Professor Bruno Charbonneau - Future-making Politics: Planning for Low-Carbon Warfare

IAS Visiting Fellow Professor Bruno Charbonneau delivers a seminar on their research -

Discussions about the consequences of climate change for security have so far emphasized how the climate crisis multiplies security threats or how it might lead to instability and war. They do not consider how war and military operations themselves might change or must change, given the socio-technological transformations that also come with climate change. The strengthening of net-zero emissions targets and the energy transition to renewables in response to the deepening climate crisis is forcing militaries to find answers to the question of how to wield force effectively within the constraints of a future low-carbon world. The prospect is one of significant changes to how militaries operate in the years ahead as the global energy transition unfolds. In other words, the consequences of climate change on security is not only about the geo- and biophysical impacts on human affairs and geopolitics—to which the military must adapt and prepare for. Planning the future of warfare must also consider how societies and the international system transform in response to climate change—and what the consequences of such transformations are for the future of the military and warfare. It is these socio-technological transformations that we aim and propose to study, in order to imagine, prepare, and plan for the future of war. This paper will do so by emphasizing the transformation of time; i.e. the specificity of the temporal politics under climate change conditions.

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