Military planning has one simple discipline, and it should apply to the gathering threat of climate disruption.

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You don't plan for the future you'd like. You plan against the most dangerous credible course of events, because readiness can't be bought on the day it's needed. By the time you have certainty, it's too late to act.

Climate change is now part of the operating environment in which every other security problem plays out. It strains our forces, our economy and our social cohesion, and those of our neighbours, all at once.

Australia's first National Climate Risk Assessment rated the current risk to the defence and national security system as high, and projected it would be very high to severe by 2050, warning that compounding and cascading impacts will stretch the system's resources and funding "to their limits".

The financial picture points the same way. The economic cost of extreme weather has more than tripled over three decades. Commonwealth disaster recovery spending could rise by 500 to 600 per cent by 2090. One in seven Australian houses is uninsured today, and this could reach one in four by 2050.

Our allies have been increasingly open. Early this year Britain released an intelligence-supported assessment whose reasonable worst case included Himalayan water shortages raising tensions between China, India and Pakistan, three nuclear-armed states.

Australia has its own assessment. In 2022 the Office of National Intelligence completed an external assessment of the security risks of climate change. Its findings have never been released in any form.

Keeping it in the bottom drawer doesn't reduce the risk, but only delays the preparation.

Acknowledging a risk isn't the same as managing it. We have plenty of speeches and........

© Canberra Times