Olivia Lazard and Rod Schoonover discuss how this year’s elections in the EU and the United States will shape global climate policies, stressing the urgent need for transformative action amid increasing planetary insecurity.
This year’s elections in Europe and the United States will significantly impact global climate action amid increasing global insecurity and contested green policies.
Olivia Lazard, fellow at Carnegie Europe, and Rod Schoonover, cofounder of the Ecosecurity Council, emphasize the need for more effective leadership and institutions to address climate change.
[00:00:00] Intro, [00:01:23] The Climate Change-Security Nexus, [00:11:45] Will Elections Affect Climate Policies?, [00:20:47] The Need for Strategic Foresight.
Olivia Lazard, December 19, 2023, “The Day After COP28: The Heat Is On,” Strategic Europe, Carnegie Europe.
Olivia Lazard, June 1, 2023, “How the EU Can Use Mineral Supply Chains to Redesign Collective Security,” Strategic Europe, Carnegie Europe.
Olivia Lazard, April 6, 2023, “The EU’s Water Strategy Is Too Shallow,” Strategic Europe, Carnegie Europe.
Rod Schoonover and Dan Smith, April 2023, “Five Urgent Questions on Ecological Security,” SIPRI.
Rod Schoonover and Eilish Zembilci, October 26, 2021, “New National Intelligence Estimate on Climate Change Underplays the Role of Food Security,” Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).
Rod Schoonover, April 21, 2021, “Plant Diseases and Pests Are Oft-Ignored Climate-Linked National Security Risks,” Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).
Olivia Lazard
2024 marks a pivotal year in our world’s history. Spring isn’t over yet, but the year is already on track to be the hottest ever recorded. March 2024 marked the twelfth consecutive month of global average temperature above the 1.5 degrees Celsius threshold – the indicator that stands for our planet’s biophysical limit.
But 2024 is also a year of global elections. At a time of planetary overshoot, what citizens vote for will matter even more.
The policies that governments will adopt in the next few years will be crucial to rein in climate change—or leave it unhinged. But climate change is also what is making citizens worried about their future. Amid a growing sense of global insecurity, climate policies are becoming increasingly contested.
So, what do we need to know about the state of the planet, and what does it mean for us? What are the growing rifts between planetary security and international politics? And will new governments steer us towards a more sustainable future?
Olivia Lazard
Hello, and welcome to a new episode of Europe Inside Out, Carnegie Europe’s monthly podcast about the continent's greatest foreign policy challenges.
My name is Olivia Lazard and I am a fellow at Carnegie Europe.
Olivia Lazard
This episode of Europe Inside Out is about climate change, and what climate policies we should expect from newly elected governments in the European Union and the United States.
I’m joined by Rod Schoonover. He is a co-founder of the Ecosecurity Council, a non profit security NGO that seeks to better align security doctrine and policy to threats arising from Earth systems stress.
Rod, welcome.
Rod Schoonover
Thanks, Olivia. Pleasure to be here.
Olivia Lazard
So, I'm tempted to start from the bigger picture, where we're at from a planetary perspective. Copernicus, the European Space Agency, told us that the last 12 consecutive months ranged at about 1.65 degrees Celsius of global average temperature above pre-industrial levels. This does not mean that we've passed the 1.5 threshold for good, but it does give us an indication of where we're headed from a planetary perspective, knowing that obviously the 1.5 degrees threshold was the pillar around which the Paris Agreement had been organized.
The reason for that is obviously that the 1.5 threshold is a biophysical limit, not just a political target. We've been told by a lot of different climate scientists as well who work on tipping points, that at the 1.5 degree threshold, the ecological sensitivity of a number of ecosystems around the world, let it be the Poles, the Amazon, the AMOC, all start essentially becoming more brittle, which will have obviously massive repercussions in terms of the ecological interdependencies that hold world together.
The last data point that I want to bring up is obviously that scientists working on planetary boundaries have told us last year that already six out of nine planetary boundaries have been crossed. They are in overshoot. We don't know if this is permanent, if we can reverse the situation, but obviously it gives us a sense essentially of the fact that climate change is currently in a runaway scenario.
