“The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.”
– Sun Tzu
We ignored Sun Tzu’s warning. We let the greatest enemy of our age — climate chaos — grow unchecked. Now, instead of subduing it without fighting, we are spending billions to fight a war we already lost the first battle of.
Record-breaking 2023 wildfires cost Quebec more than $8B
Climate Is the New War: Canada’s $9B Defence Splurge Is Worthless If We Let the Country Burn
Canada has just pledged to blow $9 billion more on defence this year alone, with the goal of hitting NATO’s 2% GDP target now, not by 2032.
And, thanks to U.S. President Donald Trump’s arm-twisting, the alliance is aiming for 5% by 2035. That’s not just “a lot” of money — that’s a budgetary earthquake.
But here’s the dirty truth no one in Ottawa will admit: you can’t buy national security if your country is on fire, drowning, or choking on smoke.
You can’t defend sovereignty if your soldiers are deployed more often against wildfires than enemy tanks.
And you can’t keep pretending “climate” and “defence” are separate budgets when they are now the same war.
The New Enemy Isn’t at the Border — It’s in the Air, the Water, the Soil
We were too stupid to mitigate climate change when we had the chance.
We ignored the science, let oil money dictate policy, and now the enemy is here — heat domes, megafires, floods, droughts.
An “invasion” of too much of everything, everywhere, all at once.
In 2023, Canada’s Armed Forces deployed more troops to fight wildfires at home than to our largest overseas mission in Latvia.
In the next decade, that number will only grow as the Arctic thaws, coastlines erode, and weather disasters pile up.
NATO itself admitted in 2021 that climate change is a “threat multiplier.”
Translation: it doesn’t just make things worse, it makes everything worse at once — destabilizing fragile states, displacing millions, wrecking infrastructure, and creating the kind of chaos enemies exploit.
So why is Canada about to shovel tens of billions into jets, ships, and tanks without investing equally in the climate-hard technologies that could stop our own country from collapsing from within?
Defence Spending Without Climate Strategy Is National Suicide
If we’re going to pour generational money into defence, it better be spent in ways that multiply both our military capability and our climate resilience.
That means dual-use technology — tools that fight both human enemies and planetary breakdown.
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Heavy-lift drone swarms like those from B.C.’s FireSwarm Solutions: put them on wildfire frontlines today, use them for combat logistics tomorrow.
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AI-powered satellite monitoring like Ontario’s hum.ai: track carbon sinks along our coasts one day, monitor the Arctic for Russian incursions the next.
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Modular renewable microgrids: power military bases off fossil fuels while providing emergency power to disaster-hit towns.
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Climate-hardened infrastructure: naval ports and airbases that won’t be rendered useless by rising seas or permafrost collapse.
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Batteries and critical minerals: feed Canada’s cleantech sector, secure supply chains, and make our forces more energy independent.
This isn’t “going green.” This is survival.
The Synergy Ottawa Doesn’t Want to Talk About
Canada is already ranked second in the world for cleantech innovation potential. We have critical minerals. We have engineers who can design the tech.
What we don’t have is capital — the fuel that lets innovation scale before it’s too late.
And here’s the kicker: spending on climate-hard tech is military spending.
It’s economic resilience spending.
It’s sovereignty spending. Every dollar spent on a Canadian-made wildfire drone, microgrid, or climate-resilient Arctic outpost stays in Canada, creates jobs in Canada, and makes Canada harder to break.
Right now, every silo in government — climate, defence, economic policy — is being treated as if it’s a separate war.
That’s the fatal error.
In a converging-crisis century, there’s only one war: the fight to keep Canada habitable, functional, and sovereign.
If We Don’t Merge Climate and Defence, We’re Dead Meat
Let’s be blunt.
You can’t guard the borders if the borders are underwater.
You can’t protect sovereignty if your soldiers are in smoke-clogged hospitals.
You can’t run a military if your bases are on fire.
The 21st century battlefield is here — and it’s covered in ash, seawater, and heatwaves. Pretend otherwise, and all the NATO spending in the world will be as useful as a bulletproof vest in a flood.
Bottom line: Ottawa must tie every new defence dollar to a climate-hard, dual-use outcome. Not 10% of the budget. Not a token green fund. Every dollar. Otherwise, this “investment in security” is nothing more than a war chest for a future we won’t survive to fight.
yours truly,
Adaptation-Guide
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