Overshoot: Navigating a world beyond 1.5°C
Jun 5, 2026 · 28 min · 8 segments
Lieutenant General Richard Nugee spent 36 years in the British Army. Now he's warning that climate change isn't a future problem. It's a national security crisis happening right now.From resource wars…
Richard NugeeGuest
Laurie LaybournHost
Richard, you were a Lieutenant General and that meant that you spent your career planning for threats of various kinds.
So when you first started seriously looking at climate risk, how did it stack up and compare to the other types of threats that you were dealing with prior to that?
It's very obvious if you're being blown up or being attacked by mortars or something like that, or shells.
But armies who are on the battlefield, it's too late by then to start thinking about other aspects.
You're fighting for your life, you're fighting for your friends, and if you want to get very ambitious, you're fighting for your country.
And what I came to the conclusion of was that actually climate change is going to affect the way we fight and affect our ability to fight and our ability to operate in certain environments in a way that we have to think about before it comes.
And so for me, it's about making sure that we understand exactly what sort of threats are available from a defence perspective.
What we have taken for granted, I think, for a long time is that we would have a relatively stable environment in which to fight.
It may be a hot environment, it may be a cold environment, but it's one that is reasonably predictable.
And that makes operating in a military context extremely difficult because you're not only fighting the enemy, you're fighting the weather and you're fighting the environment and you're fighting the conditions.
From a very narrow perspective, and I accept it is a very narrow perspective, climate change offers a completely different type of threat, but it also offers opportunity.
And this is the piece that I think was really grasped by the Ministry of Defence, which is if you get in front of that, then actually you can be very well prepared for whatever the environment throws at you.
It's a question of strategy rather than a question of the tactical fight on the battlefield.
And so that's why it's so powerful to act now rather than actually waiting until something more disastrous happens when it's too late to do anything about it.
I used quite regularly when talking to the Ministry of Defence was if you don't deal with it now, you won't be able to deal with it tomorrow.
And by that, what I meant was when you're actually in the fight, it's too late.
Richard, you were a Lieutenant General and that meant that you spent your career planning for threats of various kinds.
So when you first started seriously looking at climate risk, how did it stack up and compare to the other types of threats that you were dealing with prior to that?
It's very obvious if you're being blown up or being attacked by mortars or something like that, or shells.
But armies who are on the battlefield, it's too late by then to start thinking about other aspects.
You're fighting for your life, you're fighting for your friends, and if you want to get very ambitious, you're fighting for your country.
And what I came to the conclusion of was that actually climate change is going to affect the way we fight and affect our ability to fight and our ability to operate in certain environments in a way that we have to think about before it comes.
And so for me, it's about making sure that we understand exactly what sort of threats are available from a defence perspective.
What we have taken for granted, I think, for a long time is that we would have a relatively stable environment in which to fight.
It may be a hot environment, it may be a cold environment, but it's one that is reasonably predictable.
And that makes operating in a military context extremely difficult because you're not only fighting the enemy, you're fighting the weather and you're fighting the environment and you're fighting the conditions.
From a very narrow perspective, and I accept it is a very narrow perspective, climate change offers a completely different type of threat, but it also offers opportunity.
And this is the piece that I think was really grasped by the Ministry of Defence, which is if you get in front of that, then actually you can be very well prepared for whatever the environment throws at you.
It's a question of strategy rather than a question of the tactical fight on the battlefield.
And so that's why it's so powerful to act now rather than actually waiting until something more disastrous happens when it's too late to do anything about it.
I used quite regularly when talking to the Ministry of Defence was if you don't deal with it now, you won't be able to deal with it tomorrow.
And by that, what I meant was when you're actually in the fight, it's too late.
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