With a rather alarming recent article in New York Magazine, climate change is back in the news generating countless op-eds and headlines. An examination of these articles reveals that they are not tales of actions taken and crises averted, but of warnings ignored and dangers increased. There has grown a stark divide in this country between the scientific community, who grow ever more certain of their predictions, and the current governing elite, who grow ever more reactionary in their outlook. This divide extends all the way down to the American people where it has become the latest casualty of a culture of polarization, illiteracy, and suspicion that leaves the county mired in inaction and despair.

There are several reasons that the situation has deteriorated to where it is now; the amount of money invested in the status quo is truly staggering, science is not the best field at generating stirring rhetoric, and people are naturally very resistant to sweeping changes in their lives. These are all important and valid reasons for the reluctance to address climate change, but I believe there is another less mentioned but no less important reason. We talk about climate change as if it was just another policy issue, like jobs or healthcare, and assign it no special importance in our conversations and debates. More often than not it is only mentioned in passing as a form of lip service like so much other political posturing. What it is vitally important for us to realize, is that climate change is fundamentally distinct form virtually every single issue we argue about in both its size and impact. If we are going to talk about climate change in any meaningful way we must treat it like the one subject arena it most closely resembles: war.

To many left of center readers comparing climate change and war may seem like two completely opposing forces, one is the fight to save life and the other is the quest to end it. On the surface this is true, but once you pull back and look at the forces involved in both they become virtually indistinguishable. War is so much more than two people trying very hard to kill each other on some dusty battlefield, it involves being able to organize, move, and educate (occasionally brainwash) millions of people quickly. It requires being able to rapidly shift the character of the economy and bring it under a high degree of control and synchronization. It necessitates making massive investments in science, technology, and infrastructure at breakneck pace. Not to mention the high degree of international cooperation that comes with planning and executing any joint endeavor. To anyone who has studied the problems of climate change you realize that these are all the things that are desperately needed.

There is also the fact that war appeals to one of the greatest human motivators, threat. Due to the nature of human evolution it is rather difficult to motivate people on the basis of a data chart. However, give humans some type of threat, no matter how vague, then they will fall over themselves to combat it. If you struggle to believe this consider a real world example. The power of threat is so great we have managed to convince ourselves that a bunch of crackpots with guns and trucks in a desert on another continent represent the greatest threat to civilization since Hitler, regardless of evidence to the contrary and we spend billions to fight them. As threatening as the most vicious terrorist may be, they pale in comparison to the threat climate change poses.

Changing the conversation on climate change from a mere policy distraction to a war footing will not be an easy task. It will require shifting every piece of rhetoric and prediction activists and scientists use to talk about climate change, changing how they write and speak to a more forceful and political tone than they are comfortable with and marrying patriotic fervor with saving the planet. Even with this change in tactics, it is no guarantee that we will be able to beat back climate change, it’s a massive force and it’s a battle in itself just to be in a position to do something. But if history shows us one thing, it’s that war is a force that brings change. How ironic is it that this most destructive of human endeavors should provide the keys to our salvation.