 Well, good afternoon. I am John Jackson, the host for today's 16th Issues in National Security Lecture for this academic year. Rare Admiral Chatfield is unable to join us today, but I want to extend her welcome on her behalf. The series was originally established as a way to share a portion of the Naval War College's academic experience with the spouses and significant others of our student body. It has been restructured to include participation by the entire Naval War College extended family to include members of the Naval War College Foundation, international sponsors, civilian employees, colleagues throughout Naval Station Newport and participants around the nation. We will be offering two additional lectures between now and 18 May 2021. And we're also considering a short summer series of four lectures to run from late June to early August. We'll let you know if and when these plans solidify. As we've mentioned in previous lectures, the college is pleased to offer certificates of participation to all viewers who have attended at least 60% of the offered lectures, 11 of the 18. We will use the honor system and will upon request awards certificates to anyone who completes 11 lectures by 18 May 2021. Please reach that milestone or expect to please send an email to Commander Gary Ross, providing the name you want to have inscribed on the document and a snail mail mailing address, so we can send your certificates out hopefully sometime in June. Looking ahead on Tuesday for May 2021 we will hear from Professor Walter Burbick, who will speak about the Arctic. Today a family discussion group meeting will follow the formal lecture to provide information to the members of the Newport community. This week's guest is Sylvia Culpa from the Personal Property Office, who will give us an update on this situation with the upcoming PCS season. So, they're on with the main event. The presentation that follows please feel free to ask questions using the chat feature on zoom, and we'll get to as many questions as we can at the conclusion of the formal presentation. Without question climate change affects the security around the world. This afternoon our speaker will explore the basics of climate change, and many of the ways it interacts with national security. The changes to climate have significant impacts on local water, food and other resources, leading to potentially destabilizing effects on fragile state systems and migration. The countries and organizations that best understand and anticipate these changes will be best prepared to fight and win in the unstable climatic environment ahead. Dr. Cameron US Navy is a permanent military professor teaching policy analysis in the National Security Affairs Department, and she is the founding director of the climate and human security studies group. Her academic interests include climate change and security, climate and energy policy, human security topics and civil military coordination during humanitarian assistance disaster relief missions. She is a nationally known expert who was awarded the 2019 eco educator award by the renewable now network. She has earned a PhD in security studies from the Naval postgraduate school and an educational doctorate in educational technology from Pepperdine University. I am pleased to pass the digital baton to Commander Andrea Cameron. Thank you so much Professor Jackson. This is a wonderful lecture series and I really appreciate the invitation to talk today. I always enjoy the variety of topics and hearing my fellow faculty speak within their own specialties. So today I get a chance to share an orientation about the breadth of climate topics. And to do this, I'll talk about climate change itself, some other trends, what it means, and then a few thoughts on the strategic implications. This is a brief throughout where the DOD is working on this, especially since there's been so much activity in the area in the past couple months. Before we get going, I wanted to explain how I got into this. My research started in humanitarian assistance, and where the DOD could help in these critical life moments when time is the essence, and that's still part of my research area. Moving on, I realized I didn't want to just focus on what we can do after the fact. I wanted to start thinking about what can we do before a crisis or maybe even prevent a crisis. So I drew on my background in development and policy, and as I did this I started looking further and further and further out in the time horizon to understand the changes coming. And that got me into human security, environmental security, and then understanding the science of climate change. And I've spent the past several years building on these concepts and how they affect national security. So as promised, I'll kick off today with what is climate change? Just a few of the basics so that you understand the context for the rest of the lecture. I'm going to share my screen. Let's start a video for you. Did you know that the Earth's temperature has risen over 1 degree Fahrenheit in the past century? It might not sound like much, but think about it this way. A 1 degree rise in your body temperature can lead to a fever. 5 degrees can land you in the hospital. So guess what? Our Earth has a fever, and scientists believe Earth's temperature could rise by 3 to 10 degrees this century. Why? For one thing, greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. They raise the temperature by trapping heat. And warmer temperatures means, you guessed it, less snow and ice. As they melt, what's left behind are darker patches of land and water. And guess what dark colors do? Here's a hint. Ever try wearing black clothes to the beach? Not a good idea. Black absorbs more sunlight, thus emits more heat and makes you warmer. Not good for you or the Earth. Here are some other possible symptoms. A planetary fever, shrinking glaciers, shifting plant and animal ranges, sea level rise, more intense heat waves, stronger hurricanes. Experiencing any of these symptoms? It's time to seek attention right away. Remember, the planet you save may be your own. So welcome back. So that was a quick NASA video, and we'll start with