When a group of retired generals and admirals warn that climate change is a security threat, it’s clear we’re all beginning to take the problem seriously. With their warnings that rising seas and more powerful storms could wreak havoc in poor countries with fragile societies, it would be easy to discount them as reactionary “liberals” if they weren’t also known as the Military Advisory Board.

Last month another report written by an agency that has advised the Pentagon and intelligence agencies took on military language to warn that “The U.S. may need to adopt a ‘preemptive’ approach to forestall the worst effects of collapsing ecosystems, water systems, or radical restructuring of the global insurance industry.”

They focus on the frightening realities of social unease, citing as examples post-2003-invasion Iraq and the suburbs of Paris in 2005 to warn that “the fragility of civil orders, even in developed countries” is “painfully evident” and can be precipitated by “causal factors, which can include climate or weather stress.” 

It sounds like the perfect premise for the a Hollywood blockbuster in the style of Titanic or Escape From LA or the tv series 24, but instead it’s a call to action for the US military and on our new need to focus inside our country and on the possibility of unrest arriving at our southern border due to climate change; “without question urban planning and control will be a critical skill for the US government”.