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The Sustainable Hour no. 613 | Transcript | Podcast notes
Keeping people safe starts with protecting the conditions that make life possible. As climate disruption threatens homes, livelihoods and the stability of entire regions, Australia’s understanding of national security needs to catch up.
In The Sustainable Hour no. 613, retired Australian Army Colonel Neil Greet joins Tony Gleeson, Colin Mockett OAM and Mik Aidt for a frank conversation about climate, conflict and the practical work of protecting people.
A FUNDAMENTAL SECURITY THREAT
Neil served for 30 years as an army officer, working as an engineer in Iraq, East Timor and remote Indigenous communities. He also helped coordinate Defence’s support for Victoria following the 2009 Black Saturday bushfires.
Today, he is an executive member of the Australian Security Leaders Climate Group, which urges governments to recognise climate disruption as a fundamental security threat.
His experience brings a different perspective to the debate. Security rests on the wellbeing of people and communities. Understanding their needs, working with the environment and building relationships all matter. Military strength alone cannot provide those things.
. . .
The episode opens with a warning from United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres and a clip of former British MP Caroline Lucas discussing the UK government’s assessment of the security risks posed by ecosystem collapse. Her intervention sets the scene for Neil’s challenge to Australia: take these threats seriously enough to prepare for them.
. . .
PREPAREDNESS GAP
Among the issues we explore with Neil:
• The risks are here – Australia needs to move urgently from recognition to preparedness. The immediate context is the “super” El Niño, which the release presents as a real-world stress test rather than a hypothetical future threat. Neil’s message is essentially: the risks are here, but Australia still doesn’t have the national machinery to manage them.
• Climate and displacement – When flooding, heat or the loss of livelihoods makes a place increasingly difficult to live in, people face painful choices about leaving. Neil discusses how climate pressures can interact with resource competition, conflict and political instability, including in Bangladesh, Sudan and the Sahel.
• Security through cooperation – Helping communities rebuild, restoring essential services and working alongside local people can build trust. Neil draws on his experience to explain why winning a battle and creating lasting security are very different tasks.
• Preparedness gap – Australia has a major climate-security preparedness gap. The central argument is that climate disruption is already a national-security and human-security threat – affecting health, food, water, energy, infrastructure, livelihoods and regional stability – but Australia lacks a coordinated national system for assessing and preparing for those risks.
• Disaster readiness – The armed forces have an important role in emergencies, but increasingly frequent disasters put pressure on their capacity. Neil stresses the need for civilian leadership and recovery systems that can carry the work forward after military assistance ends.
• Building with nature – Engineering begins with understanding the place and the people. Neil argues for using what is available, avoiding unnecessary construction and designing for the environment we actually inhabit. Poorly considered adaptation can create fresh problems.
• Build institutional capability – Australia is falling behind allies such as the United Kingdom. The release uses the UK as the key comparison: it says the UK is moving beyond simply recognising climate risk and is building institutional capability, including a dedicated Climate Security Taskforce and planning for food, water, supply-chain, economic and regional-security risks.
RECOVERY
Our discussion also confronts the limits of recovery. Some damage cannot simply be undone. Neil urges clear-eyed planning for difficult circumstances, while Colin reminds us that apparently entrenched political systems have changed within living memory. The tension between those perspectives runs through the conversation: facing the scale of the danger while continuing to work for a better outcome.
Neil is particularly critical of the gap between political speeches and practical preparation. He calls for an unclassified version of Australia’s climate-security intelligence assessment to be released so the public can understand the risks. He contrasts Australia’s approach with recent steps in the United Kingdom to bring climate risks into foreign and security policy.
→ Recent open letter: www.aslcg.org/open-letter
→ Find out more on Australian Security Leaders Climate Group’s home page:
www.aslcg.org
, , ,
GLOBAL OUTLOOK
In his Global Outlook, Colin examines Australia’s continuing support for coal and gas, the debate over emissions from exported fossil fuels, and the growing financial consequences of climate risk. He also brings evidence of change: new analysis from energy think tank Ember estimates that electric car fleets displaced 200 million barrels of crude oil in oil-importing countries between March and August 2026.
We discuss the benefits of electric trucks and cleaner transport, connecting climate action with cleaner air, lower running costs and reduced dependence on volatile fossil fuel markets. Colin also brings our regular Forest Green Rovers update.
. . .
OUR SONGS
Music carries the episode’s themes from warning to possibility:
• ‘Prepare for Impact’ calls for purposeful action as climate disruption reaches into everyday life.
• ‘What Story Will We Tell’ turns towards the future we are creating through our choices, relationships and willingness to rebuild.
. . .
Neil leaves us with a practical invitation: ‘Build forward wiser.’ Bring what we have learnt into the decisions we make now, and prepare our communities for the world taking shape around us.
