 Welcome to Think Tech on Spectrum OC 16, Hawaii's weekly broadcast on things that matter to tech and to Hawaii. I'm Cynthia Sinclair and I'm Keisha King. In our show this time we'll cover the annual Paul Chung Memorial Lecture that took place in August at the Hawaii Prince Hotel. The lecture was presented by Admiral Paul Zerkampf, U.S. Coast Guard retired. He gave us what he called an apolitical view of climate change, national security and world order. Paul Zerkampf was the commandant of the Coast Guard from 2014 until 2018. During his time as commandant, the Coast Guard attained its highest appropriation ever to modernize its fleet. Over his 40-plus years of active duty, the Coast Guard set new standards in maritime safety and security. In 2010, Zerkampf served as on-scene coordinator during the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, where he directed 47,000 first responders, 6,700 vessels and 120 aircraft. He is a 1977 graduate of the Coast Guard Academy and took master's degrees from Webster University and the Naval War College. He is also a graduate of the programs at the Asia Pacific Center for Security Studies, APCSS here in Hawaii, and the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. The attendees at the talk included members of the Hawaii business community, including senior executives of Hawaiian Electric Company, several legislators, and a number of students and faculty from the Engineering, Ocean Science, Tropical Agriculture, Law and Business Schools at UH Manoa. We are very fortunate that Admiral Zerkampf and his wife have chosen to retire in Honolulu, where he now contributes his time and expertise to business, academic and policy fora, and charitable organizations. Please join me in welcoming Admiral Paul Zerkampf. When I would describe to both presidents Obama and Trump, what does the Coast Guard do? And I would simplify it. If you ever go to church and a sermon usually has three themes, do it in three. I said, well, the first thing we do is we protect the nation from threats that are out there on the sea. And then we protect people who are on the sea, search and rescue. But then the third is we protect the sea itself. And as the protector of the sea, I would provide best military advice to what's happening to the sea today. In fact, the Arctic Ocean used to be a field of ice, and now it's mostly an open ocean. But other best military advice that I provided to both presidents is what is happening in Central America today. We have challenges with rule of law, good governance, and economic disparity. And three countries, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras, collectively received less than 1% of all U.S. foreign aid. And so my advice to President Obama is a small investment would go a long way to have people stay home. And hundreds of millions of dollars were raised under that administration to try to raise the economic prosperity of those three countries. And I did that after meeting with the three presidents in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras, which by the way is the crossroads for all illicit drugs destined for the United States. So our consumption is largely responsible for the violent crime that occurs in the Western Hemisphere today. We have an inherent responsibility. China is the number one investor in those three countries today. And democratically elected nations, Christian values that really look to the United States for leadership. Unfortunately, I've had less progress with the current administration that looks to build a wall to prevent the movement of people. The other area that I would brief both presidents is the largest threat to our nation's security today is our nation's debt, which the Shidler School of Business can very well appreciate. To service our nation's debt in 2019, we're talking about a $400 billion nondiscretionary slice taking off the top of our appropriation. In 2023, to service our nation's debt, that figure will be greater than the most optimistic projections for the Department of Defense appropriation. And in 2028, this does not go away. It's going to be about a $915 billion slice off the top of our budget to service our nation's debt, at a point in time where we're accruing nearly $1 trillion of deficit each and every year. And so we're not paying close attention to our nation's debt. And then finally, that brings us closer back to this topic, is we're not paying close enough attention to what's happening in the world around us and in our nation today. And by that, what I'm talking about is the changing climate. And so what is the impact of that? Well, the impact is we're seeing more severe and more costly natural disasters. As the atmosphere warms and the ocean warms, the atmosphere absorbs more water. And then we have stronger tropical cyclones. And that was the