a quick mini science lesson. Now I'm not a political or a physical scientist. I'm a political scientist as Professor Jackson introduced me. So when I teach my climate change and national security electives, I primarily use NASA and NOAA information and guest scientists to bring that expertise to the Naval War College. NASA has studied the Earth more than any other planet, and it's some of the best science in the world. So if you're not familiar with the science on climate change, I highly recommend websites for NASA Global Climate Change, NOAA Climate and the U.S. Global Change Research Program, and they've been putting together in the national climate estimate for the last 30 years. I've put the links in the chat. My students also really like the NASA site in particular, and if you like that Earth Minute video, there's several other ones that explain what's going on in a nice family friendly way. So studying climate is a science, and it's a science about the Earth as a system. Now I don't expect anyone in the audience to be astrophysicists or climatologists, geophysicists, meteorologists, or oceanographers. Actually, with a Navy audience, we might have some meteorologists or oceanographers out here. Welcome. But those are the fields that look at the science of climate change. But you don't have to be a scientist or even an environmentalist to understand the basics and start thinking about what it means to you. So there's a couple of big things to know about this Earth system. First, it's a closed system, and it stops at our atmosphere. Everything that happens within this system affects either the air, the land, or the water and ice. There's not a relief valve or an escape pouch. It's an enclosed system. Just like your body, if you drink a soda, it may have effect on your digestion or circulation, your breathing or your glands. That gives you the same kind of analogy. Now climate change has also been called global warming, as the video mentioned. And this is because of the greenhouse effect and the increase in greenhouse gases into the parts of the system, the atmosphere, water, and land. Now I'll show you a brief know a graph about the greenhouse gases and what they're composed of. So let me bring up my sharing here. So the most common gas is carbon dioxide. And you can see with the gray on this graph, that's about two thirds of what makes up these greenhouse gas portfolio. The other parts are methane. And the rest is nitrous oxide, chlorofluorocarbons like freon, and then some other minor gases. And those are the gases and the greenhouse effect that the has on this global Earth system. Now when NASA and other research organizations study the Earth, they use satellites, aircraft, ships and submersibles. And they've been tracking a few key measurements to understand the state of the planet. Okay, they tracked a lot. I'm going to mention four of them to you. One of them, most obvious, is the temperature of the Earth. Another one is the amount of greenhouse gases in parts per million, as the chart shows you. They can also measure sea level rise in millimeters per year and land ice in gigatons per year. And as temperature gases and sea level are rising, the land ice is decreasing. Some of those, those are the key measurements that we've been talking about. Now the science has been understood about this closed system and how the climate would change for about 150 years. The first president briefed on this was actually Lyndon Baines Johnson back in the 1960s, which is why we've had a lot of kind of forward progress for the last 50 years in this field. It's something that our federal science agencies and our economic or commerce departments have been researching for that long. They really wanted to know and understand how it was going to affect American businesses and prosperity. In the 1990s and 2000s, we get our first indications out of the intelligence community that there's some risk here, and it's not just about our economics, but there's security risks. We finally got an official definition of climate security in the fiscal year 2020 National Defense Authorization Act and I've shown you the definition here. Climate security, the effects of climate change on US national security and related infrastructure on political stability at national and subnational levels on security of allies and partners, and on ongoing or political potential political violence and unrest. So you'll see me come back to many of these pieces throughout the rest of our talk today. I'd also like to point out that climate change alone is not the only concern here. There are many other environmental issues as well. Some way be infected affected by climate change and many others that are not. So I'm on a leadership team of at OSD policy on resource competition environmental security and stability, commonly known as recess. I'm also on the leadership team of the intelligence communities environmental security working group within both of these and the academic community climate changes only considered part of the broader environment. Within recess we defined environmental security as security challenges and opportunities arriving from changes at the environment at the local regional or global scale. Environmental security includes but is not limited to water food energy climate health and ecological security and the interconnections between these systems. In addition to the global earth system and what how we talked about climate change. There are many non climate related environmental security issues as well. Here's a few of them. You can see a list it's just a sample there are many many more unexploded ordinance is a big one deforestation illegal mining. These are some examples that affect our own military bases and also things we see abroad that our combatant leaders are working on environmental security issues that are not climate related. Now going back in our timeline. We've been working on the environment for many, many decades, but a key part was when Congress set up in 1990 the strategic environmental research and development program sort of within the DoD. We did this so we could start researching the environmental issues around