“There is a hardcore inside Defence that still thinks security is only about tanks, ships and, dare I say the word, submarines. Whereas national security is much more than just defence. It’s about people. It’s about climate. It’s about many non-traditional things that influence security.”
~ Neil Greet, in The Sustainable Hour no. 613 at 17:23.
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We at The Sustainable Hour would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which we are broadcasting, the Wadawurrung People. We pay our respects to their elders – past, present, and emerging, and extend that respect to all First Nations people.
The traditional custodians lived in harmony with the land for millennia, nurturing it and thriving in often harsh conditions. Their connection to the land was deeply spiritual and sustainable. This land was invaded and stolen from them. It was never ceded. Today, it is increasingly clear that if we are to survive the climate emergency we face, we must learn from their land management practices and cultural wisdom.
True climate justice cannot be achieved until Australia’s First Nations people receive the justice they deserve. When we speak about the future, we must include respect for those yet to be born, the generations to come. As the old saying reminds us: “We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children.” It is deeply unfair that decisions to ignore the climate emergency are being made by those who won’t live to face the worst impacts, leaving future generations to bear the burden of their inaction.
“The Indigenous worldview has been marginalised for generations because it was seen as antiquated and unscientific and its ethics of respect for Mother Earth were in conflict with the industrial worldview. But now, in this time of climate change and massive loss of biodiversity, we understand that the Indigenous worldview is neither unscientific nor antiquated, but is, in fact, a source of wisdom that we urgently need.”
~ Robin Wall Kimmerer, weallcanada.org
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Extinction Rebellion in Melbourne: “There’s lots of support from passing cars at the other weekly protest against dirty coal and gas, and energy-guzzling data centres at Sarah Witty’s office in Fitzroy every Friday from 12:30 to 1:30pm. Coffee and conversations with other climate activists afterwards.”
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TRANSCRIPT
of The Sustainable Hour no. 613
António Guterres, United Nations Secretary-General: (00:00)
Humanity is speeding past the limit to avoid climate catastrophe.
Jingle: (00:14)
The Sustainable Hour. For a green, clean, sustainable Geelong: The Sustainable Hour.
Tony Gleeson: (00:24)
We’d like to start off as always by acknowledging that we’re on the land that have been nurtured by the Wadawurrung people for millennia. We’re broadcasting from stolen land, land that was never ceded, always was and always will be First Nations land. In nurturing both their land and their communities before they were invaded they accumulated a great amount of ancient wisdom, the same ancient wisdom that we’re going to need to survive the climate crisis that is rapidly surrounding us.
Caroline Lucas (01:09)
https://substack.com/@climatemajorityproject/note/c-355112484
The government didn’t want you to see that report, so they suppressed it. There was a lot of pressure, was a freedom of information, and finally they released 14 pages, heavily redacted. But even in that heavily redacted form, it was talking about the fact that every major ecosystem that we depend on for our own survival is on a pathway to collapse. That was the phrase they used. That was not Greenpeace saying it, it wasn’t the Green Party saying it, that was MI5 and MI6. So let’s have a broader discussion about what we mean by security. Let’s have a broader discussion about what it means when it comes to new threats.
Mik Aidt: (01:34)
That was Caroline Lucas, a British politician on the BBC Question Time, where they discussed whether we are actually serious about defence or not. And that’s of course in the UK. But you could ask the exact same question here in Australia and we will be discussing something very similar in The Sustainable Hour today.
There so many lies and are so many stories circulating in social media in particular and among politicians, including that we should scrap net zero and we should just keep polluting the atmosphere as we have done it for a long, long time, as if we didn’t understand that there are consequences from doing that. Let’s talk about these consequences!
But before I get really upset and angry here and begin rambling, let’s calm down, keep cool with some balanced news from around the world, I can see Colin Mockett OAM is eager to deliver his global roundup bulletin. Do you have any good news for us today, Colin?
COLIN MOCKETT’S GLOBAL OUTLOOK: (02:47)
Look, yes, I do have a little bit of good news, but basically I’m on the exactly the same topic that you have already laid the groundwork for because our roundup this week, Mik, begins here in Australia where we have repeatedly reported our meteorological offices warnings that the approaching summer will be even hotter and more dangerous because the predicted El Nino was likely to be stronger, making high fire risks more likely. There was another such warning last week which ratcheted up the fire warning saying that the El Nino will be multiplied by climate change.
Now you would think that our politicians would listen to the Met Office, wouldn’t you? But on the same day as that Met Office warning, our federal government’s resources minister, Madeline King, gave an address at the National Press Club in Canberra, and she stated in no uncertain terms that the government stood firmly behind the mining of fossil fuel industries. She actually thanked representatives of the resources sector, in particular the Minerals Council of Australia and the Association of Mining and Exploration Companies for their input into her speech, she said, and that speech announced the government’s gas reservation policy, and that policy was meant to silence those people who’d been calling for a 25 per cent tax on gas exports. Minister King painted a picture of our country being reliant on gas, both domestically and for stability in the region.
