The UK-US alliance must lead the way on tackling climate change
4 min read
Millions of people on both sides of the Atlantic are dealing with the worsening consequences of climate change.
For nearly eight decades, the United States and United Kingdom have recognised that we share the same fundamental geostrategic and national security interests, as recognised in NATO's founding treaty. Today, the greatest threats to our nations’ security are no longer confined to the battlefield. As millions of Brits and Americans wrestle with the worsening impacts of a warming planet – with both Southern England and Oregon contending with unprecedented wildfires – climate change is reshaping what it means to keep our people safe.
Last year, the UK's National Security Strategy identified the potential for climate change to have "a significant effect on the lives of British people". The British intelligence community also warned that the UK’s food security is under threat and that ecological collapse risks “conflict and military escalation will become more likely". Similar warnings have been voiced in the US. In 2022, the Joe Biden Administration stated that "of all the problems we face, climate change is the greatest and perhaps existential", while Jim Mattis, President Donald Trump's first Secretary of Defence, has said that "climate change is impacting stability in areas of the world where our troops are operating today."
As lawmakers on either side of the Atlantic, we believe that climate change represents a security challenge and public health crisis that needs to be met with robust global and multilateral action. The only way to stop and reverse the worsening consequences is to reach global net zero emissions by the middle of this century. The longer we delay, the worse things will get and the greater the risk we breach "tipping points" that could cause irreversible feedback loops, accelerating climate change.
The good news is progress is being made. Despite the Trump administration withdrawing the US from the Paris Climate Agreement, across America, city and state governments, corporations, and ordinary citizens are rolling up their sleeves to maintain momentum in the fight against climate change. Meanwhile, the UK continues to show global leadership, helping to corral action at the international level, despite the absence of its closest ally.
This drive towards domestic renewables is improving our nations' energy security. From the Covid-19 pandemic to the energy crisis that followed the Russian invasion of Ukraine, we’ve learned how vulnerable our globalised economies are to system-wide shocks. Economic security is foundational to national security, and we will remain exposed to global headwinds outside our control so long as volatile fossil fuels continue to dictate energy prices. Rising geopolitical tensions lend new urgency to a renewables transition. This would fundamentally reshape our energy systems so that they're more decentralized and resilient to acts of sabotage, and insulate our national economies from future price shocks.
As we navigate a world that is becoming less certain every day as a consequence of our warming planet, our two nations must continue to learn from each other.
That means understanding what each country is getting right and going wrong.
For people in the US, the UK's historic tradition of cross-party consensus on climate change provides an example to aspire to. As that cross-party consensus fractures, it's important that British politicians now learn from the American experience. President Trump has pursued a policy that prioritises fossil fuel extraction while attempting to halt the development of new renewables which offer genuine energy security. Far from delivering the affordable and abundant energy he offered the American people, it has instead left them more vulnerable to the aftershocks of his war in Iran, while undermining the US' long-term ecological, economic, and national security.
As Britain wrestles with the question of how to assure its own long-term security in a century that threatens to be as unstable as the last, it must ask itself: is this an example it really wants to follow?
Pippa Heylings is the Liberal Democrat MP for South Cambridgeshire and Maxine Dexter is a Democratic US representative for Oregon