our military bases. There are a couple reasons for this. First, the DoD hasn't always been so conscientious about what we do on bases, everything from the ordinance to the firefighting foam to fuel storage and transfer, etc. But also, we're building infrastructure that's supposed to last 50 years. So you have to understand what the base is going to look like 50 years from now and start planning accordingly. So researchers and engineers were way out in front on climate and environmental security. And we've developed several other programs along the way you see a couple of them here on the deck. Now I'll drop the share for a minute. So there's been a continuity of progress in these different areas for about 30 years, but let's quickly fast forward to the last couple months. The efforts you've been working on climate security really feel like this got started on January 27th, 2021, with executive order 14008 tackling the climate crisis at home and abroad. This formally gave a lot of tasks to the DoD about climate security issues. And climate change was also a big component of the interim national security strategic guidance that was released later. Last week, it was also a key part of the President Biden's leader summit on climate. So now I'm going to change up my presentation a little. I'm going to start saying this is what climate change is, what do we do about it, and then what does the DoD do in those categories. So for example, we'll talk about mitigation, geoengineering, carbon capture and adaptation. We'll start with mitigation. Within the closed system that is heating up from greenhouse gases, we can do something by lowering the amount of gases we put into the system. So when you hear about cutting emissions using renewable energy or electric cars, fuel and building efficiencies, you've hit this category of mitigation. Now with all honesty, the DoD is the single largest fossil fuel consumer in the world. Annually, we can spend over 85 or consume over 85 million barrels of fuel to power our ships, aircraft, combat vehicles and our contingency bases. This costs about $8.2 billion fluctuating with the price. That's really expensive and a vulnerability. Now previous to the DoD's interest in fuel efficiency, that mostly came out of cost rather than trying to mitigate climate change. However, little facts, since 2003, the DoD facilities have reduced energy consumption by over 20%. Since 2005, alternative fuel consumption has increased 188%. And for reasons of both cost, commitment to reducing greenhouse gases and decreasing our operational vulnerability, these types of programs will definitely continue and grow. Now operational energy is an important part of this. Operational energy is the energy required for the training, movement and sustaining of military forces and their weapons platforms in our military operations. So here's the thing, the dependence on this energy coming from fuel is a critical vulnerability. As important it is to cost save and reduce emissions, if we can find ways to provide energy and that's more sustainable, we minimize our risk. And if we have an important significant advantage on the battlefield that perhaps our adversaries will not. So operational energy is really key to this. Now that is mitigation and what DoD is doing. It's about decreasing the amount of gases put into the atmosphere. Now policy solutions around this are usually about mandating or incentivizing the type of behavior we want to change and disincentivizing the behaviors we want to stop. Now another approach to climate change and what we can do about it is called geoengineering. Geoengineering are interventions meant to counteract the gases put into the earth system. There's two big ways we can do this. One is to remove the carbon and the other is to increase our ability to reflect the sun's energy back to space. So first carbon capture is probably how you know of it. This approach removes greenhouse gases from the atmosphere primarily. With all this carbon dioxide in the air, water and land, what kind of technologies can we develop? And make sure to make sure it doesn't get into the system or it can be removed. Can we capture CO2 from the seawater? Can we scrub it from an energy plant emissions before it's released into the atmosphere or store it out elsewhere, commonly underground? Are you familiar with building more forests or planting trees like the one trillion trees initiative? This is one of the many efforts to pull carbon out of the atmosphere. Now historically the DOD has not been focused on the strategy much and it's been left to private industry, academia and other government agencies. Now you may notice that I'm referring to carbon dioxide specifically. That's two thirds of the greenhouse gas portfolio and two, that's mostly what the DOD generates. Now there are many big and small energy companies working on carbon capture, especially if we can find a way to generate energy in the process of removing the carbon. So this could fall into an area of our energy security rather than developing, addressing climate change. But the good news is it can do both. And Congress has been giving us more and more funding in our National Offense Authorization Acts to start building these types of programs where DOD research and development can partner with companies for innovative solutions. So expect to see more of that in your future as well. Another approach to geoengineering is large scale solar radiation management. It's the ability to reflect the sun's energy back out into space. Now sometimes geoengineering and solar radiation management are used synonymously. Now the most common approach is spraying into the atmosphere to block the sun's radiation from getting to the earth system as a whole. It's a high level chemical cloud. Now this is also called stratospheric aerosol injection. You might be familiar with some of the terms. This idea is built from the science behind what happened to the earth after volcano erupts. The earth had colder periods because the eruption put all these particulates into the atmosphere and they reflected back some of the sun's rays. The idea is that if we on our planet have not