 Hello, my name is commander Andrea Cameron and welcome to this virtual conference about the national security significance of a changing climate risk and resilience in the 21st century. First, let me direct you to the events page where the conference program and three supporting comfort friends templates are available to you. The link will be posted in the chat. The conference program has the agenda full biographies of the participants and recommended resources. Before we proceed, I have to thank Professor Peter Dombrovsky and Ambassador john cloud, the current and former William B Ruger chair of national defense economics, as well as the naval war college foundation for sponsoring this conference today. It is through their generosity that today's event is both free and open to this broad audience. And you are all here today, because I wanted some amazing guest speakers for an elective that I teach in the winter term called climate change and national security. So this event has been in the works for about a year. We decided when we decided it had to be the health virtually a couple months ago, and offered an amazing opportunity to expand the audience to anyone who's interested in the connection between climate and security. And now 1000 people join us today from around the world countless government and agencies and civilian academic institutions is a testament to the growing interest in the subject. And with that, I'd also like to remind everyone that the views discussed by faculty today are our own opinions, and not those of the naval war college department of the Navy or the Department of Defense. Now people ask me why I study climate and security, and I could easily give a dozen answers. The security of our allies and partners is at risk. The security of our adversaries is at risk, and the security of our homeland is at risk. And in the end, which of those is the most dangerous. It's a fact that some element of climate related risk has been routinely identified as a key security issue in Contraternal testimony by Secretaries of Defense, chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff combatant commanders service secretaries and chiefs, including the Secretary of the Navy who you'll hear from in a moment, as well as leaders from Homeland Security and intelligence communities. Now let's add to that for consecutive National Defense Authorization Acts that have increasingly put climate related requirements on the Department of Defense and Intelligence Community. In conjunction with this, you see a growing number of practitioners in every space, many of you in the audience today, who experienced the changing climate and how it affects your jobs and your lives. More and more leaders, practitioners and scholars are taking notice of the connection of climate insecurity. And now we are in a presidential transition, where over 30 years of growing recognition of this problem will meet a very climate ambitious agenda. This is an incredibly unique moment in time. We do not know who our next leaders will be or to implement this agenda, but we do know that it's time to better understand how a changing climate affects national security. Today, we explore this topic with two keynote speakers and five distinguished panels. You'll see a continuity of progress over time, hear about the challenges and costs and get ideas for the future. The event is being recorded and will be available on the Naval War College YouTube channel after the event. Now to start us off, I'd like to introduce our own warrior scholar leader, Rear Admiral Shoshana Chatfield. Commissioned through NROTC, she has a long career as a Navy helicopter pilot with command tours ranging from the squadron to most recently as Joint Region Marianas. She was awarded the Navy's political military scholarship and received a master of public administration from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. She also earned a doctorate in education and leadership studies from the University of San Diego. She is currently our president at the US Naval War College. Rear Admiral Chatfield, thank you for joining us today to deliver our opening remarks. Thank you, Dr. Cameron. Good morning to all. And I know that we have some 1000 registered participants who are signed up with 150 people logging on from 57 countries. And so when I say good morning, I mean good morning, good afternoon and good evening, depending on where you are. Thank you so much for joining us today. I am honored and excited to kick off this conference on this very important topic. I'd like to first make a special welcome to our distinguished guests today, the Honorable Alice Hill, the David M. Rubenstein Senior Fellow for Energy and the Environment Council on Foreign Relations. The Honorable Sherry Goodman, Secretary General International Military Council on Climate and Security. The Honorable John Conger, Director Center for Climate and Security. The Honorable W. Jordan Gillis, the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Sustainment. Admiral retired Paul Zunkoff, a former commandant of the Coast Guard and Naval War College alumnus. To all of our active and retired flag officers and SES, our gracious Naval War College Foundation, our connected alumni who have joined us today, all of our partners from academia, our faculty and students from the Naval War College. Thank you so much for being here and participating in this important dialogue. I'd also like to give a special thanks to the former and the current William B. Ruger Chair of National Security Economics, Ambassador John Cloud and Professor Peter Dombrovsky for sponsoring this conference. And to our events, audio, visual, public affairs office and graphics teams that work so hard to make these virtual conferences such a great success. I want to thank Professor Andrea Cameron for your committed work in this important Naval War College study and your success in coordinating this conference. And I would like to recognize our Naval War College Library and announce that we have a new library guide for climate change. The guide features a number of open source resources, and it's accessible to those with Naval War College credentials. The link for that, and I know it's not everybody online but for our Naval War College community, but it's printed in the conference program, and also in the chat box so