Assured Destruction: Firepower, Climate Change and Security Dilemmas

Abstract

Traditional notions of a security dilemma need to be updated to tackle the insecurities emerging as climate change accelerates. Security dilemmas used to focus on mutual suspicion where weapons production to enhance firepower capabilities in search of security by one state triggered responses by others and resulting arms races. Now the unintended consequences of the ever-larger application of civilian “firepower” in the form of fossil fuel combustion to “secure” modern modes of life, suggest that this is now endangering societies everywhere. A paradigm change in terms of security thinking is needed urgently to update traditional thinking to face the new circumstances of a climate disrupted world.