been able to curb the warming from our own greenhouse gas emissions, we can run a large scale engineering experiment on the planet by injecting sulfur particles into the atmosphere and manipulate the same cooling result. Now naturally this is a highly controversial proposal because it may cause more problems than it solves and we won't know for sure until we do it. It also may further exacerbate the environmental security issues we're trying to address and destabilize regions around the world. NASA uses the analogy that at best it's a band-aid or a tourniquet and at worst it could be a self-inflicted wound. It is not a substitution for mitigation and lowering the greenhouse gas emissions we're putting into the system. And it does come with significant ethical issues about whether we should do it. But it's an option so I presented it to you today. Basically it doesn't solve how the society manages the planet and carries with it a significant bout of risk. Also should we decide to do this, it would involve significant multilateral cooperation because of the scale that would be required to have an effect. So solar radiation management is a really complicated option. We've talked about mitigation, geoengineering and solar radiation management and carbon capture. So what's the big one? Adaptation. Adaptation is where the majority of the focus is when it comes to climate change. Generally speaking for the DOD in particular, these are the initiatives that reduce vulnerability, there are the preventative actions or the practices that avoid probable harm. It's where we get our environmental management, disaster management, our planning. And because there's so many military installations, there's broad interest in maintaining the mission readiness on those bases. This is where we come back to that research and engineering that started 30 plus years ago. Now hot off the press, I'll put the link in it, link for it, into the chat. We have a brand new DOD installation exposure to climate change at home and abroad. And for the last couple years through the National Defense Authorization Acts, Congress has been asking us to provide more and more information about how our infrastructure is adapting to climate change and where the vulnerability and the risk is. So this is the latest development it was in response to that executive order. And it gives out the most significant CONUS continental US hazard indicators. I'm going to share my screen again, let you take a look. So these have been kind of categorized and recategorized a few times over the years, but this is the hot off the press latest one. Drought coastal flooding, riverine flooding, heat, energy demand, land degradation, wildfire and historical extreme conditions, which is kind of the renaming of extreme weather events kind of goes into that category. What I found extremely fascinating about this report if you'd like to take a look. It talks about the risk to infrastructure by service and how each service can build resilience. I see some thoughts in the chat about things that aren't on the list. That's why it's always a list in progress. What I found really, really compelling about this which surprised me was that each service got to name their dominant CONUS hazard indicator, and they all picked drought. And that really surprised me I thought coastal flooding might be a higher for the Navy, but drought has been ranked by the Army, the Navy, and the Air Force as the number one risk. So check out that report that's a significant amount of progress and work went into that, and in a very short amount of time by my colleagues at the Pentagon. So congrats to them. So as you may remember we are in the adaptation we're adapting to climate change and what are some of the other things that we will be doing infrastructures a big one. So over 10 bases have been impacted by natural disasters and extreme weather events from 2017 to 2021. And that damage has been $13 billion. That's 13 billion that isn't going to cyber, AI space, unmanned systems, new platforms. And even the trends this will be an increasing proportion of our budget. So it's something that's very concerning and we really want to be thinking about long term, what do we need to do to adapt to the changes that are coming. Also, number two on the list was coastal flooding over 1700 DoD installations could be affected by sea level rise. The major accomplishment last year by my friends at CERDUP was the DoD regional sea level database and I put the link in the chat for you if you're interested. Now this resource looks at a variety of site specific scenarios and how sea level rise and coastal flooding will affect those bases was exceptional amount of work and a really great job. Now this impacts to base infrastructure is really important. It can impact our training. It can disrupt our deployment cycles and our overall mission readiness. Now also within adaptation is some of the things we haven't done so well in the past. And these are the things that are relatively new. One other thing that came out of the executive order is Secretary Austin created the climate working group. This includes the Joint Chiefs of Staff combatant commanders and the services. It's ensuring that we incorporate the security implications into our risk analysis strategy development and planning guidance. And this is something we haven't done a lot of in the past we're currently there's a climate risk assessment going on and that'll get that is due to the higher chain of command. But more importantly in our operations going out to the combatant commands we will be looking at our strategies our policies and our plans and planning and seeing how these will need to adapt once we understand the risk analysis better. These are things that are going to be big going forward that is relatively new work within the deal. Now I'd like to make a quick note on resilience. Resilience is what you get from adaptation, but some people use these terms interchangeably resilience is the capacity of an ecosystem to absorb disturbances without significantly altering its structural or functional characteristics. So basically can return to normal as soon as possible. So