Western governments have a track record of suppressing climate change intelligence assessments. Take the US spy community, for example. Despite decades of tracking and analyzing national security risks posed by climate change and making many of those intelligence products publicly available, the Office of the Director of Intelligence insists that it must keep a 2008 National Intelligence Assessment on the “National Security Implications of Global Climate Change to 2030” classified. Former intelligence officials have testified publicly about the report, cited the report in literature, and supported calls for the report’s declassification, to no avail. After almost two decades, the report remains classified to this day at the confidential level, the lowest level of national security secrecy.
More recently, in 2022, Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese asked the nation’s most senior intelligence chief Andrew Shearer to personally lead a review of security threats posed by the climate crisis. Months later, Albanese refused to release the report or even say when it had been completed. Defense spokesperson for Australia’s Green Party David Shoebridge dubbed the Aussie government the “cult of secrecy in Canberra.” Since then, Albanese has continued to reject calls to make “even a saniti[z]ed version of the assessment public.”
It’s been well documented that intelligence agencies will sometimes withhold information to shield themselves from public shaming or awkwardness. The still-classified 2008 National Intelligence Council report is a perfect example of this phenomenon. In a 2021 Bulletin article, Thomas Fingar, the chair of the council at that time, stated that report “was kept classified because the United States didn’t want ambassadors from countries identified as especially vulnerable to climate change to start calling and asking for resources to help with mitigation and adaptation earlier than they would otherwise.”
A similar instinct could very well be at play in the United Kingdom right now, with some outlets reporting that the prime minister may be withholding the unabridged DEFRA report to avoid public criticism that the government isn’t doing enough to stave off the worst effects of biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse.
