks

and their mutual interaction could drive the Earth System climate to a point of no return, whereby

further warming would become self-sustaining (without further human perturbations). This ‘hothouse

Earth’ planetary threshold could exist at a temperature rise as low as 2°C, possibly even in the

1.5°C-2°C range.18

Existential risk management

Because the consequences are so severe — perhaps the end of human global civilisation as we

know it — ‘even for an honest, truth-seeking, and well-intentioned investigator it is difficult to think

and act rationally in regard to… existential risks’.19 Particular issues arise: What are the plausible

worst cases? And how can one tell? Are scientists self-censoring to avoid talking about extremely

unpleasant outcomes? Do scientists avoid talking about the most alarming cases to motivate

engagement?20
Analysis of climate-related security threats in an era of existential risk must have a clear focus

on the extremely serious outcomes that fall outside the human experience of the last thousand

years. These ‘fat-tail’ outcomes have probabilities that are far higher than is generally understood.
Traditionally, risk is assessed as the product of probability and damage. But when the

damage is beyond quantification, this process breaks down. With existential risks, learning from

mistakes is not an option, and we cannot necessarily rely on the institutions, moral norms, or social

attitudes developed from our experience with managing other types of risk.
What is needed now is an approach to risk management which is fundamentally different

from conventional practice. It would focus on the high-end, unprecedented possibilities, instead of

assessing middle-of-the-road probabilities on the basis of historic experience.

Scenarioo planning can overcome such obstacles, provided it is used to explore the

unprecedented possibilities, and not simply act as a type of conventional sensitivity analysis, as is

often the case in current practice. Properly applied, it can provide a framework that enables

managers to better handle these critical uncertainties, avoid dangerous “group think” and provide

flexible rather than unidimensional strategies, thereby potentially improving the quality of decisions in

this vital arena.21
Existential risks require a normative view of the targets required to avoid catastrophic

consequences, based on the latest science within a qualitative, moral framework. Action is then

18 Steffen, W., et al. 2018. ‘Trajectories of the Earth System in the Anthropocene’, Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences, 115(33), 8252-8259.
19 Bostrom, N., and Cirkovic, M.M. 2008. Global Catastrophic Risks, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 9.
20 Schmidt, G. 2019, op. cit.
21 Meißner, P. 2013. ‘The benefits of scenario-based planning’ in Schwenker, B. and Wulf, T. (eds.) Scenario-based

Strategic Planning, Weisbaden, Springer Fachmedien Weisbaden.
9
David Spratt: Existential climate-related security risk: A scenario approach determined by the imperative to achieve the target. It requires policy that is integrated across

national, regional and global boundaries, and which recognises that issues such as climate, energy,
the ecological crisis and resources overuse are inextricably linked and cannot be treated in separate
‘silos’, as at present.
In Prof. Schellnhuber’s words:

‘We must never forget that we are in a unique situation with no precise historic analogue. The
level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is now greater, and the Earth warmer, than
human beings have ever experienced. And there are almost eight billion of us now living on
this planet. So, calculating probabilities makes little sense in the most critical instances…
Rather, we should identify possibilities, that is, potential developments in the planetary
makeup that are consistent with the initial and boundary conditions, the processes and the
drivers we know.’22

In this spirit, we sketch a 2050 scenario, which allows some reflection on existential climate-related

security risks and draw some preliminary conclusions.

A 2050 scenario

2020–2030: Policy-makers fail to act on evidence that the current Paris Agreement path—in which

global human-caused greenhouse emissions do not peak until 2030—will lock in at least 3°C of

warming. The case for a global, climate-emergency mobilisation of labour and resources to build a

zero-emission economy in order to have a realistic chance of keeping warming well below 2°C is

politely ignored. As projected by Xu and Ramanathan, by 2030 carbon dioxide levels have reached

437 parts per million—which is unprecedented in the last 20 million years—and warming reaches

1.6°C.23

2030–2050: Emissions peak in 2030, and start to fall consistent with an 80 percent reduction in fossil-fuel energy intensity by 2100 compared to 2010 energy intensity. This leads to warming of

2.4°C by 2050, consistent with the Xu and Ramanathan ‘baseline-fast’ scenario.24 However, another

0.6°C of warming occurs—taking the total to 3°C by 2050—due to:

22 Schellnhuber, H.J. 2018, op. cit., 3

23 Xu, Y., and Ramanathan, V. 2017, op. cit.
24 Xu, Y., and Ramanathan, V. 2017, op. cit.

10
David Spratt: Existential climate-related security risk: A scenario approach

● The activation of a number of carbon-cycle feedbacks, including permafrost mobilisation,
declining ocean and soil sink-efficiency, and Amazon dieback; and
● Greater ice albedo feedback from the retreat of Arctic sea ice, positive cloud albedo feedback
from retreating storm track clouds in mid-latitudes, and positive albedo feedback by mixed-
phase clouds than current models assume.
[It should be noted while this is towards the high end of the range of possibilities, it is far from

extreme: the low-probability, high-impact warming (five percent probability) can exceed 3.5–4°C by

2050 in the Xu and Ramanathan scenario.]