common in 2017 when Hurricane Harvey hit Houston, Texas and dumped 40 inches of rain on a metropolitan area of over 7 million people. And right after that, we had Hurricane Irma that wiped out the U.S. Virgin Islands and then it went right up the spine of the state of Florida. And then finally, we had Hurricane Maria, which absolutely leveled the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. And then if you go back to Katrina, if you add up the total cost of those four hurricanes, you're now talking about a $400 to $500 billion supplemental request upon our budget. And this is happening more and more frequently. We know the sea level is rising. Investments need to be made in infrastructure, but you don't see significant appropriations addressing the infrastructure needs to address a rising sea level. I went out to the Zooter Zee about two years ago. And so in the Netherlands, back in the 1950s, they had a horrific flood off the North Sea and it washed over 5,000 people out into the ocean. And so today, the Netherlands are building up their levee system another 10 feet to accommodate the worst case scenario for a rise in sea level. And I'll come back and I'll talk about that in a little bit, but right now I work a lot with the scientific community. I work on the Climate and Security Advisory Board at the Wilson Center back in Washington, D.C. And it's our job to inform policymakers, to inform congressional staff to how do we address this threat that is germane, not just the United States, but the entire globe. And what we need to get out of is this mindset of fixing blame and not fixing the problem. We need to get out of blame fixing and start addressing the problem itself. And so where does that begin? And I'll use that and save that for my closing remarks. So what I like to do is show you a few slides and tell you a little bit about the science of what is happening. And if I'm standing in your way, just tell me to shift one way or the other. So what you're seeing here is that carbon dioxide has gone vertical. And if you look back at the Industrial Revolution that really kicked off around 1750, the global population back then was about 790 million people. Today it's 7.7 billion. And by 2030, it's projected to be about 9.2 billion. And so with more people, there are more emissions and that spike is going to continue to go vertical. The problem with that, it takes about 100 years for the carbon dioxide greenhouse gases that are with us today to metabolize. So this is already in the pipeline. And we have not turned off the valve to this pipeline and we continue to feed that. In fact, today our carbon greenhouse gas levels are the highest they've ever been in nearly a million years. And how do we know that? We do ice core samples with the scientific research we do in the Arctic and the Antarctic. So we can measure saturated carbon dioxide and we are off the scale. And so we have to scratch our head in terms of how did we get here. The other concern as we look at a growing population is where is that growth going to occur? Roughly 2.2 billion more people in the next 11 years. 1.3 billion of those people are going to be in the poorest regions of the world today. Where water scarcity is already an issue, you've got over 380 million people in sub-Saharan Africa that may be looking for a new home because of water. Where are they going to go? At a point in time where the European Union says we can take no more. Well, there's a whole other wave coming. So we can't just look at this in isolation. It's just about climate rising sea level, carbon dioxide. It's an impact on the human condition as well. What you're looking at here are different models. There's four models in terms of the relationship between greenhouse gases and the rise in global temperature. The intergovernmental panel on climate change released a report last October. And it talked about almost a worst case scenario of a 1.5 degree Celsius rise in temperature. Well, in the Arctic it's already, I'm going to critique one aspect about some of these studies. We're using Celsius and not Fahrenheit. Fahrenheit tends to round down and the average person here is going to multiply by 9 fifths and add 32 and say, what's the big deal? Right now, this is Paul Zucum speaking, we will eclipse a 2 degree Celsius rise in global temperatures. We've already exceeded that in the Arctic. We're seeing record sea ice retreat and now we're seeing a complete melt of the ice fields in Greenland, which alone can contribute to more than 22 feet of sea level rise if the trend continues. So, all of science is in violent agreement that with greenhouse gases comes increased temperatures. And then there are other implications with that as well. Don't look at the read input there, but I would just draw your attention to what looks like a sinusoidal