We're compromising the ecological carrying capacity of our planet, the literal ground upon which all of our global economic systems rely. I want to turn to you, Rod, because you've been doing a lot of really important work on this concept of ecological security, which includes climate change, but is not limited to it. You've been trying to essentially relate all of these different aspects that I've talked about to what is happening from a global international security perspective and what is the future, essentially, that we're up against in multidimensional security terms.
If we were to take the pulse of the planet today, what would the planet tell us? Where are we at and what kind of implications does it have on security?
Rod Schoonover
Great. And thank you. I mean, that's a very serious set of questions that we have to undertake. And really, when you look at security, you look at risk. And for many of the reasons that you've outlined, the scale, the rapidity, the complexity, the character of the various hazards emanating from Earth system disruption contributes to a risk landscape unprecedented in human history. So as you said, climate change, drought, ecological degradation, plastics, biodiversity, these hazards stretch beyond political boundaries and create multi-scalar risks. And the links between many types of ecological stress, and conflict, and political instability, other forms of insecurity have been pretty well established. And we know that human and societal stress, is in our future. But yet we have these current stress paradigms that were essentially developed for an Earth that no longer exists. So we have these institutions that look at security, whether they're international or national, looking down the barrel of an ecologically-embedded polycrisis, which is characterized by interlinked catastrophes. It really thwarts the ability of security organizations, including military, and intelligence, and diplomatic, and development institutions, to even identify much less respond to the security risks.
We often talk, about a climate crisis and ecological crisis, but I think we're in a security crisis as well. This isn't only from Earth system disruption. We're seeing the politics and international dynamics, the rise of militarization, anti democratic sentiments, disinformation, all fueled and fueling the risk landscape that we're talking about and facing.
So the security crisis that I'm describing really necessitates a fundamental shift in our collective understanding of security. And we've historically emphasized things like military prowess and geopolitical machinations and states prioritizing their own security in isolation. I think what we're seeing from the biophysical trends as well as socio-political trends, that security can't be conceptualized as a zero sum game, should be reimagined within the context of global interdependence, with a greater understanding of ecological risks. These are things that are historically difficult, not just for the security communities internationally, but also for policy, you've worked on the energy transition. I'm wondering how you see these trends intersect and overlap.
Olivia Lazard
Yeah, thank you, Rod. Now that we've passed the 1.5 threshold, we know that there are going to be more shocks, more disasters coming. There's also going to be more of an effect around scarcity. The UN tells us essentially that we're likely to have a 40% demand outstrip of supply, essentially, of global fresh water by 2030, which is obviously going to have a number of different implications, both in terms of human security in certain places, but also, quite frankly, in terms of economic contraction. We're going to have shocks around agriculture, around industry, around technology, even. The fact that we're still essentially not quite fully up to date as to what kind of threat the multiple planetary crises that we face represent for the global economy is very concerning, and it's particularly concerning now that we have really actively engaged on this path of transitioning away from fossils, or at least trying to and going towards more mineral types of supply chains, which are obviously going to have themselves, physical, ecological, planetary impacts on a number of ecosystems around the world.
The problem is that technically, we're trying to build essentially a fourth industrial revolution on the back of a planet which is already in planetary overshoot. And nothing within our economic systems is essentially appearing in terms of indicators, in terms of of how to handle the impacts that we're going to have as a result of this fourth industrial revolution and how to change economics and trade relationships and relationships between a number of different countries, from a financial perspective as well, to face the fact that we're going to run into a number of problems in the next few years, and it's going to accelerate substantially. Another data point that came out about two weeks ago, which gives us, again, a 2030 horizon, which is pretty damning, is a Harvard study that told us that climate change is probably going to contract the global economy by 12% as soon as 2030. I've met the people who wrote this study, and they said, Well, it's probably an underestimation.