congratulations to our library for supporting the community by putting together this valuable resource. Welcome to the National Security Significance of a Changing Climate. This year's theme will focus on risk and resilience in the 21st century. The conference will help include a deep discussion on global power, competition, state fragility, domestic response, defense infrastructure, defense infrastructure and cooperation and competition in the oceans and maritime environment. And I wanted to kick off this important conference because of the dedication and work done by faculty members at the Naval War College, the Climate and Human Security Studies Group, and our students from our climate change and national security elective who've been doing such great work to better understand climate concerns and those impacts on our national security. The role at the Naval War College is to inform today's decision makers and to educate tomorrow's leaders. In today's dynamic security environment, numerical and technological superiority are no longer enough. We need to also outthink any adversary. At the Naval War College, we expand the intellectual capacity of naval joint interagency and international leaders to achieve cognitive advantage. Our objective here in Newport and around the globe is to deliver excellence in education, research and outreach and build enduring relationships with our alumni and partners. The Naval War College is committed not only to conducting research simulations and academic courses in the field of changing climates, but when appropriate we also want to be a leading voice within the Department of Defense and among international militaries in working to improve our abilities to better understand these changes. We produce graduates who can think critically and creatively apply military power to the problems we face. We develop graduates who have the education and foundation to as our chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has said discern the military should anticipate and lead rapid adaptation. These military graduates will be trained to conduct joint operations and have a foundation of strategic operations. So we are developing leaders who can use the same knowledge and skills to help discern changes in any campaign to where they are assigned. The Naval War College changing climate study is a small slice of what we include in our academic program here, but it is an important study that educates deeply researches and conducts outreach throughout our globe. Our professional military education prizes ethics in all of our courses of study. Therefore, we see the value in climate and human security studies group and our elective to be in great demand and the changing climate conference. And this value and these ethics bring our top scholars to this dialogue. We have a great lineup of moderators presenters and keynote speakers today. And that includes Colonel Erica Cameron from the Army War College. She's a fellow at the United States Institute of Peace. Dr. Annalise Bloom, the AAS Science and Technology Policy Fellow, Office of the Secretary of Defense for Policy. Dr. Rebecca Pincus from our own Naval War College. Dr. David Alderson, Professor and Director of the Naval Postgraduate School Center for Infrastructure Defense, and Professor Kate Walsh from our own Naval War College. We will also, shortly, we will hear from keynote speaker, the Honorable Alice Hill from the David M. Rubenstein, Senior Fellow for Energy and Environment at that Council on Foreign Relations. If I can offer a challenge to you all today, it would be to open your minds and think outside your own area of expertise to listen critically and expand your knowledge, experience and connections about these important topics. To also provide feedback to one another to help make these discussions as meaningful as possible as we drive toward a better understanding of environmental changes. And now we will have a wonderful video from our Secretary of the Navy. Secretary Kenneth J. Brathwhite is the 77th Secretary of the Navy. He's a graduate of the United States Naval Academy and has had a distinguished career in the United States Navy, Naval Reserve and private sector. He earned a master's degree in government administration graduating with honors from the University of Pennsylvania, the Fells School of Government. Previously, Secretary Brathwhite served as the United States Ambassador to the Kingdom of Norway. We are honored that he took the time today to express his thoughts about the importance of a changing climate on national security, and to introduce to us the Navy's newly released strategic blueprint for the Arctic, entitled Blue Arctic. Please join me and lend your attention to the Secretary of the Navy, Kenneth J. Brathwhite. 245 years ago, the First Continental Navy Squadron set sail for the open water. For the first time, we asserted our military reach beyond the horizon, demanding our place among the community of nations. We've never relinquished that place and now our reach and influence extends to every part of the globe. But that globe is changing and we must change with it. That's why I'm grateful to the Naval War College for hosting this important gathering. The effects of the receding ice in the Arctic are real and are accelerating in every part of the world. In the Department of the Navy, we've seen its impact on our infrastructure at Camp Lejeune and at Norfolk. And we've seen the transformation of the Arctic to navigable and competitive theater that will have an enormous impact on the balance of power and on commerce throughout the world. That's why we are releasing the Department of the Navy's strategic blueprint for the Arctic, establishing the groundwork for durable and lasting capabilities in that emerging theater. A blue Arctic characterized by melting sea ice and increasingly navigable waters requires a new approach by the Navy Marine Corps team to preserve our advantage at sea. The vast remote and austere Arctic environment provides naval forces an opportunity to exploit key terrain to improve the security of sea lines of communications. And as a Naval War College audience will know, Alfred Thayer-Mahan described control over the lines of communication as the preeminence of sea power. As an Arctic nation with interest extending from Maine to the Aleutian Islands and across our