Climate Change Poses 'Enormous' Security Threat

Climate change presents “security risks (that) are potentially enormous,” Dan Smith, secretary general of International Alert warned Tuesday.

Smith is the author of a new G-7 report, “A new climate for peace.”

The study says climate change poses such a significant threat to global security that world leaders should make it a core part of their foreign policy agendas.

In an interview with the Guardian newspaper, Smith called on urgent action from both national and international governments.

“Government ministries need to come out of their silos and smell the coffee. Business as usual is not an option,” he said.

The independent report, "A New Climate for Peace," outlines a series of recommendations calling on the G-7 take concrete action, both as individual members and jointly, to tackle climate-fragility risks and increase the resilience of states and societies to them.

The study was well received by G-7 members at the group’s summit in Germany last week, where ministers agreed to establish a working group to follow through with the report’s recommendations.

RELATED: G-20 Communique to Address Climate Change

However, leading environmentalist and co-founder of the group 350.org Bill McKibben issued an open letter to President Barack Obama, expressing disappointment about the recent commitment from industrialized nations to move away from fossil fuels.

"The G7 communique talking about getting the world off fossil fuel by century's end is way too close to business as usual," McKibben wrote.

In the agreement, the G-7 leaders supported a reduction in global greenhouse gas emissions within a range recommended by the United Nations climate change panel, and backed a global target for limiting the rise in average global temperatures to 2 degrees Celsius (36 Fahrenheit) compared with pre-industrial levels.

However, scientists warn that the world is currently heading for a catastrophic 5 degrees Celsius of warming.

A new report by Nature magazine, a third of oil reserves, half of gas reserves and over 80 percent of current coal reserves should remain unused from 2010 to 2050 in order to meet the target of 2 degrees Celsius.