A successful peaceful energy transition relies on continued Australian exports of energy, she said. We must continue exporting traditional commodities like gas and coal, while our export markets still need them, and while our regional trading partners follow their important paths to net zero.
Isn’t that a wonderful illustration of double talk?
Analysts have said that the new gas reservation policy exists because the government won’t move to place a tax on gas exports, and it won’t tax gas exports because foreign mining companies have told it not to.
Correspondence between the government and the gas giant Santos that were released at the weekend makes very clear that who is in charge and who is taking instructions. The industry is dictating to our federal politicians, and they’re not only listening, they’re acting on the advice. Now this was true too of the government’s response to the High Court case two weeks ago, which found that New South Wales mining companies were responsible for Scope 3 emissions. That is when their coal is burned overseas.
Environment Minister Murray Watt this week took pains to point out that federal laws did not require that any consideration be given to scope three emissions anywhere. Minister Watt seemed actually proud or perhaps relieved that his government did not need to be troubled by concerns over global warming.
The truth is that the present day Labor Party is no friend of the environment. The best it can claim is that it is a little bit less of an enemy to the environment than the coalition or one nation. But although all of our large political parties are alike in ignoring climate change, the world’s insurance companies aren’t. Premiums are being lifted worldwide because the insurance companies are essentially gamblers making cold-eyed assessments on the odds of disasters happening.
And their research clearly shows the risks that climate change is bringing on multiple fronts. In short, they know that we are all facing a very risky future because we can’t get our politicians to act as if they were in a climate and not a financial crisis.
So, to Europe, where the EU’s energy and climate think tank Ember this week published a new analysis that shows that in the six months since the Hormuz energy crisis erupted, electric car fleets in oil importing countries are estimated to have displaced 200 million barrels of crude oil, with a value of $29 billion Australian dollars.
That means, basically, that the countries are not buying that amount of oil. They’ve replaced the demand with demand for electricity. The EU figures show that the nations saving the most from reduced oil imports were China, which accounted for US$14 billion dollars of that total, followed by the EU with US$3.1 billion.
And inside the EU figures, the biggest savings in the market were from Germany and France at around US$760 million dollars and US$560 million dollars respectively.
Now do you notice anything those countries have in common? They all have policies in place that take climate change seriously, and they act to combat it. The Ember figures show that as a percentage of oil displacement compared to each country’s oil consumption.
Denmark emerged as a clear front runner, with electric cars cutting the country’s oil consumption in 2025 by 13 per cent. Now that was the last figure 2025. It’s even more now. [Editor’s note: Denmark’s electric car fleet as of August 2026 displaces an annual quantity of oil equivalent to 13 per cent of Denmark’s 2025 consumption].
Those figures were worldwide and savings in Australia from electric cars are put at just US$220 million dollars. It’ll be much bigger now, but we started from a very low position.
The impact of the Hormuz energy crisis on the cost of fuel has resulted in a clear uptick in the demand for EVs from consumers, driving up sales share. That’s what Ember’s paper notes. India, Chile, Australia and New Zealand have all seen sharp increases in EV sales.
As if we didn’t know that from the number of Chinese branded EVs on our roads. And as a side effect, figures released last week from the Motor Industry Association shows that the price of used petrol and diesel cars have dropped in Australia by at least 8 per cent since March of this year. That’s the knock-on effect of everybody moving to EVs. And it’s a very good incentive for even more take-up of electric vehicles. Because the value of old petrol and diesel powered cars is dropping daily.
And that’s our roundup for the week, except to note that the environmental sports team, our environmental sports team, Forest Green Rovers in the UK, they drew 0-0 away at Chesham United, leaving the Rovers still at 16th on the ladder. And that is my roundup for the week.
Jingle: (10:47)
Listen to our Sustainable Hour – for the future.
. . .
Tony: (10:55)
Lucky it’s early in, fairly early in the season, Colin, for the Rovers and there’s still time for them. The Eternal Optimist in me says there’s still time for them to have a go at being promoted to the next level.
Colin: (11:10)
Yep, yeah. They’ve got a new manager and he’s just sort of bringing in a new format and once they click and they get together they’ve only really got a string together, say four or five wins and they’re in the top contention. If they can do that, we will have a very nice end of year.
Tony: (11:30)
Yeah. Fingers crossed on that one. Yep. And I think it’s worth noting too the at a time when the politicians, especially ours, tend to be not taking climate seriously, but market is take it very seriously and if we look at the sales of EV cars, buses, trains
Colin: (11:54)
The insurance market. We’re all complaining about the insurance is going up, but why? It’s because of climate change.
