Source: BBC News

By Richard Black

Environment correspondent, BBC News website

Climate change is "potentially the most serious threat there has ever been" to security and prosperity, according to Britain's new climate ambassador.

In an article for the BBC News website - his first since taking the post in June - John Ashton says climate change must be tackled "whatever it costs".

He argues that the costs of not solving it will inevitably be larger.

Environmentalists welcomed Mr Ashton's appointment, but warned the UK position is undermined by its rising emissions.

Greenhouse gas production is increasing in virtually every country, and it is this that Mr Ashton believes makes climate change a real and urgent threat in Britain and around the globe.

"We need to treat climate change not as a long term threat to our environment, but as an immediate threat to our

security and prosperity," he writes.

"We need to see the pursuit of a stable climate as an imperative to be secured whatever it costs through the urgent construction of a low carbon global economy, because the cost of not securing it will be far greater."

Depending on diplomacy

As special representative on climate change for the British foreign secretary, John Ashton's main role is to build a new international consensus on climate change.

Consensus and diplomacy are, he writes, the only ways to tackle climate issues; unlike more traditional security concerns, the "hard power" option of solving a problem by force is not available.

"You cannot use military force to make everyone else on the planet reduce their carbon emissions. No weapon system can halt the advance of a hurricane bearing down on a city, or stem the rising sea, or stop the glaciers melting," he writes.

He believes that climate change, if it is not tackled effectively, will bring conflict through its impacts on societies and economies.

The lawlessness of New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina and the horrors of Darfur, exacerbated by changes to rainfall patterns, "...illustrate how an unstable climate will make it harder to deliver security unless we act more effectively now to neutralise the threat."

According to Felix Dodds, co-editor of the recent book Human Environmental Security - an Agenda for Change, diplomatic failure on climate change may well lead to conflict.

"John Ashton is right in his analysis, and international discussions are critical to solving this issue," he said, "because the alternative is you do end up with military solutions.

"There is a time window, and that window is 10 to 15 years - if we don't deal with it now, the reality is we will have to use military means to secure water, food, and energy security." […]

The full article is available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5325714.stm

For John Ashton’s article, please see http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5323512.stm