Mark Carney, the governor of the Bank of England, has become the latest person to deliver a blunt warning about the risks of climate change to global financial stability. Speaking at Lloyd’s of London, Carney warned that “the catastrophic impacts of climate change will be felt beyond the traditional horizons of most actors – imposing a cost on future generations” and that “climate change will threaten financial resilience and longer-term prosperity.”
His speech came as the Bank of England published a report on the impact of climate change on the British insurance industry, to be presented to the UK government, and sees the governor join a host of economic figureheads warning about the risk of continued reliance on dirty fossil fuels.
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The scope of national security is expanding beyond violent threats to encompass a broader array of dangers. In an article for World Politics Review, CFR's Stewart M. Patrick assesses the implications of COVID-19 and climate change for the theory and practice of national security.
Although there is no causality nor direct and automatic link between climate change and conflict, we can see that climate change can intensify conflict drivers and make it harder to find stability. The online workshop "Climate change, conflict and fragility: Increasing resilience against climate-fragility risks", organised by the European Peacebuilding Liaison Office (EPLO) and adelphi, looked into this complex relationship.
Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, numerous parallels have been drawn between this health crisis and the climate crisis. Science plays an important role in advising decision makers on how to ensure sustainable crisis management and a precautionary approach to avoid harmful repercussions, particularly where we do not yet know all the consequences of our actions. [...]
Decarbonisation won’t come as fast as the pandemic. But if fossil fuel exporters are not prepared for it, they will face an enduring crisis. The EU can help.