if your base is resilient. You can resume operations after the event has passed. And if your unit is resilient, it can adjust to changes resiliency isn't just about structural integrity or mission accomplishment. There's also a big part of psychology to this, the ability of each of us as individuals to be able to bounce back in a healthy way after a disturbance. So building resiliency was one of the key words since the Obama administration, and it will continue, because our force readiness is dependent on our resilience at all levels. So adaptation is what you do ahead of time and resilience is tested in the moment. But you can see how adaptation and building resilience can both refer to preparing for the climate and environmental hazards to come. I've seen this referred to a few times so I just want to throw out some more buzzwords but sometimes they call this greening the military, all these things we've talked about mitigation adaptation. What are we doing to green the military or take into account the climate and environmental factors. So what we've talked about so far is what is climate change, and what the do do about it within mitigation adaptation geo engineering and carbon capture. Next, I'd like to talk to you about some of the other key trends on the planet as I mentioned up front I look more and more long term. So we use strategic foresight to take into account the other trends and develop plausible scenarios we can plan for. These and trends include population growth, urbanization, poverty or the inability to earn a livelihood and food and water availability. And while I review these briefly, please keep in mind that none of them directly imply instability or conflict. There is no direct causal connection between climate change and conflict. For a decade now we've been using a term called threat multiplier, generally conveying that climate change interacts with other destabilizing factors which can lead to climate. Now this was a great way to introduce people to understanding the risks. Today, the leadership the literature aims more at moving beyond this phrase and examining which specific factors after exposure to climate hazards can lead to a bad security situation. Now there are so many context specific things that can contribute to either a positive or a negative outcome, different geographies, political structures. These are all going to be important to countries managing climate related risks. Just as important within all of these categories. We have a range of policies and practices for what we can do about them. So the most meaningful question we can ask is what are the best interventions or policies that countries can adopt to reduce these risks over time. So what are these trends I've been talking about. I'll pull up my screen again. Give you some visuals. The first one is population that I wanted to talk to you about. So current growth trends is that we're at 7.8 billion people on the planet at the moment. Now that's about three times as many people that were on the earth just over 70 years ago when World War two was over. By 2023 we go over 9 billion. By 2026 we go over 10 billion and almost 11 billion by the end of the century. And you can see in looking at the chart that most of the pop projected growth is in Africa and Asia. Now by 2026 India will also overtake China as the most populated country. Another trend in this space in 2007 for the first time in human history. The urban population overtook the rural population and that differential continues to rise. By 2050, more than two thirds of the world will live in urban areas. That's about 7 billion people at the time. Now remember we're only at 7.8 billion right at the moment. Of that there's significant poverty and extreme poverty affecting one to two billion people on the planet. And most the most recent global estimates suggests that one in three people in these urban areas that are going to be so big are going to live in slum households. If you're interested in knowing more about population and urbanization, there's some great research and graphs that are interactive and I'll put the information in the chat for you. Another trend to look at is food security. Now food and climate act in two different ways. First food systems account for over one third of the global greenhouse gas emissions. And that takes into account food generation like agriculture fisheries and livestock. And then in addition, the storage and the distribution of that food. And then we have a flip side of that. It's also food insecurity. Now there's some exceptional food monitoring systems that have been created over the years. And then we're tracking about a billion people who do not have sufficient food consumption from low to lower middle income families or countries. Now remember these trends don't have to lead to instability. A lot can be done with science and technology distribution local food systems and regulations or policies to manage food security. The US even have a strategy for it the US government global food security strategy, and it's currently being updated by our colleagues at USA ID. So this is another trend to watch for a variety of reasons. The other resource we're often concerned about is fresh water. We're approaching about two and a half billion people who live with water scarcity. And with water, it's not just about quantity but it's also about quality of water. There's so many things from sanitation and hygiene to pollution to energy production. So even with the variety of good water management practices, we won't be able to prevent drought. And as you may recall, that DoD report that I just shared with you, the Navy Army and Air Force all listed drought as the dominant climate hazard to our own bases. And as I said, we also have a US government global water strategy that aims to aims to protect freshwater resources, promote cooperation, strengthen governance and increase access to water. So these are significant strategy documents that have come out just in the last couple of years. And finally, I will briefly mention global public health, which has been the focus of everyone for the last year. The pillars to securing our