Breaking the vicious cycle between climate change & cybersecurity

The digital world is built on a fragile physical infrastructure including multiple components like power stations, networking cables and data centers. It is highly vulnerable to climate change. Extreme weather events such as rising sea levels, flooding and hurricanes threaten the physical integrity of these components.

For example, in 2012, Hurricane Sandy severed 11 out of 12 high-capacity transatlantic cables, while recent storms in the US caused widespread damage to fiber optic cables and cellular towers, resulting in mobile network outages. 

Beyond storms, intensifying heatwaves, wildfires and droughts also impact on physical infrastructure. During a UK heatwave in 2022, two data centers experienced operational failures, further highlighting the risks from increasingly frequent climate-induced events. 

While redundancy within systems has worked to mitigate some immediate impacts, as these phenomena intensify, simultaneous failures across interconnected networks may be inevitable.

A two-way relationship

The link between climate change and digital infrastructure does not just go one way. While climate events have the potential to do damage, the digital ecosystem itself actively contributes to climate change. By 2025, the internet is expected to consume 20 percent of global electricity and emit 5.5 percent of carbon emissions.

Key drivers of this development include energy-intensive innovations such as cloud computing and artificial intelligence (AI). Generative AI consumes around 33-times more energy to complete tasks than standard software, while some estimates suggest that emissions from global cloud computing surpass the sum of those generated by commercial aviation.

The environmental toll is not limited to energy consumption. The production of digital devices and infrastructure depends heavily on rare earth elements (REEs) like copper, lithium and tantalum. Mining and processing these materials cause significant ecological problems, toxic waste and greenhouse gas emissions. With demand for REEs expected to increase 10-fold or more by 2050, this issue will only get worse. Additionally, improper disposal of the approximately 50 million tons of e-waste generated globally each year exacerbates pollution and emissions.

Even attempts to address these vulnerabilities have unintended consequences. Satellite-based internet connectivity, for example, offers a promising solution to mitigate the physical impact of climate change on terrestrial infrastructure. However, satellite launches harm the ozone layer and climate-driven changes in atmospheric density extend the lifespan of space debris, endangering the functionality of orbiting satellites. Climate change’s reach extends beyond the Earth’s surface, posing risks even in space.

The role of disinformation and misinformation 

The digital ecosystem also fuels another, less visible, contributor to the climate crisis – the spread of climate disinformation. Social media platforms deliver and amplify misinformation, vastly distorting public understanding and undermining any vital collective action. 

Politically motivated campaigns work to exploit climate crises to sow division or promote their own harmful agendas. For example, the 2025 Los Angeles wildfires were misused to discredit climate science and equity initiatives. These narratives generate and feed into public skepticism and delay critical climate policies, while also enabling leaders who enact policies detrimental to environmental progress. This misinformation landscape reinforces a cycle of inaction, exacerbating the climate crisis.

Disrupting the cycle

Breaking the cycle between climate change and cybersecurity needs more than resilience – it requires systemic transformation. Short-term measures, like introducing redundancy and bolstering infrastructure, are absolutely necessary, but they alone are insufficient to adequately tackle the root causes.

Efforts must focus on long-term sustainability. Accelerating the transition to renewable and diverse energy sources will be crucial in building a digital ecosystem that can withstand climate volatility. Promising innovations, such as repurposing excess heat from data centers to warm homes or water supplies, should be scaled and adopted globally. Additionally, embracing the principles of a circular economy, such as reducing e-waste through right-to-repair legislation and combatting the throwaway culture, will significantly reduce environmental strain.

Economic incentives will play an important role. Companies are already being pushed to improve the energy efficiency of data centers and other components, with cost savings often aligning with environmental benefits. Moves like developing universal ports and challenging planned obsolescence are further steps toward reducing waste and resource consumption.

Solving the intertwined challenges of climate change and the safety and security of digital infrastructure will need bold, collaborative and forward-looking strategies. This means stakeholders across industries, governments and communities must urgently recognize this self-reinforcing cycle. By prioritizing sustainability and innovation, it will be possible to secure both the digital and natural ecosystems upon which we all depend.

The path forward must have vision and commitment if it is to protect today’s infrastructure and build more a resilient and sustainable future. Climate change and digital security are not isolated issues; together, they represent one of the most complex and consequential challenges of our time.