Mik: (12:01)
And even trucks… Certainly in Europe now, in Denmark, I was recently in Denmark as you know, I’m seeing all these EV trucks everywhere and they of course have plenty of space to write that I am electric and that kind of thing in very big letters. And sitting here in my car in Australia with an open window now that it’s getting warm, my god, I’m inhaling all these fumes coming out from the trucks in particular. And I’m thinking, I can’t wait until these trucks get electric. Please!
Colin: (12:32)
Yeah.
Tony: (12:34)
Yeah, the market’s speaking on that too, Mik. The price of diesel is going up and up. And there’s people like Dan Bleakley, who’s who’s been on the show before, who’s pushing really hard for trucks to get get into Australia. Apparently in China, they’re they’re very big. They they’ve done the maths and worked out it’s much better all round to to get away from diesel, get off diesel, get on be electrified.I think next year we’re going to see much, much more of that in Australia.
Mik: (13:06)
It’s good for the climate and it’s good for business.
Colin: (13:09)
It’s good for everybody’s pocket.
Tony: (13:12)
Yeah, considerably cheaper as well if if once that starts to happen and we see one or two of the the trucks that it certainly won’t take long for the others to to get on board as well. And especially when they see the the balance sheets of these companies that go electric. Yeah.
Mik: (13:31)
It will be us laughing all the way to the bank eventually. But for now it seems like there’re some people, and I’m looking at the Coalition, I’m looking at One Nation, they don’t seem to have gotten the memo.
Colin: (13:42)
No, they’ve got the memo all right, they’ve just chosen to ignore it.
Mik: (13:47)
Well, they got the memo from the rich people who are trying to protect their vested interests.
Tony: (13:52)
Yep, that’s the one they… that’s the one they take notice of. But ironically it… – that is so ironic because it’s not helping their pockets at all.
Colin: (14:02)
No, it’s helping Pauline Hanson and Nigel Farage and Donald Trump. They’re getting rich because the when they talk about the trickle down effect from rich people, that was something very much that was in effect the end of the twentieth and the beginning of the twenty first century. We were all supposed to benefit from the trickle down effect of tax cuts to the ultra rich. In fact none of it came to us, it all went to their figureheads Donald Trump, Nigel Farage, Marine Le Pen, you name it, every country has got a figurehead politician who is funded by ultra rich people.
Mik: (14:47)
It’s definitely something we need to talk more about, but I have an impression today we’ll be actually talking about something very serious when it comes to climate. Tony, over to you.
. . .
Tony: (14:58)
Our guest today is Neil Greet. Neil is spent thirty years in the army and he’s now on the executive of the Australian Security Leaders Climate Group, as as well as many other activities that keep him busy. So Neil, thanks very much for coming on.
Neil Greet: (15:20)
Yes, thanks. Thank you very much, Tony. It’s a pleasure to be here.
Tony: (15:24)
Let’s start with your army experience, maybe and and how that led to working with with national security on climate.
Neil: (15:35)
So yeah, as you mentioned there, Tony, 30 years in the army. I was an army engineer for most of that time, which I spent time across the South West Pacific on operations in East Timor and Iraq and also working with our remote indigenous communities. Towards the end of my career I was involved with the reconstruction during conflict type planning that was necessary for Afghanistan, but I never went.
My final sort of gig in the army was to come down to Melbourne to support the Victorian government in the aftermath of the Black Saturday bushfires back on the ninth of February two thousand and nine. And then I went on to other pastures and one of those is working with the Australian Security Leaders Climate Group.
Tony: (16:29)
And how did that flow from your army experience? Was it particularly the last one that th that working on the bush forward?
Neil: (16:37)
Generally, I would think it was sort of just being in different places and seeing the world through different eyes. And it it was a gradual thing. I couldn’t pin it to any one thing, but certainly, you know, of course I’m learning and understanding outside the army or the military at the time. So certainly the way the world was progressing and talking about climate effects I guess it was a congruence of a number of things.
Colin: (17:09)
Mm… Neil, were you alone in that view in the in the military or were there quite a few of you thinking of the climate above anything else?
Neil: (17:23)
I would say to you, the answer to that question, certainly not alone, but certainly in a minority. All right. So you would be aware, I think, that Admiral Chris Barrie is involved and ex chief of the defence force. So I mean and also another good friend, Air Vice-Marshal John Blackburn retired and so these people are, you know, have reached high ranks in the military. But there is definitely probably a hardcore inside defense that still thinks security is only about tanks, ships and dare I say the word submarines, whereas national security and security is much more than just defence. It’s about people. It’s about climate, it’s about many non-traditional things that influence security and that’s if I were to be so blunt where we never really understood the wars in Af Iraq and Afghanistan because the mission became kill the kill the terrorist and if you just kill one you create more. So there there’s a deeper understanding to what security is.