northern constellation of allies and partners, we must be bold and assert our influence in the high north. This blueprint is a statement of cooperation in a region that critically requires such engagement. However, it is also an assertion of our readiness and determination to defend the homeland and remain competitive. We will achieve our enduring national security interests in a blue Arctic by pursuing these objectives. Maintain enhanced presence, strengthen cooperative partnerships and build a more capable Arctic naval force. The US Navy and Marine Corps have been operating in the Arctic for decades in the air, under the sea and on the ground, and we're accelerating our capabilities on the surface. The Arctic is a unique region that presents unique challenges and the only way we'll be ready to meet those challenges is with consistent training and practice in real world conditions. That's why we're training and preparing alongside our allies and partners, leveraging their expertise in the region and building our capability to operate efficiently and effectively beneath the northern lights. In the spring of 2019, Exercise Northern Edge saw 10,000 personnel from the USS Theodore Roosevelt Carrier Strike Group operating alongside the Joint Force to enhance interoperability and improve capabilities above the Arctic Circle. Two years ago, Trident Juncture marked the largest post Cold War exercise in the Arctic, bringing together nearly 50,000 personnel, 65 ships and 250 aircraft for a collective defensive exercise in Norway and in its surrounding waters. Dynamic Mongoose brought together NATO, surface ships, submarines and maritime patrol aircraft for complex anti-submarine warfare training off the coast of Iceland. And we've continued icex, the longest running Arctic exercise honing our undersea capabilities beneath the Arctic ice. Beyond joint operations, we are forging agreements with our allies and partners on the Arctic Council, including the recently signed Memorandum of Understanding for the International Cooperative Engagement Program for Polar Research. Regional cooperation built on a bedrock of internationally recognized principles like national sovereignty is in the best interest of every member of the Arctic community. We seek an Arctic region that is stable and free of conflict, where nations act responsibly in the spirit of trust and cooperation to preserve freedom of navigation, protect sensitive ecosystems and respect international law. We hope all nations will follow our collective example, but while we hope, we also watch. And right now we're watching Russia assert territorial dominance in the Northern Passage as it secures economic interest, expands its military presence and invests in new offensive and defensive technology specific to the harsh Arctic climate. We're also watching China claim status as a near Arctic nation, trying to normalize its presence in the region through a polar silk road with the same coercive tactics that have defined the Belt and Road Initiative. So, when you think of the second and third order effects of receding sea ice, you have to consider what can happen if we don't have a strategic and effective presence in a blue Arctic. Left uncontested, our competitors have the potential to make incremental gains through aggression and malign activity until we're dealing with a factor complete at the top of the earth. We cannot let that happen. We won't let that happen. So I invite you to review a blue Arctic, the Department of the Navy's strategic blueprint for the Arctic, and the urgent tasks ahead for our naval forces, our nation and our allies. I appreciate all of your efforts to bring attention to this national security concern, and I wish you all the best in your studies at the preeminent war college. And finally, Happy New Year to each of you. I am sure 2021 will be a better year. I'd like to express my deep thanks to the Secretary of the Navy for sharing his thoughts today and leading us into the key themes of the conference. He mentioned strategic competition, infrastructure, and changes to training exercises and readiness. He highlighted diplomatic cooperation for polar research as well as economic and strategic interests. A link to a blue Arctic is in the chat at the moment. I'd like to thank our own Professor Walter Berber who is instrumental in the development of the strategy, as well as having the Secretary join us today. This conference asks us to look at all the strategic significance of a changing climate, and the Secretary just introduced us to one key component, receding sea ice and an expanding Arctic. The rest of the panels today will explore many of the other ways the changing climate is significant for national security. And with that, I have the honor to introduce our second keynote address with the honorable Alice Hill. Alice is the David and Rubenstein senior fellow for energy in the environment at the Council on foreign relations. Her work at CFR focuses on the risks, consequences and responses associated with climate change. She previously served as special assistant to the President Barack Obama, and senior director for resilience policy on the National Security Council staff. In that position, she led the development of national policy to build resilience to catastrophic risks, including climate change and biological threats. Her book, Building a Resilient Tomorrow was just released, and recently Yale University awarded her the Public Voices Fellowship on the Climate Crisis. She is a leading voice on climate national security and building resilience in the homeland. Please join me in welcoming Judge Alice Hill to speak at the conference today. Thank you so much, Professor Cameron and Admiral Chapfield. I am really honored to speak with you and this distinguished group today. This is a stellar panel that will be sharing the many insights that have been gleaned about this growing risk from climate change and how it will affect our national security. The Naval War College may be the first Department of Defense academic institution to host an event on the subject of climate change and national security, but I'm confident it won't be the last. In the midst of a global pandemic, I'm convinced that climate change coupled with environmental degradation will become a, if not the defining security issue in the years ahead. I suspect, however, that