But we're not planning for this. Nobody is really looking at what are the effects, essentially, of having a planetary contraction, which is going to lead towards an economic contraction, and how that's going to create more and more tensions between countries if we don't plan for this. That's the thing which is quite worrying, historically speaking, as you're saying, our institutions have not been good at recognizing, essentially, how we create insecurity through the way that we engage with the environment. And vice versa, and how to start shifting directions. But this is particularly worrying as we look towards the next five years.
Rod Schoonover
So all of that is a very worrisome set of issues. I think even to pile on, when you look at the work on planetary boundaries and overshoot, a lot of that is coming from stresses that aren't necessarily related to climate change, or at least contribute to other planetary stresses. Our overloading of soils, our overabundance of things like nitrogen and phosphorus, the really crucially important destabilization of the biosphere, all have security dimensions that are part of, but also largely not part of climate change and energy policy. I think it's important to recognize that without more transformative action that addresses agriculture, for example, and mining, and production in general, that we're still in a planetary mess. If we look at things through a climate only, lens, we will be far from being out of danger.
Olivia Lazard
The US will be going to the polls in November. The EU citizens just finished their own election. There are a number of movements around that direction. But I want to turn to you to directly give us a sense of what you feel is happening in the US conversation and how you think that political shifts in the EU and the US will influence transatlantic climate policies and ecological security policies, as well as efforts to address planetary crises.
Are we seeing essentially some doomsday scenario ahead of us? Or are there some spaces where we can sort of pick up stories where we can build upon a different trajectory?
Rod Schoonover
Yeah, it's interesting because there are, I think, several simultaneous pathways that are interweaving with each other. Sitting here in the United States, we go through this big election cycle every four years. And it's almost as if the population wakes up a month before the election and then decides on what's going on. It's not a really great way to run a democracy. But we have this real interesting tension between people who are advocating and looking for transformative change. And we also are seeing what I think most would admit to be incremental change happening. The system almost always delivers incremental change. And so it's remarkable to have this, for better or worse, understanding of our global trajectory, a frustration that we can't do big things. And yet, with all of what we know about our system stress, it is almost never the issue that people vote on.
I think we're in a precarious position. We have essentially two parties in the United States. The current President, President Biden, has probably done more on climate change than any President in history. It's still largely incremental, but it's also very, very important. And then you have the presumed nominee, who is the former President, who campaigns on the idea of leaving Paris Accord, and fulfilled that promise. And that party is, I think, even more aggressive in, what many would call an anti-climate agenda. And so we're at a real bifurcation, I think, that has overtones for the rest of the world in how we're going to deal with these set of planetary crises, that the scientific world could not be more direct in what it's saying. The decoupling from our political process, from our scientific understanding, is really remarkable. Because our understanding of the populace is probably about as low as it's ever been despite the polling.
And so it's not a definitive answer, right? Because you can see these two pathways, both imperfect, both probably not really dealing with core issues facing us. But one puts us in a better position than the other. I know Europe just went through a series of interesting elections from this side of the Atlantic. I'm wondering what your take on what's been happening of late, Olivia.
Olivia Lazard
Well, you just said that you think the US elections will have overtone for the rest of the world. I'm wondering if this time around, it's not the other direction that Europe will probably have overtones in terms of what will happen also in the US later this year. It was a big slap in the face, mostly for Germany and for France. It was a big slap in the face, particularly in Germany, where the coalition parties, which a few years ago were understood to be the big winners of centrist politics, all got disavowed, essentially, by this European elections. The Greens, in particular in Germany, which used to stand on a very strong ground up until the war in Ukraine, lost a lot of votes. In France, where you had the Renaissance, the Renew party, which is Macron's party, was completely disavowed by voters who voted in favor of the far right or the radical right.
