Home ⋅ Published Books ⋅ Blue Heart: War, Climate and the Battle for the Ocean that Keeps us Alive

Blue Heart: War, Climate and the Battle for the Ocean that Keeps us Alive
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By: Mark Mellett
Publisher: Wordwell
Published: October 2026
Pages: 320
Categories: History, Humanities, Non-Fiction
Language: English
Available as: Hardback
On sale at:
ISBN-13: 9781918093179

In Blue Heart, Mark Mellett, former Chief of Staff of the Irish Defence Forces and former Chief of the Irish Naval Service, argues that the defining crises of the twenty-first century—climate change, energy insecurity, geopolitical instability, food vulnerability and the erosion of democratic resilience —are converging at sea. Drawing on a lifetime in naval command, international security and ocean governance, Mellett examines how the ocean has quietly sustained the modern world: regulating climate, absorbing carbon, carrying global trade, supporting food systems and enabling the undersea digital networks on which economies now depend. Yet this vast living system is under mounting pressure from warming waters, biodiversity loss, overexploitation and intensifying strategic competition. From the North Atlantic to the deep waters west of Ireland, from vulnerable undersea cables to contested energy infrastructure, Blue Heart reveals an ocean becoming both more fragile and more geopolitically significant. Mellett explores the rise of hybrid maritime conflict, the risks posed by fragmented governance systems, and the profound implications of climate disruption for migration, sovereignty and global security. Personal, strategic and urgent, this work is a powerful examination of humanity’s relationship with the sea. It argues that ecological security and human security can no longer be separated, and that we must recover our sense of belonging to nature if we are to protect the blue heart of the planet that keeps us alive.

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