some of you may have lingering doubts as to the connection between national security and climate change. At least that's what I've learned in my many discussions about the topic with military leaders over the years. After listening patiently to me, they sometimes say something like, yes, I hear what you're saying, but what hill do I need to take or who do we shoot? Climate change, as you will hear today, may well worsen conflict, but it also brings many other challenges, challenges to what Admiral Chapfield has alluded to, basic human security. In my experience, most policy makers have had little or no formal education in climate change. I'm not a scientist and my route to the issue was admittedly circuitous. I got my first start as a federal prosecutor in California and then as a judge in Los Angeles. I joined the Department of Homeland Security in 2009. Shortly after the election of Barack Obama as US President in November 2008, my phone rang. On the other end was Janet Napolitano, a friend from law school asking, how would you like to come to Washington? That moment yielded one of the most important pieces of career advice I could ever share, and it's simply be nice to those you sit next to in school. I invited me to join her and she had been recruited by President Obama to become Secretary of DHS, the third largest agency in the federal government after the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs. DHS, of course, had been born out of the events of September 11, 2011. We are the largest reorganization of the federal government since the creation of the Department of Defense after World War II. In addition to a deep anti-terrorism focus, DHS shoulders broad security responsibility across its about two dozen different agencies. This includes our emergency management, the Federal Emergency Management Administration FEMA, immigration enforcement, and protection of American waterways through the US Coast Guard. Not long after I arrived at DHS, President Obama issued his first executive order on climate change. He required all federal agencies to find ways to cut their carbon emissions, but also for the first time to plan for the impacts of climate change. As the newest arrival on the DHS leadership team, I recall that we were sitting around a big conference table. This executive order we're discussing what are we going to do with this thing. At that time, and still now, it was not viewed as a career enhancer to be talking about climate change. Of course it carries a lot of political baggage. So as we're deciding who will get the assignment, someone says, as I remember it, oh, give it to her, she's new. And so that's how I landed the job of figuring out what the Department of Homeland Security should do to plan for climate change impacts. To respond to the order I assembled a task force and we members asked ourselves a basic question one that in retrospect seemed somewhat insubordinate to the president's direction. But until that question had a solid answer, I knew it would be difficult to garner the necessary enthusiasm to focus on climate change and what the department should do about it. In the face of widespread skepticism about the reality of climate change, the cause. We asked ourselves, should the Department of Homeland Security in 2009 with all of its other responsibilities care about the impacts of climate change. We heard from dozens of scientists, planners, security experts, including some of those you'll hear from today, Sherry Goodman, Josh Busby, as well as the US Navy Task Force climate change. We heard from NASA and NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. At this time, we learned about the projected hurricanes wildfires and droughts that could pummel not only the United States, but also the rest of the globe that we could experience unprecedented temperatures at least in the last millennia. Based on the evidence, the task force got its answer. DHS should care deeply about climate change. It would affect and does affect all of the department's missions. Climate change impacts everything from the spread of disease. It's believed that there's connection to the coronavirus to climate change in the increased interaction between humans and wild animals. As a result of shrinking crops. It affects the stability of infrastructure. We see this in the Arctic as the permafrost melts that infrastructure which was built on the assumption that the land would remain solidly frozen has now begun to tilt and crash as the land becomes mushy and soft. It affects the access to fresh water to food to shelter basic needs for human existence. As you'll hear today, these changes bring consequences that can deeply affect military operations. The Secretary of Navy has alluded to the damage that's already been suffered by the US military from climate worsened events here in the United States. I remember when the DHS task force on climate change first stood up that the Coast Guard had expressed skepticism about why they needed to come to these meetings and why they needed to worry about something that was such a distant problem. Something deep into the future something about 2100 and maybe polar bears. At the time the task force had concluded its work. The Coast Guard had also concluded that it needed to do more to prepare for the changes in the Arctic, including for increased search and rescue operations oil spill events and navigational challenges as that ocean opens up the first time and ocean has opened. Since the standard spanners for exploring the Atlantic. On this task force had a collective aha moment. Not dissimilar to what judges and juries, based on my past previous experience, what they experienced after they've had a chance to examine the evidence and reach a verdict. Our aha moment showed us that climate change would bring lasting unprecedented unfamiliar change. In 2006 dictate that higher levels of CO2 in the atmosphere trapped more of the sun's heat that's causing planetary temperatures to rise. Indeed, the earth has already warmed more than one degree Celsius or 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit over the last century. To know temperatures could climb as much as 5.4 degrees Celsius or 9.7 degrees Fahrenheit more by 2100 if our greenhouse gas emissions are not dramatically reduced. And those greenhouse gas emissions are primarily