health were the same before COVID as they are now. How can we prevent, detect and respond to a health emergency. We even have a government global health security strategy. So as you can see my approach to teaching climate change and the corresponding trends that converge with it. It's not meant to be alarmist. It's an approach that examines the data and then explores what we can do about it. Now I'd like to get into what does this mean. Now it could mean new operating parameters like how does ocean acidification affect undersea warfare, our systems and our platforms. It could mean new restrictions like more black flag days or days where aircraft can't use runways or training can't be completed and now many readiness is affected. It could mean new mission areas or areas of responsibility that require new force capabilities. For example, operating in the Arctic, an ocean now navigable during parts of the year. And the intense cold has unique challenges that require winterization of platforms systems and people. And as we think through it, the DoD, the Navy Air Force Army and Coast Guard all have an Arctic strategy now. And you'll have an excellent talk about Arctic security with my friend and colleague Walter Burbrick next time. If you're interested, I'll put all the strategies into the chat. Another thing you could mean is that we're called upon to act in parts of the world where we haven't had a large footprint previously. And this is these open questions are really the questions of the next century. What it really means is that the military with so much capability and capacity is increasingly called upon to provide humanitarian assistance. Now we've had this long talk so far and I haven't mentioned humanitarian assistance disaster relief yet. First, as you can see, climate change and environmental security are broader topics and I wanted you to get a sense for that. Second, living through extreme weather events is probably how most of you have already experienced the change in climate. And third, as I said up front, I want to get ahead of problems with solutions and development and capacity building and policies. And humanitarian response, while the body of my research is after something's gone wrong, whether it's a natural disaster or a conflict. And we, when we're supporting USAID and humanitarian assistance missions, it doesn't change whether the event is climate related or not we do the same actions. There's also an evening lecture dedicated to humanitarian response in a couple of weeks. Those are some fantastic lectures to close out this evening lecture series. Now what is the biggest thing it means? If we're called to fight and to provide assistance, both at home and abroad. When do we start making really tough decisions about what we can and cannot support? When are we in a position that we undermine our own security by being spread too thin? And that's why understanding the science and the trends and what it means is so important. Now, I'll wrap up my talk with the strategic implications. While we, the United States, ask all the questions, so is every other country on the planet? What does climate change mean to them? What are these trends going to do and affect them? And they'll make their own determinations of what they need to do to protect their security interests. I'll talk briefly about China, Russia, a little bit about state fragility, and then I'll answer the standard question that we ask every later, what keeps you up at night? So I'll start with China. China has been a very big focus. We've been talking great power competition for a couple of years now. And I hear from a lot of people, some of them my students even, that China doesn't care about climate change, mostly because China, in their urgency to develop, became the largest emitter of CO2 since 2006. They are the world's largest coal producer and coal consumer. But saying that climate change isn't important to China is simply not true. They are dependent on energy resources for their continued prosperity and development, just like every other country on Earth. They wrote their first white paper on climate change in 2008. They looked really hard at their vulnerabilities, controlling emissions, adaptation, something called intensifying R&D, and developing renewable energy and optimizing their energy mix even back then. Now why? Because China considers themselves to be one of the most vulnerable countries in the world to climate change. China is the world's largest developing country, the largest population. They have insufficient energy resources and an already fragile environment. So while they're still dependent on coal, they also lead in photovoltaic technology and they are the top consumer producer of solar energy by far. So when we're talking about climate change, the conversation about them is usually about how they mitigate climate change with emission reductions and their forward progress in renewable sources. But when we look at climate change and future trends, they're going to make decisions in their own interests as well. They need resources, energy, food, water, and a means to move the resources around. So what might this look like if you had some strategic climate adaptation foreign policy on the side of China? What would they be doing in the world? Well, they might be buying wide swaths of land for agriculture. They would be developing a fishing infrastructure that could fish globally to feed their people. They would be doing science research to exploit the opportunities in the Arctic and Antarctic. They'd be securitizing their resources and routes in the South China Sea. They'd be developing alternative energy at home through hydropower and solar to minimize how much they're polluting themselves. And they'd be building an infrastructure like the Belt and Road Initiative throughout the world to bring them the supplies they need. So while we may look at these things through different lenses, like this is an economics or this is a research or this is something they want to maintain their political legitimacy. China is executing big components of a strategic approach to this problem. And they are a good 10 years and