Opinion | Free market can’t save us from climate change – the likes of China, not the US, can lead the effort though

Andrew Sheng says the world has bigger problems than trade or national security threats. Instead of spending on defence against each other or leaving it to the free market, countries should step up and deal with climate change

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Flames from the Camp Fire consume a home in California on November 9. There is a link between climate change and bigger fires in California. Photo: AP

Published: 12:32am, 8 Dec 2018Updated: 1:27am, 8 Dec 2018

The truce in the US-China trade war declared at the G20 summit in Buenos Aires last week has only temporarily defused tensions and differences across the Pacific. In a world seen through the lens of national security, there are enemies everywhere. The head of Britain’s MI6 made a remarkable speech at his alma mater, the University of St Andrews, calling on the best and brightest to join the spy service and help defend the nation against hybrid threats from enemies using cybertechnology.

Of course, the biggest threat is total nuclear war. There are five nuclear powers (the US, Russia, Britain, France and China) but Pakistan, India and North Korea have also conducted nuclear tests. Scientists have found that nuclear weapons pose the single biggest threat to the environment. But arms escalation, colliding with climate change, could unleash the unthinkable.

The US government’s Fourth National Climate Assessment, released last month, has confirmed what Californians who just lost homes in the deadly wildfires already know: climate change is happening. In the past, man saw disasters as acts of God, but this coming climate catastrophe is an act of Man: a consequence of Man’s excessive consumption and burning of fossil fuels.

The remarkable difference in priority given to defence and climate change is evident from a few figures. According to one study, in the 21 years from 1993 to 2014, total US expenditure on climate change came to about US$166 billion, in 2012 dollars. This is a mere fraction of the US$590 billion the US spent on defence last year.

But wait a minute. Since 2014, even the US Department of Defence has recognised that climate change is a “threat multiplier”, meaning that hurricanes, droughts, floods and crop failures exacerbate conditions like poverty and political instability, which might be a recipe for conflict. Europe’s migrant crisis is the result of failed states in the Middle East and North Africa, war, and also climate change.

A photo released by South Korea’s Ministry of National Defence shows US Air Force jets (left) flying with South Korean war planes. The US spent US$590 billion on defence in 2017, but far less on climate change over two decades. Photo: AFP