at this point from human caused human activity. This means that the rate of climate change greatly exceeds anything seen in millions of years of geological history. We found that within 50 years, one to 3 billion people are projected to be left to outside the climate conditions that have served humanity well over the past 6000 years. With temperatures rising never imagined record breaking events, increasingly strain the systems upon which we rely. The systems that we've built have all been built on the assumption that our climate is stable with climate change. It's no longer stable. It's moving on the range that we have experienced in our historic past. Based on my first immersion in climate change, I've realized that most policymakers in the federal government, including in the military, are a lot like I was. They just had no formal education and climate change. Based on a 2016 survey of the top 100 universities and liberal arts colleges in the United States, according to the US News and World Report rankings. Researchers calculated that the likelihood of a student taking at least just one climate change course as part of the core curriculum at those schools was 0.17%. So we've educated a lot of people that don't understand climate change. As far as I can tell our military service Academy similarly do not require students to study climate change except for a few majors like environmental engineering. So it's not so surprising then that climate change and particularly the risks posed by them don't tend to make it to the top of the agenda, including the national security agenda. The majority of policymakers simply have not had a chance either in school or as a result of an assignment like I got to immerse themselves in examining what climate change could mean for national security, public health, or the economy. But even though we haven't educated people to understand this, the climate is continuing to change. And it's changing more rapidly than we've ever seen before. Given the politicization of this topic, the fact that it can be omitted and removed from key strategic documents, and you have a recipe for decision makers to simply ignore the problem, which I believe is one of the reasons that the United States has not been particularly successful today in implementing policy that addresses forthrightly the challenges that are posed by climate change. But ignoring the problem comes with big risks, risks that are rapidly increasing. It's been a long time since I studied math, but there's one problem that I remember from the math set. It's about the lily ponds on the pond lily pads on the pond. Suppose you take a walk by a pond with a single lily pad at its edge and suppose that every day you walked by that pond again, and the number of lily pads doubles. On the first day there's one on the second day there are two lily pads and on the third there are fourth and on the fourth day there are eight and so on. So here's the math part. If the pond is covered completely by the 48th day. When was it covered halfway. The correct answer is on the 47th day. If you didn't get that right, you're not alone. In fact, many are surprised to learn after 40 days of exponential growth, you would barely notice the lily pads as they would cover only one 256 or point 0.4% of the pond. But eight days later it's covered. The exponential growth is almost imperceptible at first it's easy to ignore the steady exponential growth of the lily pads for a long time until they smother the pond, and that's the same thing that we're doing with climate change. Our failure to appreciate the exponential growth of climate change and its impacts has left us increasingly vulnerable. According to NASA 18 of the 19 hottest years since 1800 have been recorded in the past two decades, a development which has contributed to more extreme weather events including heat waves and catastrophic cyclones. In addition to the first global global pandemic in a century 2020 brought us a record breaking storm season in the Atlantic. We had so many named storms we had to turn to the Greek alphabet. A new word gigafire for when more than a million acres burns and in California and the western United States we saw over 10 million acres burned this year. The strongest cyclone ever to make landfall cyclone goni which smashed into the Philippines with sustained speeds of 195 miles per hour. As well as probably the highest temperatures ever recorded in the Arctic 100.4 degrees Fahrenheit and probably the highest recorded temperatures on earth 129 degrees Fahrenheit in the aptly named Death Valley. But unfortunately, these won't be the last extremes we see after virtually every extreme occurrence be it wildfire hurricane or drought the media will quote a long time residents saying something the fact, you know I've lived here all my life and I've never experienced anything like this before. Worsening hazards, greater extremes are exactly what a climate change brings the next worse event will be exceeded by the following worst event, and so on and so on. Science can now tell us which it couldn't when I started working on these issues in 2009 that particular events are worsened by climate change it's called attribution science. As it turns out, almost all of the record breaking events that we're witnessing including those in 2020 are influenced by warming worsened by warming temperatures from climate change. The planet has enjoyed a relatively steady climate for close to 10,000 years with global temperatures and sea level rise, remaining stable. The assumption that the Earth's climate will continue to remain stable has traditionally guided every decision, including our military operations, as well as to how and where humans live. The assumption is just no longer valid to withstand future climate impacts communities and nations and militaries cannot rely on the past as a safe guide for the future as they fell as they have done for thousands of years. And yet it's time we start imagining the unknown, because that's what climate change brings to prepare for accelerating extremes communities must consider the future risk of climate change as they make decisions about where they put their infrastructure where they put their military installations, how they conduct business, where their supply chains are, how they will live. But because all our decisions and