As 'climate security' forecast darkens, is Canada ready?

Mike Blanchfield, Canwest News Service:… Real life 21st Century threats due to climate change – massive flooding, droughts, population explosions, massive migrations of uprooted and desperate people facing life-threatening food and water shortages - have made ‘climate security,’ a buzzword that now extends far beyond the war rooms of western capitals. The trepidation is very real that this will be the driver for war on a scale we have yet to see on this planet, bringing tension to stable parts of the world, making the tense places worse.

Don't dismiss this as military-driven paranoia: the alarm is being sounded by non-military actors - United Nations agencies, leading philanthropists, the World Bank, as well as major international aid agencies that have always strived to maintain a healthy distance from the world's military establishment. Here in Canada the connection between climate change and global instability is not publicly discussed, and no one seems to really know why.

Perhaps our security agencies are overburdened, maybe it has to do with the fact we lag behind western developed nations in coming up with an actual climate change strategy.

‘I don't want to be a scaremonger, but I am concerned climate change does not seem to be a priority within Canada's security, intelligence, defence establishment. I'm concerned that, as far as I know, Canadian security players haven't analyzed the existing scientific reports,’ said Margaret Purdy, who spent 28 years as a leading federal public servant in Canada's security apparatus, including as associate deputy minister of defence…..

The Athabasca River railroad track at the mouth of Brûlé Lake in Alberta, Canada. Shot by "Eddie" with copyright held by Alcazar Mountain, Wikimedia Commons, under Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License