The Secret Security Threat The Government Don’t Want Us To Know
7/16/202619 min
Why did the government suppress a report written by senior intelligence officials which named climate and nature collapse as a national security threat? How could ecosystem collapse lead to empty super market shelves, water scarcity and increased risk of conflict? And, ultimately, why has this not become a bigger conversation among politicians?
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Join Caroline Lucas, former leader of The Green Party, as she speaks with senior British army officer, Lt General Richard Nugee and former British diplomat and security expert Arthur Snell.
Read the redacted Joint Intelligence Committee Report here
Find out more about the National Emergency Briefing here.
Find Arthur Snell's new book Elemental here
Producer: India Dunkley
Video Editor: Josh Smith
Social Producer: Celine Charles
Trailer Editor: Dylan Bonham
General Manager: Tom Whiter
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Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsCaroline Lucas· Host0:01
[dramatic music] What if the biggest threat to UK national security isn't conventional warfare, it isn't a hostile state or a terrorist network, but rather the collapse of the natural world itself? What if the government knew, yet tried to make sure that we never found out? Welcome to When Nature Becomes a Security Threat. I'm Caroline Lucas. In this series, I'm exploring the latest assessments about how nature loss and the climate crisis will make Britain less safe, and why these grave warnings are now coming, not just from the environmental movement, but from the very top of our national security establishment. Last year, a report was commissioned by the government and compiled by the UK's most senior intelligence body, the Joint Intelligence Committee. That includes the heads of MI5, MI6, and GCHQ all in one room. Now, these are the people who would advise the government about the greatest threats the country faces, and usually they're warning about state threats, espionage, terrorist organizations or cyber threats. But this report was different. It told us definitively that nature loss and climate breakdown is equally considered to be a core national security threat, and that multiple interconnected ecosystem breakdowns are not just possible, they're increasingly likely, and the consequences for the UK would be profound. So the report was commissioned, it was compiled,