systems infrastructure financial health national security have been based on that assumption that the climate is stable. We see time and time again that we are surprised by some new worse extreme event. We're caught unprepared. And that is the most important thing I can leave with you today. If all of us could internalize the fact that today's one, let's say one in 100 year flood, a record breaking breaking flood will be a one in 10 year flood event in the not too distant future, or that the one in 1000 year flood will be in the one in 100 year flood in the not too distant future. If we were able to incorporate that kind of thinking into our decision making, we would make different choices than we're making right now. The news about climate change today is not that it's happening. It's that it's accelerating. The military, the choices they make as we will hear today should involve climate proofing installations and weapons systems and rethinking training for deployments and new hotter conditions, as well as in the Arctic where it's very still a very harsh environment. We should also involve examining what those extremes will mean for our allies, our enemies and geopolitical stability. Not all responses to the coming calamities will involve missiles and bullets. It's not going to all involve taking the next hill. We should devote more money and attention to helping our neighbors including those in Central America who are suffering unprecedented events that fuel their migration to the United States and other more vulnerable countries cope with the climate streams that they are experiencing and will experience in the future. This will keep their economy stronger and help them keep their populations from migrating, excuse me, in search of better opportunities. This is an all hands on deck problem. We need everyone finding ways to cut harmful greenhouse gas emissions, but also prepare for the further impacts we will suffer for the foreseeable future and that includes even if we cut our emissions to zero today, which we will not be able to do. We would still see the impacts because of the delayed effect from the accumulation of past greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere. My one hope is that this event event inspires you to learn more about climate change and how it may affect your job and the nation's national security. The collective failure of imagination that currently impedes our efforts to address climate risks. Decision makers, be they in the political arena, military arena, the private sector, or in their own home, must confront a never before experienced reality. Namely that the globe's climate has begun to move beyond the range that humans have enjoyed and depended upon for thousands of years. The past is no longer a safe guide for the future when it comes to climate change. And the question for each of us is what will each of us do about it. So thank you so much. I think this is an extraordinary opportunity today and I look forward to continuing the discussion with you in the future. On behalf of the US Naval War College, we'd like to thank the Honorable Alice Hill for giving our keynote speech for our event today, and I thoroughly enjoyed reading her recent book, Building a Resilient Tomorrow. She will be staying with us to help answer the Q&A, along with our first panel. As a reminder to those watching, all conference materials can be downloaded from the bottom of the Naval War College events page. You will find the conference program, which includes the agenda and three full biographies for all of our participants. Also available on the events page are three other conference pamphlets. In one, we asked all of our experts today to give one policy recommendation and organize those for you. In another, we asked them to give one piece of advice for this audience in particular. Finally, there is a pamphlet with insights I've gained from the academics, scientists and students who are involved in my climate change and national security class. That is titled, What Can You Do? All these materials are available to you. As the President of the Naval War College mentioned, we also have the new Navy War College Library Guide on Climate Change, and the link is in the chat. Thank you for joining Repository and we welcome your input. Please check it out and contact our dedicated librarian, Isabelle Lopes, if you have any input to us. Thank you so much to her for putting this together. Her contact information is on the site. Joining us today are scholars and members from the national security community from around the world. We have representatives from 57 different countries, primarily staying connected through the Naval War College alumni program. Part of our continuing education mission is to keep learning together as a community, and we're thrilled to have such a broad audience today. As we've heard from our two keynote speakers, I'll briefly describe the order of events for the conference. Next up, we'll go straight into our first panel on how a changing climate affects global power competition. The break in between this will be followed by two additional panels this morning on the global or the impacts of a changing climate on fragile states around the world and domestic security implications, operations within the homeland. For lunch Eastern Standard Time. This event will conclude with two more panel discussions on the Department of Defense budget infrastructure considerations, and finally blue competition us and international efforts to develop a blue economy. The event will conclude at 330 Eastern Standard Time. For those asking this event is being recorded, and will be available on the Naval War College YouTube channel after the event. Now, I will introduce you to the first panel and moderator. To follow up the Secretary of the Navy and Alice Hills keynote messages, we launch straight into a discussion on how a changing climate affects global power competition. At any point, you may enter questions by using the Q&A button on your screen. You may review questions from other attendees who are encouraged to upvote a question of particular interest by using the thumbs up icon. Questions will be sorted by the upvotes, and this will inform the moderator of the questions with the greatest interest. The moderator for our first panel is Colonel Erica Cameron. Colonel Cameron is