Month: January 2023

Insecurity, the Anthropocene & nature’s tipping points

/ Dan Smith / 1 Comment

Each February, leaders, policy-makers, thinkers and practitioners in the field of security, broadly defined, get together at the Hotel Bayerischer Hof in Munich for a three day international conference. At the Munich Security Conference in February 2019, Germany’s then Chancellor, Angela Merkel, opened her speech by reflecting on the world’s entry into a new geochronological age – the Anthropocene Epoch. 

She explained, “This means that we are living in an age in which humankind’s traces penetrate so deeply into the Earth that future generations will regard it as an entire age created by humans.” She briefly touched on different human impacts on the environment and then said, “All of this has implications for global security and for the issues that are being discussed right here, right now.”

Right here, right now, too right.

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Climate change: old news and a new start in 2023

/ Dan Smith / 1 Comment

The facts are simple and brutal: looking back at average global temperatures over four decades, 

  • 19 of the 20 hottest years on record occurred since 2000;
  • 29 of the 30 hottest years on record occurred since 1990;
  • 38 of the 40 hottest years on record occurred since 1980.

In short, each decade of the four has been hotter than the previous one. And what it is leading to is what we have seen in 2022 – the year when 35 per cent of a major country was flooded, when another had its worst ever drought, when a continent experienced a once-in-500-year drought, and when, at the end of the year, another major country was ripped into by a cyclone bomb – all that and more, and worse, and harder to bear.

Yes, it’s old news – older than you might think – but it’s worthwhile to keep on recalling it, so the increased awareness of climate change in 2022 does not go to waste.

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