More than 300,000 acres have been burned so far this summer in France, in the worst damage experienced by the country since the second World War. Spain, Portugal, the UK and Greece have also suffered badly, with tens of thousands of people displaced and emergency services continuing to struggle with the speed and intensity of the fires.
And yet these catastrophic wildfires are not the main story of this summer’s extreme weather. The heatwave that spread across Europe in mid-July resulted in 12,000 deaths over three days. Power plants in France were forced to shut down, train tracks buckled, roads melted, schools closed and major European rivers ran dry. In Ireland, the fields have turned to straw, demonstrating just how vulnerable a grass-fed agricultural system is to prolonged drought.
We are used to hearing about threats to European and national security and the need for increased defence funding, but the focus is invariably on potential threats from external aggression. Climate change is now a permanent and intensifying threat that kills people, damages essential infrastructure and disrupts social life in profound ways. Why is it not treated as a security priority?
Europe should have been shocked into action in 2003, when a heatwave killed more than 70,000 people. Instead, the Continent is now the fastest-heating region in the world with climate policy in reverse as defence and competitiveness dominate the EU agenda. From slowing the pace of emissions reductions to watering down climate obligations, the emphasis is on deregulation rather than strategic, long-term support for decarbonisation and green industrial sectors.
Last month, Minister for Public Expenditure Jack Chambers accused NGOs of “weaponising” climate law to halt infrastructure projects. At the same time, Ireland spends less on nature restoration than any other EU country. Nature restoration is not about prettifying our countryside; it is about ecosystem resilience, soil health, peatland restoration and flood management. These measures mitigate against the effects of climate change and enhance national security and could reasonably be considered part of defence spending. And yet, according to the Climate Change Advisory Council, even small climate adaptation projects which reduce vulnerability and minimise climate risks are unable to get funding.
It is worth contrasting European and Irish inaction on climate resilience with the speed and scale of defence spending and planning. The ReArm Europe Plan, announced in early 2025, aims to mobilise €800 billion by 2030, remove national debt limits on defence spending, fast-track permits for defence factories and reorientate civilian programmes, such as Horizon Europe, to dual-use and military objectives. This is precisely the kind of comprehensive and co-ordinated EU strategy that climate change requires.
The new EU budget (2028-2034), which will be finalised during Ireland’s presidency, commits 12 times more money to militarisation (€131 billion) than it does to civil protection (€10.7 billion). Not only will this rapid militarisation exacerbate geopolitical instability, but it will drive up emissions and increase resource extraction. The planned expansion of military spending by Nato members will generate approximately 132 million tonnes of CO2, equivalent to the annual emissions of Brazil, the fifth-largest emitter in the world. The fact that recent wildfires in France threatened missile factories and research facilities near Bordeaux should tell us something.
After the fires are extinguished, concerns about climate change will be pushed aside until the next extreme weather event hits. The fleeting focus on climate change is in stark contrast to the near-daily commentary and Government talking points around Ireland’s vulnerability to external aggression – from subsea cables to cybersecurity. Security priorities are not determined by the wellbeing of the civilian population or scientific evidence.
If climate were a security priority, we would see investment in forecasting, as well as the skills and capacity to respond to climate emergencies. In Ireland, this would contribute to the Defence Forces’ humanitarian and peacekeeping work abroad, where the realities of climate change have hit hardest, often fuelling conflict. The Spanish prime minister has already insisted that 15 per cent of Spain’s defence budget will be allocated to combating climate emergencies, a unilateral decision not welcomed by Germany and other EU member states.
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But we need to go much further than emergency response. Consider how inadequate our systems are to a climate-changed future. It is estimated that the economic costs of extreme heat to the EU could be €800 billion by 2030. The very same amount that has been committed to war readiness.
We have been sold a lie that climate action is about individual responsibility. This is as ridiculous as suggesting everyone can equip themselves to fight in war. In a recent report, the EU estimated the costs of climate adaptation to be €70 billion a year up to 2050. But, as the report identifies, even calculating how much is currently being invested or what the needs are is almost impossible. It is one thing to calculate the costs of physical flood infrastructure, another to calculate the costs (and benefits) of re-wetted peatlands, upland forestry or a shift towards localised food supply chains.
Retrofitting for climate change means nothing less than the wholesale remaking of our infrastructure, built environments and economic systems. Even apparently simple interventions will require long-term, coherent state planning and a well-funded green industrial strategy – akin to what we are seeing with ReArm Europe.
Patrick Bresnihan is associate professor in the department of geography at Maynooth University