There are a lot of great ways to talk about climate change. Framing it as a national security threat and telling Americans that they should take climate action to prevent a flood of climate migrants is not one of them. That's the very short version of a new brief from Common Defense, one of the US's largest veteran-based advocacy organizations, which worked with human rights experts, defense policy wonks, and climate communicators to explain the pitfalls of the national security frame.
Given that the Russian invasion of Ukraine has turbocharged the relevance of right-wing arguments that fossil fuels are a national security priority, it may be tempting to respond with the opposite claim that it is actually climate action that's good for national security. This may be true, but military security shouldn't be our focus for talking about the climate crisis.
In "Security For All: Demilitarizing Our Climate Narratives" and an accompanying video, Common Defense lays out the "significant dangers" of the security arguments that "directly endanger the Black, Brown and Indigenous peoples most impacted by climate change– especially immigrants and refugees."
The report warns that "the 'climate migration as security threat' narrative emboldens white supremacists" like the multiple mass shooters who have murdered in the name of ecofascism.
The document explains, "As racist conspiracy theories like the Great Replacement Theory are mainstreamed by prominent figures such as Tucker Carlson, persuadable young men will either see it as the racist lie that it is, or as a credible viewpoint reinforced by moderate voices legitimizing the concern that the US will be overrun by immigrants (as a result of climate change)."
Another reason to do literally any other kind of climate communications is that security rhetoric is "being exploited by defense corporations to militarize our borders." In exactly the same way that climate change is a present crisis and not a future threat, this issue "is not a future dystopia; thousands of people die every year at increasingly militarized borders." Let's not give the arms manufacturers profiteering off of "weapons, walls and surveillance" the veneer of credibility that they seek when claiming that increasingly hardened border control is a necessary response to the climate crisis.
On top of the threat of ecofascists and arms dealers exploiting the national security-and-climate frame, this rhetoric will also hinder climate protests. The Common Defense report notes that "police and private security forces are increasingly using military weapons and tools against domestic climate campaigners, particularly Indigenous peoples protecting ancestral lands from fossil fuel infrastructure, with associated policing, surveillance and legal barriers being established to prevent effective climate action."
And that's just the first section of the report! After establishing the dangers of the national security frame, Common Defense points out that (whoops!) this rhetoric doesn't really work that well, anyway. Studies show it has a "limited persuasive impact" and that the "framing can backfire by undermining existing bases of support while entrenching the belief held by those who oppose climate action that government resources would be better spent on conventional security threats."
Also, the climate community should be wary, to put it mildly, of embracing military leaders. "Given the horrific and racist consequences of the War on Drugs and the Global War on Terror," the report says, "it should be clear why US climate advocates should strive to prevent our leaders from declaring a 'War on Climate Change'."
So what should we do instead? After all, climate change does pose a "clear and present danger" to every country. Instead of using military leaders as climate messengers, we can turn to "veterans, healthcare workers, and emergency personnel like firefighters and paramedics," who are "equally trusted messengers who have served to protect their communities, are directly impacted by climate change, and can persuasively convey the dangers of inaction."
As for the issue of immigration, "The climate movement should argue for the redirection of substantial funds—especially those funds being used to expand militarized borders in the name of climate adaptation—towards protecting people, establishing safe pathways for migrants, and enabling a just transition to post-fossil fuel economies across the globe, while leveraging all the tools of capital finance, aid, remediation, loss and damage payments and investments, among others."
We need to present a vision of a better world and the best pathway to get there. As the report aptly states, "We should offer clear solutions and alternatives – both immediate and visionary– and assert that we have the tools, ambition, and expertise to build real safeguards. If we fail to offer these solutions, reactionary voices will continue to win the day and the world will continue to grow hotter and less safe."
