Description
Much has been said about climate security in reference to the ‘threat multiplier’ frame while others have sought to include the planetary and ecosystems as policy contexts. In this paper, I argue that climate security as currently conceived in strategic policy documents and in the academic literature is an exercise in strategic ignorance, one that requires a discounting of existential risks. The discounting of existential and extreme risk, however, produces not a manageable policy context, but instead helps responsibility-bearing institutions such as the state to evade responsibility of foreseeable harm. I add to existing discussion in the climate security literature that unless directly linked to questions of accountability and responsibility in reference to harms, climate security does not provide security for climate or people. In doing so I seek to innovate the philosophical understanding of existentialism as accountability for one’s action, to build a novel approach to understand responsibility as responding to past, present, and foreseeable harms. I argue this is particularly relevant in the context of future questions about existential climate politics as they unfold.