2050: By 2050, there is broad scientific acceptance that system tipping-points for the West Antarctic

Ice Sheet and a sea-ice-free Arctic summer were passed well before 1.5°C of warming, for the

Greenland Ice Sheet well before 2°C, and for widespread permafrost loss and large-scale Amazon

drought and dieback by 2.5°C. The ‘hothouse Earth’ scenario has been realised, and Earth is

headed for another degree or more of warming, especially since human greenhouse emissions are

still significant.25
.
While sea levels have risen 0.5 metres by 2050, the increase may be 2–3 metres by 2100,
and it is understood from historical analogues that seas may eventually rise by more than 25 metres.
Thirty-five percent of the global land area, and 55 percent of the global population, are

subject to more than 20 days a year of lethal heat conditions, beyond the threshold of human

survivability.
The destabilisation of the Jet Stream has very significantly affected the intensity and

geographical distribution of the Asian and West African monsoons and, together with the further

slowing of the Gulf Stream, is impinging on life support systems in Europe. North America suffers

from continuing weather extremes. The summer monsoons in China have failed, and water flows into

the great rivers of Asia are severely reduced by the loss of more than one-third of the Himalayan ice

sheet. Glacial loss reaches 70 percent in the Andes, and rainfall in Mexico and central America falls

by half. Semi-permanent El Nino conditions prevail.
Aridification emerges over more than 30 percent of the world’s land surface. Desertification is

severe in southern Africa, the southern Mediterranean, west Asia, the Middle East, Australia and

across the south-western United States.

25 Data for this scenario is drawn from a wide range of sources, including: Xu, Y. and Ramanathan, V. 2017, op. cit.;
Campbell, K.M., et al. 2007, op cit.; Mora, C., et al. 2017. ‘Global risk of deadly heat’, Nature Climate Change, 7, 501-
506; Lynas, M. 2007. Six Degrees: Our future on a hotter planet, London, Fourth Estate; Wallace-Wells, D. 2019. The
Uninhabitable Earth: Life after warming, New York, Duggan Books.
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David Spratt: Existential climate-related security risk: A scenario approach

Impacts: A number of ecosystems collapse, including coral reef systems, the Amazon rainforest and in the Arctic.

Some poorer nations and regions, which lack capacity to provide artificially-cooled

environments for their populations, become unviable. Deadly heat conditions persisting for more than

100 days per year in West Africa, tropical South America, the Middle East and South-East Asia,
contribute to more than a billion people being displaced from the tropical zone.
Water availability decreases sharply in the most affected regions at lower latitudes (dry

tropics and subtropics), affecting about two billion people worldwide. Agriculture becomes nonviable

in the dry subtropics.
Most regions in the world see a significant drop in food production and increasing numbers of

extreme weather events, including heat waves, floods or storms. Food production is inadequate to

feed the global population and food prices skyrocket, as a consequence of a one-fifth decline in crop

yields, a decline in the nutrition content of food crops, a catastrophic decline in insect populations,
desertification, monsoon failure and chronic water shortages, and conditions too hot for human

habitation in significant food-growing regions.
The lower reaches of the agriculturally-important river deltas such as the Mekong, Ganges

and Nile are inundated, and significant sectors of some of the world’s most populous cities —
including Chennai, Mumbai, Jakarta, Guangzhou, Tianjin, Hong Kong, Ho Chi Minh City, Shanghai,
Lagos, Bangkok and Manila — are abandoned. Some small islands become uninhabitable. Ten

percent of Bangladesh is inundated, displacing 15 million people.
The Global Catastrophic Risks 2018 report found that even for 2°C of warming more than a billion people may need to be relocated and that ‘In high-end scenarios, the scale of destruction is beyond our capacity to model, with a high likelihood of human civilisation coming to an end.’26

National security consequences: For pragmatic reasons associated with providing only a sketch of this scenario, we take the conclusion of the Age of Consequences ‘Severe’ 3°C scenario developed by a group of senior US national-security figures in 2007 as appropriate for our scenario too:

