No, it's ill formed and to be honest you're probably the first person to take it seriously enough to return a comment that isn't ridicule or outrage.
Self-fulfilling capture, and indeed malevolent hijacking seem unavoidable pitfalls of such projects, you're right. But I notice the other wars on abstract nouns you mention are against human weaknesses (drugs/exploitation, terror/wrath, homelessness/inequity). And these always get twisted; wars on poverty become wars against the poor; wars on drugs become wars on addicts; wars on terror become wars of terror.
Is climate maybe different if it's an "external" threat? The danger is that becomes a "war on nature" which is how we got into this fine mess. So no easy answers.
However James is canny in reminding us that war is a (the) strong organising principle for humans and there may be a way to twist that into benevolence.