But there's been indeed quite a lot of attention towards this so-called Green Deal. But the problem was, and this has always, unfortunately been one of the Achilles heels of Europe, the problem was that the Green Deal didn't have a geopolitical dimension at its design phase. When the war in Ukraine started, when energy prices went through the roof, when dependencies of supply chains, particularly for the energy transition in the form of mineral supply chains and chemical supply chains, were revealed as a massive weak point of Europe, a lot of parties, particularly on the green, were left a bit weak in their answer. I think that what we're seeing right now is an interesting realization, whereby, on the one hand, we've come to a moment of European politics particularly with regards to climate policies, to security policies, to agricultural policies, where it should be the right time to have a geopolitical project. It is time for the EU to step to the plate and to really say, Well, if we want to go green, we need to go green with other parts of the world because we depend on these other parts of the world in order to deliver on our climate law, in order to decarbonize, in order to move towards a more ecologically safe environment, and to do our part in creating a planetary safe environment.
Exactly at the moment when Europe is supposed to step up to the plate and to be geopolitical, to be geo-economic, we see essentially that the arbiter of European elections or European policies in the next few years will probably be leaning towards the far right and therefore towards more sovereign types and protectionist types of policies, outlooks, and focus. The trajectory, essentially, of the Green Deal is very ill defined at the moment. And it's very unclear whether or not Europe will manage to fully deliver on its climate law. Even going further, if it will it be able essentially to keep on going with this paradigm, this imperfect yet existing paradigm of net zero, which is currently active. And my concern is essentially, and this is something that maybe ties back also to some of the issues that you were talking about, the misinformation, the disinformation, the political influence which is going in the wrong direction, because I see from other parts of my research that indeed Russia has been preparing for all of its faults, preparing for a two-degree world and beyond.
And it's been preparing for a warming world in a more insecure world by investing into its own agriculture, into its own self-sufficiency, into diversification of industrial energy supply chains. And while Europe essentially loses time trying to really embark on a coherent, effective, systemic, green and ecological transition, the one actor that will actually gain from that is Russia. We know that some of the parties essentially from the radical right in Europe have links essentially to Russian influences, much like what is happening to a certain extent in the US.
Rod Schoonover
Yeah. I mean, It begs a question, who benefits from a more fragmented world, right? And I think your analysis is showing, I mean, Russia and other I think, do benefit, from this breakdown, which I think is why it's part of its playbook that we've been watching here in the United States and elsewhere for quite some time. And what a predicament we find ourselves in, both ecologically and societally, nationally, right? And many nations can see that through their own national scope, but also internationally. I think we're in tough times right now in terms of problem solving on problems that we can't agree on.
Olivia Lazard
Talking about solutions, it would be too simplistic, right? Because when we have multidimensional, multiscalar problems, and multi-timeline problems, solutions is not the right word, right? But for lack of a better word, what are some of the trajectories where you think that in spite of this predicament, which seems to be quite locked in at the moment from a political and societal perspective, where do you see some spaces for change, if any? Or do you think essentially that we'll have to change by the force of things because the planet will essentially force us back into societies or economies that are more in line with what it can bear, with what it can carry? Do you think that there is still room for change? And if so, where do you find essentially pockets of inspiration more so than hope, I would say?
Rod Schoonover
Right. I don't use the word solution pretty much ever anymore. I use the word navigate. And the thing is that we can see a lot of the road bumps ahead. We can't see all of them or maybe even most of them, but we can see enough that we could, on paper, chart a better course to navigate. Just putting on the security hat for a second. I think one of the ways that international and national security communities could navigate what's coming is to really step up the game on strategic foresight. I think this is something that a lot of organizations talk about. They don't do it as much as they ought to, and they don't do it at the scale that's really warranted.
The prescription for transformative change really lies in Leadership. We take a lot of blame onto ourselves as individuals. What can we do here and there to affect real change? But I think the problem is the leadership, irrespective of whatever political persuasion they come from, there's been this inability to really get more transformative change on on the table. And there are other forces at work here that damp that down. But it's hard to imagine anything looking like solutions or effective navigation until we get that part right. The whole leadership, economic, what drives decision decisions in a national or international setting? What are the decision points and what are they based on? It's hard for me to imagine getting to the transformative change we need without really diving into that. What's your take, Olivia?