wave, which is the jet stream. Traditionally, it's a perfect straight line that stays at about 55 to 60 degrees north latitude. And it almost acts as an impermeable barrier where cold air stays north and warmer air stays south. That no longer exists. The jet stream is now meandering. The jet stream is now meandering. In July 30th, it was 112 degrees Fahrenheit in Paris where very few of those people have air conditioning. That same weather system moved over Greenland in one day. It melted 12 billion tons of the ice field of Greenland where it was all slush on that particular day. Meanwhile, when we have polar vortexes hit Washington DC, it's bringing that Arctic air south. And we say, well, there is no such thing as climate change because it's pretty darn cold in Washington DC today. We need to open the aperture a little bit wider and not look at weather. We need to look at climate. There's a clear distinction between the two of those. And then with that comes an unequitable distribution of water, severe droughts and severe flooding. And you really have not a lot of control over where that water goes. But we do know where there's water scarcity, crop yields go down. And in fact, when you look back to Syria, where we've been entrenched and now we have two peer competitors, Russia and the United States involved in Syria. How did we get there in the first place? Well, in 2009, 2010, there was a severe drought in Syria. In fact, the crops failed in Syria. There's a very strong agricultural sector in Syria. And what you had was a lack of governance to address the problem of Syria. So what you had was an insurrection. And then the rise of Arab Spring. But there was a significant climate component to how we found ourselves in Syria today. And the challenges I look out my window when I talk about this as a threat to global security, is we have a lot of countries in the world today that lack good governance and rule of law that are extremely vulnerable to climate change. So what does that do to conflict in the future? And what's the solution? This is just a graphic of how sea ice continues to go away up in the Arctic. And there's a feedback loop that goes with it. As the ice melts, there's now blue ocean instead of white ice and it absorbs heat. And so each year you have successively more ice leaving and more ocean opening up. A number of countries are taking advantage of this new open ocean. I'll talk about that in a few minutes. But we have a whole new ocean that is opened up in what I would call a strategic void. So what do we do with the new ocean? We've written a lot of papers about it when I say we the United States, but we have not made any significant investment in terms of what do we do with the new ocean? And others are making investments. And so if you look at the orange lines, that would be an average year of where there should be sea ice. And that is where sea ice is today. In fact, that picture when I sent these slides off to Shirley, that was taken on August 6th. It has retreated even more ever since. Losing about 35,000 square miles of ice a year. That's losing about seven Hawaii's in a given year. And on a given day, I mean. So a major, major retreat. And each year it gets successively worse as there's less ice. And a lot of this is first New Year ice. The older ice tends to weather through a warm summer. And then it builds upon itself in the opening months. So where does it all go? The water doesn't stay in the Arctic as these ice fields melt. An area that is particularly vulnerable today are the Pacific Island nations. This is Kiribati. And in the Marshall Islands, extremely vulnerable. The Maldives. In fact, in the U.S., there are five cities that are at great risk today of rising sea level. Number one is Miami. Miami is built on limestone. So if you try to build sea walls, it's porous limestone. And it's going to go underneath and come up. You're going to have to raise the roads. You're going to have to build drainage ditches. You're going to have to invest in infrastructure. Number two is New York City. Number three, New Orleans. And New Orleans is complicated by the fact that at the same time the land is sinking. Tampa, Florida. Boston. And then if you look at our airport hubs at all of these locations, we look at an airport delay in any major hub. It has a significant downstream effect. I'm looking over at Reef Runway over there. A worst-case scenario is we will have a 6.5 foot rise in sea level by the end of 2100. Which means in a high tide, you will not be able to use Reef Runway. What happens to the water treatment facility out at Sand Island? What are we doing about our infrastructure that is exposed to a potentially rise in sea level? Well, it's not going to happen today. Maybe we'll let the next generation worry about it. But where do we start making some commitments today that can maybe be carried forward by the next generation rather than just weigh our hopes on hope? Hope is not a strategy. This is up in the island of Shishmaref. I took Senator Dan Sullivan up there. And the homes are literally falling into the ocean. 