currently an Army War College fellow at the United States Institute of Peace. She recently left as the Senior Army Strategy Advisor in OSD policy strategy and force development, where she worked on the national defense strategy implementation. Her plans include deployments to the multinational headquarters in Iraq and Afghanistan, and positions at the highest echelons of the US Army, Department of Defense and the Interagency. She has a master's degree in military arts and science and theater operations from the US Army School of Advanced Military Studies, or SAMS, and a master of public administration from the Harvard Kennedy School, just like our Naval War College president. We're honored to have Colonel Cameron leading this first panel for us today. Thank you, Commander Cameron, for the introduction, and it was my distinct honor to moderate this first panel discussion on climate change and great power competition. As you mentioned, I spent two years working for the secretariat events, advising on and assessing the validity and implementation and effectiveness of the national defense strategy, or the NDS. Consistent with the national security strategy, the NDS reiterates that the US has entered into a period of great power competition with our two primary adversaries being China and Russia. This is the context for today's panel discussion on climate change. My experience at OSD and my observations of the department while I was there have led to several key takeaways about national security and great power competition that I think are relevant to today's discussion. These certainly reflect my personal views and are not necessarily official views of the Department of Defense. My first observation was that national security and national defense are not synonymous. We tend to conflict with you. And doing so makes taking ownership and interagency collaboration on cross cutting national security issues like climate change, quite challenging. Second, my other observation great power competition is complex and riddled with really wicked problems like climate change. And to these there are no purely military diplomatic economic or information competitions problems or solutions. Given the fact there are so many actors variables and interdependencies within the global system within the competition means that any actions taken in one area often have unpredictable third and fourth order effects in other areas. And we have to be considerate of those for making policy choices. The global actors within this international system be they friend neutral adversarial, whether they're domestic international actors. We have to appreciate that they do not view the strategic environment, global dynamics or issues the same way as review, and their actions will be driven by their own history interests beliefs and rationale. That's what these actors will approach issues like climate change from a different perspective. I think we have to be cognizant that our adversaries China and Russia in particular several other than the international environment view competition as a zero sum game, and this is going to affect their decision making their win is our loss. And any of our wins of their losses. So that is how they're thinking through the process. Also the US cannot compete everywhere, all the time. We need to be selective and where we're competing and prioritize our efforts for maximum gains. So China does require some tough policy choices informed trade offs between priorities and deliberate assumption of risk in certain areas of places, or times, we need to be very strategic about how we choose what we're doing and where we're doing them. In competition, I want to keep, I want everyone to keep in mind that everything we do, all of our actions, all the applications, any efforts we take towards any issues are really tools in competition, they're tools to compete. We have to have a competitive mindset in great power competition, and think more strategically included and how we combine sequence, or even withhold the application of our national tools. And finally, my last thought is that competition in some areas, which I think climate change is one of those does not necessarily include cooperation and others, and I think climate change also has a cooperative aspect. But keep in mind that cooperation does not mean you're not competing in the game. So while these thoughts come from my experience at DoD, they may be useful in thinking broadly about US national security, great power competition, and how the US can compete while furthering our national security interests, including in the area that we're doing during this panel and conference on climate change in particular. So I'm thrilled to be here today to explore this important issue in the context of great power competition. We have some extraordinary speakers joining us this morning. First, we're going to hear from Honorable Sherry Goodman. Miss Goodman has a multidisciplinary career as a national security executive, public policy leader, board director, and lawyer. She is currently a senior fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center's Polar Institute and Environmental Change and Security Program, as well as a senior strategist at the Center for Climate Security. For many achievements, she holds the distinction of being the first deputy under secretary of defense for environmental security. Sherry is known as the godmother of climate insecurity and coined the term threat multiplier to fundamentally reshape the national discourse on the issue of climate change. Our second speaker, Dr. Scott Moore, is a researcher and policymaker focused on emerging environmental and technological challenges. Dr. Moore is currently director of China programs and strategic initiatives at the University of Pennsylvania, where he conducts research on emerging challenges facing China in the world, including climate change. He previously served as the Environment, Science, Technology, and Health Officer for China at the Department of States, coordinating all aspects of U.S.