Olivia Lazard
Well, to respond to this lack of leadership, I have one worry, that to the lack of effective leadership that manages to communicate all the systemic threats that we're facing, there is essentially an outsized belief in the role that technology will have to play essentially in saving us from the current predicament that we find ourselves in. We observe, and we've been observing, essentially, the rise of a group of people who are now heavily researching and heavily investing into what we call climate interventions, which is essentially an extension of the linear scientific type of thinking as applied on complex problems, which is at its maximum application, let's try and reduce the exposure of the planet Earth to the sunrise, either by deploying an umbrella between the sun and the planet or by trying to dim the atmosphere through some particle seeding and radiation management tool. That, to me, is essentially given up. It's pushing towards the type of solutions which I think are still going to be too simplistic for the type of very complex interdependent problems that we're facing.
If we start using solar radiation management, we may very well find ourselves in the a predicament where we turn the clock back on transition efforts. So whatever we're currently trying to invest into, regarding the deployment of solar panels, wind turbines, batteries, etc. might actually be completely useless if we start messing with the intake or the input of solar energy into the atmosphere, which regulate obviously solar exposition and wind patterns and hydrological patterns, etc.
That's one thing. But in reverse, some of the things that I see happening at the moment, which give me... I still have trouble using the word hope by now because I think that it's been used and abused, but it gives me energy, let's put it this way, is that there are more and more conversations happening with countries of the global south, in particular around industrial policy. One of the things that I think is going to be really important going forward is how to connect, essentially, those conversations about industrial policy and the future of economic development, together with how do we do climate security better through relationships rather than through country policies. How do we then come up with conversations that will essentially start refining what it means now to have norms and relationships that underpin collective security as we go about those next years, particularly the next five years, but even more so the next 10 years, which are critical for this energy transition.
Rod Schoonover
So I couldn't agree more on the techno democratic approach to solving our ecological problems. On geoengineering and climate intervention, I think I agree on everything you said. The only thing that I would put in there is that I think it would be really unwise if some leader in the future or in the near future decided to embark on a geoengineering effort or a program without the scientific basis to do so. And I am rather worried about that aspect because I can easily see that trajectory where a poorly understood technology is deployed out of desperation.
And in terms of bringing new people into the discussion, this is one of the things I find myself thinking about more than anything else in terms of what constitutes security. Whose security are we talking about? Traditionally, security, as it developed in the 20th century, really meant Western or global Nord security, or increasingly, the security of defense contractors or whoever was contributing to the military programs. I think the way I am looking at it, it is rather impossible to bring a state-centric view of security into the 21st century of real sustainable security. And I think that necessarily brings in questions of equity and justice, because security isn't sustainable unless it includes and is driven and brings in the people.
So I think this is one of the important reasons why bringing actors from the global south into this discussion of what constitutes security, and make it aligned with the threat landscape that the 21st century is showing us. And so I worry about things like an elective Cold War with China, getting in the way of addressing transcontinental transnational threats. I think it's easier to map out the problem landscape, describe what's coming, and then the real difficulty is, what do people do? What do leaders do? What do we support with our votes, et cetera?
Olivia Lazard
Thank you, Rod. I think that it's a perfect way to end leading with questions rather than answers, I think, this is a lot of what we do when it comes to ecological and planetary security. I was delighted to have you on this month's episode of Europe Inside Out. Thank you very much for taking the time.
Rod Schoonover
And thank you for having me, Olivia
Olivia Lazard
For those who are interested in learning more about climate and international security, I encourage you to the follow the work of Carnegie Europe on X (formerly Twitter) @Carnegie_Europe. That’s C-A-R-N-E-G-I-E underscore E-U-R-O-P-E.
You can find me at @OliviaLazard. That is @O-L-I-V-I-A-L-A-Z-A-R-D.
You can find Rod at @RodSchoonover. That is @R-O-D-S-C-H-O-O-N-O-V-E-R.
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This episode of Europe Inside Out was produced with the support from the US Mission to the European Union. Our producers are Francesco Siccardi and Mattia Bagherini. Our editor is Futura D’Aprile of Europod. Sound engineering and original music by Jeremy Bocquet.