In April of 2009, representatives of the 28 member states of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) met in Strasbourg, France, and just across the border in Kehl, Germany. The largest military alliance on the planet had climate change on its agenda at a time when politicians in most member states were at best inactive and at worst actively denying the reality of the situation. What solution did they propose to climate change? Increasing “border security” as well as biometric IDs and more surveillance for their domestic populations, and reemphasizing their goal of normalizing the domestic use of military forces in urban environments by 2020. A strategy paper released in advance of the summit said plainly that “Security challenges are predominantly socio-economic, not military-technical, in character.”88 The paper goes on to make clear that “socio-economic” threats are those posed by poor people, climate refugees, and others angered or harmed by the current state of affairs, and as such, member states should continue to integrate police and military action and be prepared to deploy the military in their home territories.89 Anyone who is shocked by this response, or sees it as some kind of non sequitur, has failed to appreciate the true nature or scope of the ecological crisis. World governments, particularly those in the Global North, understand the crisis as a security issue. They know the problem is real, and they know growing deserts and rising sea levels will force hundreds of millions of people from their homes in search of their very survival. Their solution is to further militarize the borders— those borders of Fortress Europe and the American southwest that are most definitely “designed to kill”—so that people fleeing for their lives will be dissuaded by the very real possibility of dying in their journey.90 To put it simply, the major militaries of the world, already among the greatest producers of toxic waste and greenhouse gases, propose killing even more people to shield themselves from the consequences of the crisis they are in large part responsible for. And they also propose increasing the repression against their own citizens, fully aware that the lower classes everywhere will bear the brunt of the crisis, and rebellions are to be expected in the North as well as in the South.
excert from "the solutions are already here" by peter gelderloos