thinking ahead of us on this issue. Now there are complications here. We haven't fully grasped how this part of strategic competition plays out. We largely don't understand the implications for their use of their diplomatic and economic instruments when they use them differently around the world to address the problem. And therefore we've probably underestimated their progression. We don't have a similar strategy on how to compete in this area. And I can't say how comprehensive or coherent overall Chinese planning is. But at a minimum, you could say they're leaning in to the issues and thinking them through. And at the other end of the spectrum, you might even assess that they are so far ahead of us that we may have lost a battle we didn't realize we were in. Now I briefly will talk about Russia. Now I've also heard that Russia doesn't care about climate change, which is also not completely true. Russia is concerned because they have their own vulnerabilities. Permafrost is melting, they have a lot of increased wildfires and they carry with them a myriad of environmental problems from from back in the Cold War era. But from their perspective, the changing climate also means there are net gains. They're a petrol state where most of their economy is built off of maintaining those interests. Arctic waters that open up for exploitation and commercial traffic, they can now monetize the northern sea route. And there are opportunities as agriculture shifts northward. So we really have to examine whether their net interests drive them to address the climate crisis or not. I think the book is out on that. Now, of course, there's all the rest of the countries in the world. And I would like to give some big credit to the Global Fragility Act of 2019. Because it's really driven USAID State Department and the Department of Defense to work together on looking at state fragility around the world and the consequences of that and of course climate is just a piece of that. But I wanted to mention it to you. Now, I get to answer what keeps me up at night. A colleague this morning made a very interesting quote. So what keeps me up at night in the future is migration. And what really shocked me is this is someone working at the UN Refugee Agency UNHCR. He said the people, the people who can move are not the most vulnerable. It's the people left behind. And that's a really bad situation because I think we know how the travel and the vulnerability of the people on the move. So can you imagine the dire circumstances that's a rock and a hard place for people who might be in this situation. Now, there's no such thing as a climate refugee that is not a term recognized. In fact, it wasn't until 2018 that we had any kind of international governance on migration at all. But to me, migration is the key issue of this century, whether it's internal or there's more and more urbanization or it's across state lines or even continents. This, why is it important to me because it really pushes the fundamental premises of our liberal values. We believe in human rights, we believe all people are equal and we believe in democracy and that people should determine their leaders. So what happens when your city has just tripled in population based on migration? Do you welcome these people? Do you learn their language? Do they learn yours? Do they assimilate into your culture? Do they take your jobs? Do you have to give them a social safety net to support them? Do you make them citizens? Do you treat them as equals and let them participate in your government when they might overwhelm your population? Now, I'm not defending protectionism here, but I dropped my screen share for a second to conclude the talk. But I really want to identify the tension around the world that's going to push our liberal values and human rights and democracy to its limits. So, as I keep studying the subject and I ask myself, what will we have to do to adapt in the future? The migration challenges and the pressure on our liberal values, the potential for destabilization is a huge question that is yet to be thoroughly explored. So I've talked to you today about what is climate change. I've talked to you about some of the recent developments within the Department of Defense, especially in the categories of mitigation, adaptation, what could come with solar radiation management or geoengineering and carbon capture. I talked about some of the other trends that are related to this, and then a little bit of the strategic implications. So that concludes my talk. Thank you so much for your attention. I'm honored to join you today. Maria, thank you very much for an excellent talk. I notice among our participants today, someone identified as Senator, and I wonder if that individual would like to identify themselves and add any comments. Perhaps they want to stay in the background. I just comment that Senator Whitehouse from Rhode Island has been one of the foremost advocates for studying climate and making the necessary changes. So, if it's not him, I wish him well in his efforts. A lot of great questions came in. We don't have time for a lot of them, but let's zero in on a couple that are really at the worker level, if you will. I have questions about what does a naval base do? How many of them are at risk from ocean rise? How many are actively involved in becoming less tied to fossil fuels, et cetera? And is there anything that's in a commander's fitness report that would encourage him to do what needs to be done to make his base more climate friendly? Those are exceptional questions. I particularly like your Navy focus. So one thing that has also been announced, last year the Army came out with an Army Climate Adaptation Tool, looking at those climate hazards I showed you earlier that was announced with the latest report. And it was such a great tool that the DOD just picked it up and it's launched as the DOD Climate Adaptation Tool, the DCAT. And that's exactly what we're in the process of doing. Now that this is such an intense focus area, we will be looking at base by base. I mean, we went from like 60 bases to 300 bases. We have thousands of bases to get to, but this gives us a