Massive nonlinear events in the global environment give rise to massive nonlinear societal events. In
this scenario, nations around the world will be overwhelmed by the scale of change and pernicious

challenges, such as pandemic disease. The internal cohesion of nations will be under great stress,

including in the United States, both as a result of a dramatic rise in migration and changes in

26 Wariaro, V., et al. 2018. Global Catastrophic Risks 2018, Stockholm, Global Challenges Foundation, 24.
12
David Spratt: Existential climate-related security risk: A scenario approach

agricultural patterns and water availability. The flooding of coastal communities around the world,

especially in the Netherlands, the United States, South Asia, and China, has the potential to challenge

regional and even national identities. Armed conflict between nations over resources, such as the Nile

and its tributaries, is likely and nuclear war is possible. The social consequences range from increased

religious fervor to outright chaos. In this scenario, climate change provokes a permanent shift in the

relationship of humankind to nature’.27 (emphasis added)

Discussion

This scenario provides a glimpse into a world of ‘outright chaos’ on a path to the end of human

civilisation and modern society as we have known it, in which the challenges to global security are

simply overwhelming and political panic becomes the norm.
Yet the Global Catastrophic Risks 2017 report concludes that ‘the world is currently completely unprepared to envisage, and even less deal with, the consequences of catastrophic climate change’.28

What can be done to avoid such a probable but catastrophic future? It is clear from our

preliminary scenario that dramatic action is required this decade if the ‘hothouse Earth’ scenario is to

be avoided. To eliminate this risk and protect human civilisation, a massive global mobilisation of

resources is needed in the coming decade to build a zero-emissions industrial system and set in

train the restoration of a safe climate. This would be akin in scale to the World War II emergency

mobilisation.
There is an increasing awareness that such a response is now necessary. Prof. Kevin

Anderson makes the case for a Marshall Plan-style construction of zero-carbon-dioxide energy

supply and major electrification to build a zero-carbon industrial strategy by ‘a shift in productive

capacity of society akin to that in World War II’.29 Others have warned that ‘only a drastic, economy-
wide makeover within the next decade, consistent with limiting warming to 1.5°C’, would avoid the

transition of the Earth System to the Pliocene-like conditions that prevailed 3-3.3 million years ago,
when temperatures were ~3°C and sea levels 25 metres higher.30 It should be noted here that the

1.5° goal is not safe for a number of Earth System elements, including Arctic sea-ice, West

Antarctica and coral reefs.
The national security sector has unrivalled experience and capacity in such mobilisation, and

can play a unique role in its development and implementation, as well as educating policymakers of

the existential security risks in failing to do so.

27 Campbell, K.M., et al. 2007, op. cit., 9.
28 Ism, C., et al. 2017. Global Catastrophic Risks 2017, Stockholm, Global Challenges Foundation, 35.
29 Anderson, K. 2019. ‘Climate’s holy trinity: how cogency, tenacity & courage could yet deliver on our Paris 2°C

commitment’, Presentation to Oxford Climate Society, 24 January 2019, accessed 18 March 2019,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BZFvc-ZOa8

30 Burke, K.D. et al., 2018. ‘Pliocene and Eocene provide best analogs for near-future climates’, Proceedings of the

National Academy of Sciences, 115 (52), 13288-13293.
13
Comment on APS Review Priorities for change by Ken Coghill & David Spratt.

Implications for Proposal “Build a flexible operating model” (Networked enabling

systems and common processes across the service)
Question Response
How can this proposal • The APS should recognise the limitations of policy-relevant
be strengthened? climate change research in exhibiting scientific reticence.31
What is missing? • An analytical focus to the role of near-term action as a
determinant in preventing planetary and human systems
reaching a ‘point of no return’ by mid-century, in which the
prospect of severe reductions in food production and large areas
of the Earth becoming uninhabitable for mankind leads to the
breakdown of nations and the international order.
• Urgent examination of the role that the national security sector
can play in providing leadership and capacity for a near-term,
society-wide, emergency mobilisation of labour and resources, of
a scale unprecedented in peacetime, to build a zero-emissions
industrial system to protect and sustain human civilisation.
• Recognition of the current and prospective impacts and potential
for mitigation of climate change
How can lasting change • The APS should adopt a scenario approach giving specific
be ensured? attention to high-end warming possibilities in understanding
medium-range (mid-century) climate-security risks, particularly
because of the existential implications.

31 For a discussion of scientific reticence, see James Hansen, Pam Peterson, and Philip Duffy discuss how the hesitancy
among scientists to express the gravity of our situation is a major block to our understanding and response to climate
change
14