Colin: (18:49)
Now look, you must realise that you’re on The Sustainable Hour, and our premier point of contact is sustainability. You’ve been rebuilding after wars and rebuilding after bushfires and rebuilding simply for the need of it in the Northern Territory. Is there a similarity in that? And is there a sustainable element to all of those rebuilds?
Neil: (19:17)
Colin, yes, yes, yes to that, right? In fact, if that was to be when you were talking about lessons, certainly on a pathway of understanding, as an engineer, and if you’re raised as an engineer in a city, it’s all about controlling nature and just building things, you know, like have always been built. you you don’t think of how you build with nature, but when you go to these more difficult places you think about how you have to build in the environment you’re in as opposed to making the environment what you want it.
So it goes to the core of using what you’ve got. Don’t overbuild. Think of what you’re doing for the people there and all those things. I’m not suggesting we get that right, but at least there’s a lot of thinking that goes into that to try and take the people with you rather than work against them.
But having said that kinda I’ll come back to the point, not everyone sees that. They see the military or security as just a blunt weapon, and they don’t understand a sophistication that lies behind it.
Colin: (20:31)
What are the national security implications then of the climate crisis as you see them near?
Neil: (20:39)
Right. So when you come to it, there’s a and and talking on a sustainable hour, we get people who will think, here we go again, securitisation of of everything, you know, that defence people want to toke over and make this into a security thing. That’s not what this is about. And it’s also not the other hard side that thinks that just military operations are the only answer.
Climate security is in the middle of that. It’s trying to understand how climate will change the geopolitical and the actual environment that we have to conduct future warfare in and how it influences people. So one of the big things people will often talk about is migration that might occur as things get untidy in the world.
And the example in our own neighbourhood might be something like Bangladesh, that might well suffer flooding, from sea level rise. And in the end, what do those millions of people do? Do they stay there and die or do they move in our human history? We know people will move. We’ve done it before. And so how does that change the dynamics? We assume that our security is based on the current world, but climate change will put us in a different world. So that’s why climate security is important, right?
Colin: (22:13)
I would guess also it would be a good way of winning people over because if you rebuild a village that’s been flooded and you rebuild and give it give people homes with, for example, solar panels so they’ve got free electricity, they are going to be on your side and not opposed to the doctrines of the West anymore.
Neil: (22:41)
Fundamentally, Colin, I totally, totally agree with you a hundred per cent. So that would be what in the vernacular of security thinking is called soft power. So the idea of soft power is you work with people, all the things you go you develop a better life in concert with them and therefore they believe you’re the good guys.
Right. But and the butt is really important. A lot of people aren’t interested in that. They see and I and and you know, I do have to put our our friends over the other side of the Pacific Ocean and and watch the behaviors, the transactional behaviors at the moment, which just see toughness as and you know firepower and all those things are the things that win wars, you know, the old adage don’t bring a knife to a gunfight, you know, all this crap. Or the modern way, 21st century version of that is don’t bring a submarine to a drone fight.
Neil: (23:53)
Well it is, you know. exactly. But if you concentrate only on that point, you don’t get the complexity of people and you don’t actually win if I was to say it, you don’t win the conflict because you might win the battle, but you don’t win the war. And if I was to say to you, America has since Vietnam has been very good at winning battles.
But has never won the wars.
Colin: (24:25)
And I guess the added complication too is that this could as the climate crisis unwinds, it could be conflict within the country. It’s a completely different role for the army.
Neil: (24:40)
Exactly. So conflict within states, because you have winners and losers, and that’s a different type of security. and you only need to look at the difficult conflicts going on in Africa at the moment, in Ethiopia, across the Sudan, across the Sahel there, to see the complexities of a changing climate, resource competition, warlords, and all of that come together in a terrible mess. I mean, it is… you know, we could talk about other wars, but we don’t talk as Australians much about what’s happening in that that region of Africa and it is quite horrific. And then there’s the outflow of humanity that comes with that, the refugee camps, and everything like that. And if I was to say to you as Australians, we’re pretty good at looking the other way with that sort of stuff. it’s certainly not on our front pages at all.
Colin: (25:45)
Did you find that as a white Western looking person, you were immediately bracketed as American and you had to get over that and say we’re not Americans, we’re Australians?
Neil: (26:00)
Now, okay, to that point, Colin, when I was in Iraq, I was directly embedded inside the coalition forces, which was essentially the American force. So I was at that time in Baghdad, for all to all observers, just an American, right? I did not try and distinguish there because, you know, you were just part of the coalition force. Every everyone, if if an Iraqi looked at us, we were we were all the same. There was no differentiation. So just as you looked at them and couldn’t see as soon as you’re… I’ve forgotten the other one.
Colin: (26:52)
Yep. And of course, there is a lot of ignorance in humanity on all sides, right? That leads to war. So yeah.