tool where we can look at all the indicators within those climate hazards and really start understanding those risks over the long term. So that is in development, but not done completely. It's kind of installation by installation. But I do agree that sea level rise is a major concern. I did put the DOD regional sea level rise database. So if you're interested in any base in particular, feel free to look it up in there. It's an exceptional resource and what it does is it takes it out, you know, 10, 20, 50, 80 years so you can look out to 2080 and see where your favorite naval station is going to potentially get impacted by sea level rise. There is no means to put on an officer's fit rep, at least not to date, what they've done related to climate or fulfilling some of these promises, but that might be something to come. I generally don't like putting things on fit reps that only apply to a small group like installation commanders. But what I do want to take the opportunity to do is you can be a pilot or a human resources officer or a SWO, or someone who works emergency management. There is no field that is untouched by some of these issues. And if you haven't done some due diligence about thinking about what in these areas that I've talked about today applies to you, please take a moment and start thinking about it. Because these are really, really important. And I, John did my introduction, my introduction said my own words that basically, you know, fighting and winning in the future as the people who understand these threats and adapt to them better, are about ahead of time so that we're less vulnerable. So I do encourage everyone in your respective fields, please take the opportunity to think through how this threat applies to you. Thank you. I just editorially here I think a lot of times people think I'm not going to worry about cyber because some cyber expert will take care of that. I'm not going to worry about unmanned, some unmanned guy will take care of that. Climate is everybody's business and everyone's concerned. So I think you've done a great job of bringing home that message. Yeah, to use a Navy analogy, you know, everyone's a first lieutenant, everyone's a safety officer, everyone's a force protection officer and everyone will have to be thinking kind of some kind of climate adaptation or resilience in your in your respective jobs. Absolutely. One of our questioners asked about the term black land. And what does that mean in terms of the impact of ice melt. There was a little bit about that in the in the video up front and one of the, one of the things I was talking about with geo engineering the solar radiation management was, you know, the sun's energy that's coming into the planet gets reflected by the atmosphere somewhat by the clouds and then all of the white spaces so Antarctica and the Arctic have a lot of white covering them, which is now one melting and getting smaller but those are all reflective surfaces of the earth that it kind of helps to bounce back some of that energy, so that we're not absorbing the heat as much. And what happens, especially with a lot of our coal production this is one of the reasons we're really trying to minimize cold, you know that that ash and soot is covering these these reflective areas so not only are they decreasing in size but our ability to reflect that back out of the atmosphere is getting diminished, which kind of is kind of the cycle that that happens and then we get more ice that melts, more ash on top of it so we're, we are looking at that and that is a concern. There's some great kind of how much if you look at the NASA site how much the ice has diminished over the last 30 to 40 years and it's really quite remarkable. Several years back there were some press stories about the green Hornet, which was an aircraft that was going to use biofuel efforts to use biofuel on our ships. Is that ongoing or is there are we a long way from seeing anything done in that area. We are a long way at the climate leaders summit. I heard NATO talking about using biofuels. I was surprised to see that picked back up. But I haven't, I haven't heard it picked back up for the US Navy. Yeah, there was a big initiative under Secretary maybes, the greening the fleet. A few during the Obama administration. I have not heard that part picked back up as we've been picking up all of these climate initiatives that came out of the executive order. Very good and there was some you already mentioned China and India being major sources of CO2 and what they are doing is there anything more that DoD or Department of State or US government writ large can do to encourage them to continue in that area. That's a fantastic question. The leaders summit was really I was surprised because even some of the people who are not huge climate advocates, their prime ministers and their leadership were part of that event. So leadership, political leadership, internationally, a lot of these issues that I'm interested in humanitarian response or climate or environmental security. It's a team sport, and you all want to show you're an responsible international actor and you do that by standing up there with the big, the people who are important and sharing their concerns. So I was really impressed. That was probably one of the biggest takeaways I had from that leader summit last week during Earth Day was how many leaders came up, because that will be something that they will be kind of measured on is is how important it is to them and what are they doing. Are we part of the solution or are we part of the problem. Well I think that's all the questions we have time for Andrea or any final comments you'd like to make before we sign off. I just thank you I see lots of my students in the chat and several other new people. Thank you for joining me, Professor Jackson thank you so much for setting this up Commander Ross, it's been a wonderful opportunity, and I hope I get to do it again. Thank you very much. Okay what we'll do now is we'll take a five minute break and then we'll come back for the family discussion group meeting so please come back up on at 535 and we'll move into the next section. Thank you.