Al-Shifa overwhelmed after Israel destroyed Gaza's Ahli hospital
Israeli settlers storm Al-Aqsa compound under army protection
MSF says Gaza turning into 'mass grave' as dozens more killed
How Israel is changing its 'rules of the game' for Lebanon
Why Sudan is launching an ICJ genocide case against the UAE
How a US-China trade war could impact the Middle East
Capitalism's genius climate change solution? Build more weapons
Criticising Israel in Australia? Say goodbye to your free speech
How Trump squandered his chance to win over US Muslims & Arabs
Gaza's Christians hold on to faith as Easter returns under siege
The Eyes of Gaza: A personal diary of survival by Plestia Alaqad
70 years of Iranian history through five women in The Persians
Breadcrumb
It’s hard to ignore the irony. The elites at the heart of Western capitalism, a system which bears the most historical responsibility for the climate crisis, are now sounding the alarm that this impending crisis threatens capitalism itself, and the security of the West.
According to Gunter Thallinger, an executive on the board of insurance giant Allianz, the growing inaccessibility of insurance due to climate risks will result in a “climate-induced credit crunch,” leaving housing, infrastructure, and industries vulnerable.
As large swathes of the economy see their value degraded by climate impacts beyond the scale of insurers or governments to manage, “The financial sector as we know it ceases to function. And with it, capitalism as we know it ceases to be viable.”
Meanwhile, military leaders are also sounding the alarm about climate change — even as the US Department of Defence under Trump returns to its focus on “warfighting and lethality“.
James Stavridis, the retired US Navy admiral and former supreme allied commander of NATO, in his recent writings, lays out the brutal reality of climate-related impacts on US security.
COP29: Israel did not ‘make the desert bloom’. It stole the land
Stavridis warns that climate change will destabilise vulnerable regions, provoke Arctic conflict, and flood key US military bases. In particular, he warns of flooding risk at the US’s Naval Station Norfolk — the largest naval base in the world.
“Even if new dikes, tidal gates and barriers, pump stations and piping can mitigate rising oceans, the cost of safeguarding the bases may become prohibitive. Other key East Coast ports like Miami and Charleston, South Carolina, are also in danger,” he says.
Wildfires and hurricanes, Stavridis laments because the National Guard has to swap “warfighting” for disaster relief.
“Every time state and National Guard units are called out to respond to wildfires in the Western US or hurricanes in the Southeast, resources marked for deployment must be used for domestic transport and their warfighting training is disrupted,” he says.
But while certain financial and military elites can see the problem of climate change, they struggle to articulate answers from within the system they have built and spend their lives in.
Thallinger argues that “Capitalism must now solve this existential threat” – the very threat it created, calling for an accelerated green technology transition, emphasising technologies like solar, wind, and battery storage. He doesn’t understand, or seems willingly ignorant that capitalism’s growth imperative is fundamentally at odds with the finite nature of the planet, despite crying out that the “system is crumbling, and nobody’s ready.”
The Allianz group itself has committed to no longer insuring new oil and gas projects, but its investment arm still holds $26 billion worth of fossil fuel assets, according to a report by Urgewald.
Stavridis also cannot perceive answers to problems very much of his own making; the US military is by some counts the single biggest greenhouse gas emitter of any organisation on earth.
The real security threats for the West? They’re not in some far-off desert — they’re in the rising oceans, the burning forests, and the financial collapse that’s coming faster than a hypersonic missile. There is no fortress strong enough, no bomb big enough, to hold back the seas or cool the scorched fields.
“Wicked problems” — like climate change and poverty — are systemic, complex, and resist easy fixes. Neither green tech nor military might can solve them. When the system’s own beneficiaries — generals, bankers, insurers — start describing its collapse (with insurers already fleeing climate-vulnerable regions at just 1.2°C of warming), it’s not a warning — it’s an obituary.
Some capitalists are doubling down on using military might, instead of tackling wicked problems.
Norway’s two main opposition parties are urging the government to lift a ban preventing its $1.6 trillion sovereign wealth fund from investing in major defence companies like Boeing and Lockheed Martin.
HSBC, Barclays, and Standard Chartered are dismantling climate commitments — pushing net-zero targets decades back, gutting sustainability teams, and scrubbing reports — revealing how ‘stakeholder capitalism’ collapses when US fossil capital and imperial finance reassert control.
Trump’s second term is helping CEOs and billionaires grab more power. Delaware is changing its laws to protect bosses like Elon Musk. The SEC is making it harder for investors to hold companies accountable. This weakens shareholder rights and boosts corporate control. The rich are writing new rules to protect themselves — even from their own investors.
The shattered streets in Gaza, the starving children, the destroyed sewage systems—they are not outliers. They are previews. The “lethality” NATO promises is meaningless as a form of real security when survival systems collapse. Gaza has no clean water, no food, no power.
Modern warfare has a doubly destructive relationship with the geos (the ground and the life it sustains): toxic materials threaten life after war as the deposits of bombardment and before war as mineral commodities at the beginning of arms supply chains. These repeated patterns of environmental and public health effects can be seen across parts of Iraq, Gaza and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The minerals that fuel the engines of militarism — coltan, cobalt, uranium — are extracted from the soil, each piece a silent witness to the violence that follows. But these minerals are not just commodities—they are the seeds of destruction, fertilising a war machine that does not stop, even after the battle ends.
The fallout of these wars, as this paper notes, “does not fade with the cessation of violence; it seeps into the very earth, contaminating ecosystems, rendering them uninhabitable.”
This environmental destruction caused by military technologies should be considered an integral part of war, rather than a secondary or collateral effect.
Looked at through this lens, the solutions to the crises of capitalism offered by those within the system like Thallinger or Starvidis, merely rely on further extractivism from the Global South, whether for the military or for “green growth.”
Palestine in a World on Fire: Addressing crises of our time
Military security is a deadly distraction — a $2. 2 trillion global industry (SIPRI 2023) that accelerates the very crises it claims to prevent. This isn’t protection — it’s planetary arson.
The reality is, we don’t need more weapons to fight hypothetical enemies — we need to change the systems causing these wicked problems – neoliberal and racialised capitalism, extractivism, militarism, ongoing colonialism and global financialisation.
The struggle for a Free Palestine is a fight against the same systems driving climate collapse: extractivism, militarism, and capitalism. Palestine’s struggle mirrors every frontline community fighting to survive capitalism’s fires and floods. From Yemen to Niger Delta to Central India, the lesson is the same: our chains are linked.
Nandita Lal is an independent researcher on climate change and Indigenous People. She stood as an anti-war candidate in the General Election in the UK in July 2024
Follow Nandita on X: @ditalalmolloy
Have questions or comments? Email us at: editorial-english@newarab.com
Opinions expressed in this article remain those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The New Arab, its editorial board or staff, or the author’s employer.