Action to address climate change has been left so late that any political response will likely become an international security issue — and could threaten democracy.

That's the view of Ole Wæver, a prominent international relations professor at the University of Copenhagen, who also says climate inaction could lead to armed conflict.

"At some point this whole climate debate is going to tip over," he tells RN's Late Night Live.

"The current way we talk about climate is one side and the other side. One side is those who want to do something, and the other is the deniers who say we shouldn't do anything."

He believes that quite soon, another battle will replace it. Then, politicians that do 'something' will be challenged by critics demanding that policies actually add up to realistic solutions.

When decision-makers — after delaying for so long — suddenly try to find a shortcut to realistic action, climate change is likely to "be securitised".

Professor Wæver, who first coined the term "securitisation", says more abrupt change could potentially threaten democracy.

"The United Nations Security Council could, in principle, tomorrow decide that climate change is a threat to international peace and security," he says.

"And then it's within their competencies to decide 'and you are doing this, you are doing this, you are doing this, this is how we deal with it'."

A risk of armed conflict?

Professor Wæver says despite "overwhelmingly good arguments" as to why action should be taken on climate change, not enough has been done.

And he says that could eventually lead to a greater risk of armed conflict, particularly in unstable political climates.

Professor Ole Wæver is currently a James Fellow in Social Sciences at the University of Sydney until January 2020. ( Supplied: Lars Svankjær )

"Imagine these kinds of fires that we are seeing happening [in Australia] in a part of Africa or South-East Asia where you have groups that are already in a tense relationship, with different ethnic groups, different religious orientations," he says.

"And then you get events like this and suddenly they are not out of each other's way, they'll be crossing paths, and then you get military conflicts by the push."

He isn't the first expert to warn of the security risks of climate change.

Chris Barrie, former Defence Force chief and honorary professor at the ANU's Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, wrote in October that "climate change is a threat multiplier".

"It exacerbates the drivers of conflict by deepening existing fragilities within societies, straining weak institutions, reshaping power balances and undermining post-conflict recovery and peacebuilding," he wrote.

And current Defence chief Angus Campbell has warned that increased incidences of climate change-related natural disasters could stretch the capability of the ADF.

Letting 'the dark forces' loose

Professor Wæver argues that delayed action will lead to more drastic measures.

"The longer we wait, the more abrupt the change has to be," he says.

"So a transformation of our economy and our energy systems that might have been less painful if we had started 20 years ago, 30 years ago.

"If we have to do that in a very short time, it becomes extremely painful.

"And then comes the question: can you carry through such painful transformations through the normal democratic system?"

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He says classifying climate change as a security issue could justify more extreme policy responses.

"That's what happens when something becomes a security issue, it gets the urgency, the intensity, the priority, which is helpful sometimes, but it also lets the dark forces loose in the sense that it can justify problematic means," he says.

This urgency, he says, could lead to more abrupt action at an international level.

"If there was something that was decided internationally by some more centralised procedure and every country was told 'this is your emission target, it's not negotiable, we can actually take military measures if you don't fulfil it', then you would basically have to get that down the throat of your population, whether they like it or not," he says.

"A bit like what we saw in southern Europe with countries like Greece and the debt crisis and so on.

"There were decisions that were made for them and then they just had to have a more or less technocratic government and get it through."

Partnerships as pathways

Major events like bushfires elevate concerns about climate change in Australia, Professor Mark Howden says. ( Supplied: Qld Dept of Community Safety )

But Mark Howden, director of the ANU's Climate Change Institute, does not see this happening any time soon — and says it would be counter-productive in the long-term.

"I wouldn't support that sort of hypothesised action by the UN, because I think solutions to climate change need to be a partnership," he says.

"The way to generate persistent, long-term and positive action is by partnerships, so actually bringing people along, developing a collective vision of what could be, and making climate change not something to fear but something to take sensible decisions over.

"So for me, taking a security approach — taking a unilateral, very militaristic, interventionist approach — would break apart all those positives.

"It wouldn't necessarily generate partnerships, it wouldn't generate bottom-up action and wouldn't generate innovation."

But, Professor Howden says, there's an "elevated conversation happening across many different domains" about climate change in Australia, particularly because of bushfires and droughts.

He says climate-related disasters create a "step up in terms of public concern in relation to climate change" — whether or not they are linked.

"Climate-related disasters tend to get people reflecting on their lived experience and the things they value and it raises that level of concern and tends to stay high for an extended period."

He recognises "we haven't solved this problem", but says the Paris Agreement — and the national and international greenhouse gas inventories that support it — still shows promise. He says "it is the only global game in town to limit climate change".

The 2015 agreement set targets to block global warming at well below 2C, and 1.5C if possible.

But a recent UN report revealed global fossil fuel output is currently projected to overwhelm these efforts.

"Everyone knows that those initial commitments aren't adequate to meet the temperature targets, but they're a start," Professor Howden says.

"The key to the effectiveness of the Paris Agreement is the mechanism that ratchets up those commitments over time."

Professor Howden says we should give the Paris Agreement "a chance to work" — and if it does, it will "take a chunk out" of greenhouse gas emissions.

"The big question is: is it going to happen fast enough?"