Neil:
At that point we’re talking back in 2006 – so this is twenty years ago – I did fully understand that there was no weapons of mass destruction at the time, right? So you know, and everyone did. but the point of being there was there was Colin Powell, as you may well remember, was a very brilliant leader. He said, if you broke it, you fix it. Right? So when the Americans broke Iraq in two thousand and three as the Secretary of State, he very strongly pushed the idea that we broke you we broke it, we fix it. Now I am a strong, strong, strong believer in exactly that.
And one of the reasons that I was happy to be there as an engineer doing that. But again, I’ll come to a point that’s not what a lot of people thought that they were going to achieve in Iraq. And the complexities of oil sit behind all of this. And we we see I cannot understand why we have failed to learn those lessons and find ourselves making an even stupider war against Iran. When I say we, I mean we in the Western sense, not we as Australians. Yeah.
. . .
SONG 1 (28:28)
‘Prepare For Impact’
Verse 1:
Carbon feeds the sea
Evaporation feeds the clouds
The ocean spins slower
but hotter, and acidified
One month of rain in a single surge
Drowning our city, streets submerged
Red alert in the engine room
Mass evacuation, emergency
Chorus:
Prepare for impact
[We need to move beyond good intentions]
Prepare for impact
[to purposeful action]
Verse 2:
What we’re seeing, says scientists
has never been seen before
This is the age of the
trans-apocalyptic meta-collapse
It doesn’t look like the movies you saw
Rising prices, inequality, war
Industry holding our future at ransom
Leaders saying ‘nothing’s wrong’
Chorus:
Prepare for impact
[It is important to have these good intentions
but it is the actual purposeful actions that matter]
Prepare for impact
[to purposeful action]
Bridge:
But collapse is not the end
it’s the turning of the page
The moment we start choosing
a direction and a vision
The future’s not given, it’s ours to create
The danger’s in clinging to comfort and fate
Our task is not rescue, we nurture the new
We imagine, rebuild, and regenerate
[We do need to address this issue
It is critical and urgent]
Chorus:
Prepare for impact
[We need to move beyond good intentions]
Prepare for impact
[to purposeful action]
Verse 3:
Every choice we make
cuts a little carbon
heals a little wound
restores a little faith
Oh yes, we live on the edge
But we give birth to the new
More gratitude, more time
More laughter, more awe
Prepare for impact
Audio statement by Neil Plummer in the introduction:
Climate change is putting a lot of more stresses on people, including a lot of young people. This report is a scary read. It requires a national wake up call.
. . .
Colin: (31:33)
You must have been one of the very few doves in in a hawk like environment, Neil. What what rank did you achieve in the army?
Neil: (31:47)
I finished as a full Colonel. Okay? So sort of at that junior level of senior officer. Yeah.
Colin: (31:55)
And as such, were you aware of the the rank and file, were they of similar views?
Neil: (32:05)
Well, the answer is some yes, but some look, I think it would be a reflection that, you know, there’s a wide variation in you know what people think just like the rest of society. That would be my answer. But to come to a different point to answer that question, the work that the army has been doing in remote indigenous communities since ninety six and actually done it a long time before, but this is a formal programme since 1996, army engineers have been doing… a lot of officers, soldiers or sappers as we call them in the military engineers, have gone back to remote indigenous communities to work in once they’ve left the army. That’s not all of them. I’m not pretending it’s like a a lovely magical thing, but there are good people sitting there that understand or see other ways they can contribute. And that would go through all the ranks.
Colin:
It also makes a point that when they left they left it unfinished and they wanted to go back as civilians to finish it.
Neil: (33:20)
Yes, that’s right. Yes.
Colin: (33:23)
Did you find that with the Black Saturday bushfires?
Neil: (33:28)
Well, Black Saturday was interesting… So I came off in the end I the title I was given was the Chief of Defence Force Liaison Officer. So I worked closely in with Craig Lapsley at the time, who was the head of the emergency response for Department of Human Services. Craig went on to become the emergency management commissioner and the reservists of four brigade who are the local reserve unit down in Melbourne, they provided the support, military support that was helping the early recovery. All right.
So we’re in that tricky phase after the fires, but before all the contracts and had been signed and things went back to normal. So those people were people from the area, they were from Melbourne and they really wanted to do something. So there was a sense of the same goodness in that that they were local people helping locals. So it wasn’t like we had people coming down from you know, Townsville or whatever who were dislocated. So there was a closeness between the society and the army reserves who were doing most of the legwork.
Colin: (34:47)
Mm. And were you proud of how you left the communities after the Black Saturday bushfires? Or did were you there just sort of helping clearing and not actually rebuilding?
Neil: (35:01)
Yeah, and that’s important because so proud I’m not sh not I think we did a really good job. obviously it wasn’t a finish point when we left. But the important thing for the military in local and national disasters is that it does not become part of the permanent solution. It has to be a civilian led operation and you have to return to normal as quick as possible.