31 villages up in Alaska right now are at great risk of coastal erosion. This isn't from a rise in sea level as much as the ice is now retreated. Hundreds of miles offshore. Any sailors out here? I know we've got a few. It's a term called fetch. It's not what you do with your dog. It means open ocean that drives wind waves. And the more open ocean, the worse the wave effect, the worse erosion you have when those waves come ashore. You see it when you go to the south shore, north shore, whenever you have a storm activity. Wide open ocean and Hawaii, we are here to suffer the brunt. This is all soil and loose dirt, if you will. We don't have hard rock in these coastal communities. And I hope has already abandoned itself in New Orleans. It's called Ill the St. Charles. About 120 residents down there. And it cost about 140 million, over a million dollars per resident, to relocate them. But they're a first nation. Just like these 31 villages in Alaska, where do they reestablish sovereignty? Where would the Marshall Islands reestablish sovereignty? Where would the Confederated States of Micronesia, where would they reestablish sovereignty? It is within the compact of freely associated states where the United States is committed to protect the sovereignty of these territories. Now originally that was to prevent an island hopping campaign from taking their sovereignty, but their number one threat right now is a rising sea level. Where do they go? We haven't answered that question yet, but it's out there. So it's not just flooding. Well, this is Houston, and I've had the pleasure of doing multiple codels down to Houston, Texas. 40 inches of rain, 7 million people impacted. And just to add insult to injury, their 911 call center went out. So now you have people living in flooded neighborhoods. They can't call 911. If you want to know more about the annual Paul Chung Lecture, check out panmi.shidler.hawaii.edu. slash paul-chung. If you want to know more about the U.S. Coast Guard, see uscg.mio. And now let's check out our ThinkTech schedule of events going forward. ThinkTech broadcast its talk shows live on the Internet from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekdays. Then we broadcast our earlier shows all night long and on the weekends. If you missed a show or if you want to replay or share our shows, they're all archived on demand on ThinkTechHawaii.com and YouTube. And we post all our shows as podcasts on iTunes. Visit ThinkTechHawaii.com for our weekly calendar and livestream and YouTube links or sign up on our email list and get our daily email advisories. ThinkTech has a high-tech green screen studio at Pioneer Plaza. If you want to see it or be part of our live audience or if you want to participate in our shows, contact shows at ThinkTechHawaii.com. Go ahead, give us a thumbs up on YouTube or send us a tweet at ThinkTech atri. We'd like to know how you feel about the issues and events that affect our lives in these islands. We want to stay in touch with you and we'd like you to stay in touch with us. We'll be right back to wrap up this week's edition of ThinkTech. But first, we want to thank our underwriters. Thanks to our ThinkTech underwriters and grand tours, the Atherton Family Foundation, Carol Mun Lee and the Friends of ThinkTech, the Center for Microbial Oceanography Research and Education, Collateral Analytics, the Cook Foundation, Dwayne Kurisu, the Hawaii Community Foundation, the Hawaii Council of Associations of Abarbon Owners, Hawaii Energy, the Hawaii Energy Policy Forum, Hawaiian Electric Company, Integrated Security Technologies, Galen Ho of BAE Systems, Kamehameha Schools, MW Group, the Shidler Family Foundation, the Sydney Stern Memorial Trust, VOLO Foundation, Yuriko J. Sugimura. Thanks so much to you all. Okay, Keisha, that wraps up this week's edition of ThinkTech. Remember, you can watch ThinkTech on Spectrum OC16 several times every week. For additional times, check out oc16.tv. For lots more ThinkTech videos and for underwriting and sponsorship opportunities on ThinkTech, visit ThinkTechHawaii.com. Be a guest or a host, a producer or an intern, and help us reach and have an impact on Hawaii. Thanks so much for being part of our ThinkTech family and for supporting our open discussion of tech, energy, diversification and global awareness, and, of course, the ongoing search for innovation wherever we can find it. You can watch the show throughout the week and tune in next Sunday evening for our next important ThinkTech episode. I'm Cynthia Sinclair. And I'm Keisha King. Aloha, everyone.