Tag: Security

E3G (Third Generation Environmentalism) is a real UK-based climate think tank focused on integrating climate policy into politics, economics, diplomacy, and now security frameworks.

Soros-Funded Group E3G Crows Over Dystopian ‘Climate Security’ Subterfuge It Helped Build

E3G receives funding from various philanthropic foundations, governments, and NGOs.

Open Society Foundations (founded and primarily funded by George Soros) has provided grants: at least ~$1 million between 2020-2023 according to public records cited in the Newsbusters piece.

E3G’s own site lists funders like the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation but emphasizes independence. Soros´ Open Society has broadly funded climate initiatives (e.g., green jobs, finance for developing countries), fitting a pattern of supporting progressive global governance and environmental causes.

This confirms the “Soros-funded” label has a factual basis, though it’s not E3G’s sole or majority funder.

E3G recently published “Climate Security: Entering a new era?” (July 21, 2026), celebrating progress. Key points from their blog:

• They claim to have helped build the “first generation” of climate security work, which framed climate change as a “threat multiplier” for instability, migration, resource conflicts, supply chains, etc.
• Recent developments they highlight: UK’s new Climate Security Taskforce (co-chaired by climate and defense ministries), references in >60 countries’ strategies, events like their forum with King’s College, and integration into national security docs (e.g., Germany, Japan, Pacific Islands).
• They argue for expanding it: Embed climate across defense, diplomacy, development, finance; treat it as a core geopolitical factor alongside energy transitions, critical minerals, and resilience—not just an environmental issue.
• Tone: Pragmatic policy advocacy noting risks from fragmentation, but optimistic about mainstreaming.

This aligns with broader trends. Climate impacts (extreme weather, Arctic routes, energy security) are objectively discussed in military and intelligence assessments worldwide (e.g., US DoD, UK MoD reports for years). Framing it as “security” can justify budgets, international cooperation, or domestic policy.

The query mirrors a Newsbusters article (conservative media watchdog) criticizing this as part of a Soros-backed push for expansive globalist regulation.

Their concerns:

• “Crowing” over institutional capture: Using climate to expand government reach into security, foreign policy, economics (“whole-of-society” approach).
• Links to Soros’s history of funding transformative agendas (open borders, criminal justice, etc.), seeing climate as another vector for centralized control and reduced national sovereignty.
• Risks of “securitizing” everything: Prioritizing climate could distort defense priorities, enable protectionism, or create new bureaucracies without delivering security.

E3G’s self-congratulatory tone is typical for advocates who’ve influenced policy.

E3G’s Climate Security Strategy

E3G frames climate security as a core geopolitical, economic, and institutional imperative. Their approach has evolved from awareness-raising (“threat multiplier”) to mainstream integration across government functions. The July 21, 2026, blog post “Climate Security: Entering a new era?” best summarizes their current strategy.

E3G divides it into phases and pillars:

1. Phase 1 (Completed, per E3G): Establish climate change as a security and resilience risk. They claim influence here, citing early reports like Degrees of Risk (2011), which proposed risk management frameworks for climate impacts on stability.
2. New Phase (Current Focus): Climate as a “geopolitical force” reshaping energy, trade, industrial strategy, migration, critical minerals, and clean-tech supply chains. Bidirectional: Climate affects geopolitics, and geopolitics constrains climate action.
3. Four Key Reflections/Pillars:
   • Institutional mainstreaming: Push for dedicated structures (e.g., UK Climate Security Taskforce co-chaired by climate and defense ministries), inclusion in >60 countries’ national/defense strategies, and national risk assessments (Germany, Japan).
   • Broader, integrated concept: Combine defense, diplomacy, development, finance, and resilience. Embed climate into foreign/security policy planners (beyond environment ministries). Tailor by context: existential for Pacific Islands; maritime/disaster/energy for Indonesia; shared prosperity via supply chains for others.
   • Practical action over rhetoric: Warn that language can outpace implementation; risks from “disorderly, militarized or protectionist reactions.”
   • Climate finance as security tool: Link adaptation funding, development bank reform, and budgeting for climate risk to resilience. Critique narrowly military resilience definitions (e.g., Canadian Defence, Security and Resilience Bank).

Tactics:

• Convening (e.g., forums with officials, King’s College).
• Diplomacy and coalition-building.
• Targeted reports and briefings on economic security, EU policy, US clean energy transition.
• Framing clean energy transitions as enhancing security (e.g., reducing fossil fuel dependency).

Strengths

• Real overlaps: Climate impacts (extreme weather, Arctic opening, supply chain disruptions, energy reliability) legitimately intersect with security. Intelligence/military assessments worldwide acknowledge this. E3G highlights measurable issues like insurance withdrawals, grid strain, and resource competition.
• Pragmatism in tone: They acknowledge fragmentation, trust erosion, and risks from poor responses—not pure alarmism. Contextual tailoring (different regions have different priorities) is sensible.
• Institutional focus: Moving from abstract warnings to concrete embedding (strategies, taskforces) could improve preparedness if done narrowly.

Weaknesses and Skeptical Critiques

• Over-securitization risk: Expanding “security” to encompass finance, development, industrial policy, and migration can justify expansive government intervention and blur lines with economic planning. This risks subordinating traditional hard security (e.g., military capabilities, alliances against state adversaries) to climate metrics.
• Assumed urgency and solutions: Relies heavily on rapid clean energy transitions and massive finance mobilization as security enhancers. Underplays trade-offs: mineral dependencies (new vulnerabilities), reliability challenges with renewables, economic costs, and political backlash. Developing countries often prioritize cheap energy and growth over stringent targets.
• Self-reinforcing narrative: Claiming “the argument is won” and pushing “sharper focus” creates pressure for perpetual action. Success is measured by integration and spending rather than verifiable reductions in net insecurity or damages relative to costs.
• Geopolitical naivety potential: In a fragmented world (rising multipolarity, great-power competition), prioritizing global cooperation and finance flows may conflict with national interest realism. Protectionism or militarized responses they warn against could be rational state behavior.
• Adaptation vs. mitigation emphasis: Strong on mitigation-linked finance; resilience talk includes adaptation but often ties back to emissions goals. History shows wealth and technology (adaptation) have reduced climate vulnerability far more than emissions cuts to date.
• Influence model: Effective at elite levels but top-down. Funded partly by aligned philanthropies, it aligns with a “transformational” agenda that can prioritize long-term climate modeling over near-term resilience and prosperity.

Overall Assessment

E3G’s strategy is sophisticated, insider-oriented advocacy that professionalizes climate as a cross-cutting security domain.

It correctly identifies interconnections but extends them into a holistic governance overhaul that invites mission creep.

In practice, it promotes accelerating net-zero policies under a security banner, leveraging real risks to advance preferred economic transitions.

Partial integration makes sense for resilience planning (e.g., infrastructure hardening, supply chain diversification, energy diversity).

Full embrace of their “broader concept” risks turning climate into a master variable that distorts priorities in a dangerous world where nuclear deterrence, conventional military power, and economic competitiveness remain paramount.

Outcomes will depend on implementation—risk registers and taskforces are easy; delivering affordable, reliable energy and genuine resilience is harder.

Watch whether it produces adaptive strength or diverts resources into symbolic global coordination.

E3G is a London-based climate think tank (with offices in Brussels, Berlin, Washington DC) that positions itself as translating “climate politics, economics, and diplomacy into action.”

It focuses on accelerating the net-zero transition through elite influence: policy advice, coalition-building, diplomacy, and increasingly “climate security.”