So it was absolutely critical that the Victorian government picked up as quick as possible us because if you rely on the military, and this is very if it just might take back to climate change, if you rely on the military to do only disaster response, because disasters get more in intense and more frequent as we’ve seen since black okay tw two thousand and nine it was Black Saturday.
2019 and 2020, it was Black Summer and that was unsustainable for the Defence Force when they might be called away. So there’s a really important need for the military to step in in emergencies, but also to go before they become part of a permanent framework.
Colin: (36:24)
There’s a lot of adjustments that have to go on, Neil, after a a extreme weather event especially. What about the the psychological needs of the you know, there’s a lot of trauma associated with with that, with those events. What role does the army does the army have any or the military have any role in in looking at that?
Neil: (36:48)
Not so, I mean, obviously to the point of being very conscious when you’re there that lives have been lost. I mean, driving down the ridge line of Kinglake myself, on the Monday after the fire and suddenly realising all those cars, you know, still still had burnt people in it. I mean, that’s important to understand and and and certainly be empathetic and sympathetic with the community but that wouldn’t be our direct responsibility. You know, that would be for all of the the mechanisms of the state government to come in and make sure that they were looking after people psychologically and providing that right support.
We would certainly look after our own people if any of them were confronted with things, you know. And having said that, you’ll well understand that that’s an ongoing issue within the military, within the police, within the fire services.
Colin: (37:51)
I have a good friend who lost his house in King Lake and coincidentally he was in the RAF, RAAF and Graham Lord. Yeah. no look this is talking about the past. You are now currently, Neil, part of the Services sustainable group, the…
Neil: (38:11)
Australian Security Leaders Climate Group.
Colin: (38:13)
Yep, the climate group. What action and what lobbying and what are you really doing now as as a new group ’cause you’ve got some pretty high powered people aboard. What are you doing in order to try change governments? I mean, you know as well as I do that the big problem that we have with our government is that they are answerable to lobby groups who are waving money at them, mostly from the fossil fuel industry. What is your lobby group doing to try and counteract that?
Neil: (38:51)
So one of the important things with us is that we tell the governments at various levels, not just a federal government, right, that this matters to you, not because climate change is a greenie or a soft issue, that you are going to have real security problems that are going to affect you in the future.
So we have done a number of reports that have called this out. you know, missing in action tells you what we think, right, as a title. Okay. Now, the Albanese government they commissioned a report by the Office of National Intelligence to actually look at climate security risks in the country. Now that became secret, right? And there is no reason why we can’t see an unclassified version of that report to understand what actually is happening. Now to that point, the United Kingdom did a similar thing.
They released an unclassified report back in April and just recently, and this really is recent now, and this is why we are a little agitated, the Foreign Secretary came out and said that’s Ed Miliband at the Climate Week in New York and laid out what they were going to do as a response to their climate security risk report they would undertake to mitigate actions around the around the world and how they would lay out a plan. Unfortunately, our Prime Minister went over and used all these nice words, but did not he used the word. The title of the keynote speech at New York Climate Week was Climate Security is Now National Security. He then went on to mention security once.
He mentioned El Nino once. So what we have here, it’s like we talk about it, but we don’t do anything. And it’s we’re talking out both sides of our mouth on security. The UK, and and it’s not like they’re perfect, by the way, you know, are far ahead of us. They’re taking recognition of the problem and they’re doing something. We’re not. We’re pretending.
Colin: (41:33)
Have you seen the report?
Neil: (41:35)
No, no, it’s classified. I don’t want to see the classified report. I’m not interested. I’m not want to… you know, I understand things need to be secret. And the reason it probably needs t parts to be secret is it will say some parts of the world will be at higher risk than us. And they might get deeply offended if Australia say, it’s gonna be shit for you in, you know, t twenty years’ time. I understand that we might need to be s understanding of other countries. But that doesn’t mean we can’t produce an unclassified report, just like the British did.
Colin: (42:11)
From the British report or let’s put it correct, from reports of the British reports in the press, one of the big significant problems is that climate change will cause population movement. Yes. And that’s seen as being the biggest security risk for the UK and I would assume something similar would be on the front of mind for the Australians and that’s why they haven’t because it’s it’s as acute a problem in Australia as it is in Great Britain only much much more political.
Neil: (42:54)
Yeah. So obviously through recent Australian history in the last twenty years, we’ve had the notion of stopping the boats and all of that. noting of course a lot of people come here on an aeroplane and overstay. So putting that aside, Australia has a notion as an island that we can surround ourselves and stop people coming. Now what’s happening in the UK at the moment is proving that Africa is on the march northwards through Europe and into the United Kingdom. It’s causing social dislocation and all of that. So they can see a much bigger issue than we’ve ever seen nor have to cope with in Australia.
That will only get worse, you know, I mentioned the Sahel earlier, as the environment in Africa pushes people out, they will be going to Europe and they will be going to other places.
If you imagine in our part of the world that happening in Vietnam, Indonesia, where there are even more people, Australia is mostly desert as we know, you know, and particularly a hostile environment in the north. So it’s not like you’re coming to the Garden of Eden. But there won’t be many choices. See this is the point in the end. Climate change and climate security is gonna take out away our choice.
Tony: (44:31)
Yeah, taking away our choice and I guess it’s all about preparing now or talking about it and getting some sort of readiness for that happening, rather than ignoring it and then having to be confronted with a series of catastrophes.
Neil: (44:48)
Yes, Tony. One would call that prudent planning.
Tony: (44:53)
I would I would suggest that what we really need is more people like you. Because if we were really sensible, we would be looking at where the people are being forced to move. We know that Bangladesh and the the delta that it’s on is likely to flood as the glacier melts in the Himalayas.
If we sent engineers to look for solutions for the people there and then we left them with the ability to move to different grounds and still thrive, then we would have cut out the problem of any possible refugee flood coming from that area. And a similar thing I’m quite sure the British would be looking at Africa and saying, Well, where can we help solve the almost endless drought in Sudan which is causing the people to move to Europe because they can’t figure it out back there?
Neil: (46:02)
Yeah. Can I say one thing, is that we can’t solve this, right? One when I talk about prudent planning, we have to be able to look at this with hard eyes and know that thing there are many things that have already been put in place that we can’t change. We know we’ve overshot 1.5°C and that will likely take us to a a world where, you know, 3°C degrees Celsius above the industrial age. And that’s going to cause immense stress.
It’s already there. So what we actually have to do is we’re going to have to look for the best possible solutions.
And some of them are going to be hard decisions about how do we actually move people, how do we build something that is sustainable for the future and doesn’t create a bigger problem. Because that’s what we also do. in a recovery or a or in adaptation, we might actually make things worse. So there’s a whole lot of sophisticated thinking there. But we’re not going to solve it.
Colin: (47:16)
Hey, Neil, look, I’m very old, and in my lifetime I have seen the conflict in the Middle East, which was simply due to moving a whole group of people there, the Jews after the Second World War. And that has never been resolved. [Editor’s note: The conflict’s roots predate that war, including the 1917 Balfour Declaration and the British Mandate.]
But it also in my lifetime I’ve seen the collapse of the Iron Curtain, the collapse of the USSR, the removal of apartheid in South Africa. I’ve seen a lot of good things happening too, so I would never say it’s not solvable. With the right people, it’s always solvable. I’m pretty sure that Elon Musk on his own could solve world hunger just by throwing money at it and he’d still be a rich man. What we have to do is figure out how we need to combat it. And we start with the climate because that’s what’s causing all the problems. Well it all has to start with individual subtleties.
. . .
Jingle
Mik: (48:30)
That’s all we could fit in one very, very serious and important Sustainable Hour, I believe. It doesn’t get much serious than when we talk about army, war and climate. But, Neil, if we are to leave on a sort of more philosophical note with you, we always ask our guests, what should we be? And do you have a suggestion for our listeners? What should we be in the context of everything you have said?
Neil: (48:59)
So I would say to you: build forward wiser. We used to talk about ‘build back better’. Let’s build forward wiser!
Colin: (49:13)
Be thinking of the future!
. . .
SONG 2 (49:14)
“What Story Will We Tell”
Intro:
The old world is dying
A new one is being born
Not from algorithms
but from the human heart
We are the ancestors of what comes next
What story will we choose to tell?
Verse 1:
We stood at the edge of a broken age
Systems cracking like ancient ice
Smoke on the skyline, silence in soil
Still we carried seeds inside
Chorus:
Tell me:
What story will we tell?
Of how we faced the dark and stayed awake
Of how we broke the spell
And let the earth reshape our fate
Verse 2:
Not in steel, not in code alone
But in rivers we relearned to flow
In gardens grown where wounds had bled
In dreams we dared, and truths we said
Chorus:
So tell me:
What story will we tell?
Will we walk through fire with open hands?
Or build new songs from shattered bells
A world reborn, not ruled by plans?
Bridge:
This is not the end
This is the invitation
To co-create, to compost pain,
To find the sacred in relation
To weave a civilisation
That listens
That learns
That loves
And turns
Verse 3:
From greed to grace
From walls to wells
From fear to fierce compassion
From conquest to connection
Chorus:
Tell me, what story will we tell?
The page is blank, the hour is near
Not heroes, just humans
Becoming clear
Outro:
What story will we choose to tell?
– – –
Spoken words:
We are gently weaving the threads of a transformation.
A different kind of civilisation.
One that listens.
One that learns.
One that gives.
And find security and love in return
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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