-China environment cooperation, including work on the Paris agreement. The final speaker will be Dr. Nigel Boldevis. Dr. Boldevis is the editor of Strategic Survey and Senior Fellow for Russia and Eurasia at the International Institute for Security Studies. He taught at Oxford University before joining the F1, British F1 office, where his roles include head of economic department in Moscow and Ambassador Valervas. He's written widely on Russia post-Soviet affairs and international relations, an area increasingly relevant since Russia has recently been labeled as a revanchious power that threatens the security and prosperity of America and our allies and partners. Thank you all so much for joining us today. Let me now introduce Ms. Sherry Goodman. She will set the scene for the panel by discussing the risks associated with climate change, how it impacts geopolitics and connects to great power competition, and share her thoughts on climate strategy in that sense. Ms. Goodman, we look forward to your talk. Good morning. It's a pleasure to join the exceptional talent assembled by the Naval War College for this conference. Let me extend a special thank you to Commander Andrea Cameron for organizing this important and timely event and to the moderators and the many people I know are involved in bringing such a conference like this together. Here we are at the dawn of a new year and a new administration. Beyond the dark winter of COVID-19 looms the climate crisis. As President-elect Biden has stated, climate change poses an existential threat, disrupting the stability upon which our national security has long depended from increasingly use of military forces for domestic relief from hurricanes, wildfires and floods, to changing how and when we must deploy our forces into the melting Arctic and drought stricken regions in Africa and the Middle East. Climate change is set to challenge all systems on which global security, peace and stability depend. As it does, we are rapidly witnessing the climatization of security, a condition in which all other security goals that the U.S. hopes to pursue become intertwined with the stark realities of a warming planet. In this context, the next Secretary of Defense will be able to elevate attention to climate change and clean energy throughout the Pentagon from strategy and force plans to technology and infrastructure. What are the specific risks to U.S. security from climate change? Military leaders have long understood climate change to be a threat multiplier, which intensifies existing tensions, conflicts and vulnerabilities across the globe. This is a term that I coined with the CNA Military Advisory Board in 2007 when we released our first report on national security and the threat of climate change. We knew then that the impacts from destructive severe weather events to dwindling resources would exacerbate existing strains in our most fragile communities at home and abroad. Already existing hotspots for security tensions are getting hotter and old legacies of conflict are starting to reemerge. In Iraq, ISIS recruiters have specifically targeted farmers losing their livelihoods to drought to swell their ranks. In Central America, extreme weather has displaced thousands and bolstered the power of armed groups. In the South China Sea, fishermen follow migrating schools into contested waters, leading to international tensions and confrontations. In South Asia, Indian threats to limit the dwindling water resources applied to Pakistan have led to renewed calls for war among the two nuclear powers. These early signs of climate insecurity pale in comparison to the risk forecasted under warming scenarios for the decades to come. Without new norms and stronger institutions around contested issues like refugee resettlement, resource claims, and sea navigability, we could quickly enter competitive situations of militarized borders and mercantilist seizures of strategic territories. How will existing alliances and institutions like NATO and the EU withstand the political pressures that follow widespread migration and ethno-nationalist backlash? How will our adversaries take advantage of climate disasters for relative gains or to still blame and weaponize anti-American sentiments? These are just some of the questions that a climate forward national security plan should address. What are the next steps to address these risks? When it comes to the environment, the Department of Defense has moved from a lager to a leader in conservation and innovation. For example, in the 1980s and 1990s, one of the greatest threats to marine ecosystems was the plastic trash at sea, some discarded by ships en route. The US Navy developed plastic compressors that enable ships to store plastic rather than discarding it into the ocean. I recall visiting one of the Navy research labs that was developing these plastic compressors in the 1990s. This is just one instance of where many of our military has already led by example in environmental energy and climate security solutions. What should we do today? First, the Secretary of Defense should require that all Pentagon strategies and force plans from the National Defense Strategy to the potential next Quadrennial Defense Review to regional plans for specific theaters address both the risks of climate change and opportunities to address it. Identify the existing risks and the future operating conditions is the first step to taking action. And the Secretary of Defense must make climate a priority in the full range of military to military engagements he and defense leaders undertake, just as President-elect Biden has already discussed climate change with most of the foreign leaders with whom he has spoken. Some nations and organizations will welcome this engagement, such as NATO, which has already elevated attention to climate risks in its forthcoming strategic concept. In other nations like China, it will be a more complicated triangulation. Nonetheless, where China is taking advantage of climate change to improve its military posture in the South China Sea, or become the relief provider of first resort to vulnerable Pacific Island nations, the U.S. will need to compete for influence. In other cases, the U.S. can work with militaries that are trying to reduce their carbon boot print and build the resilience of their forces. Remember, the incoming Secretary of Defense should lead by example in both clean energy and resilient infrastructure. DoD is the nation's single largest energy user and approximately 1% of U.S. energy. We have already made important investments in clean energy from solar-powered housing to microgrids and renewables for remotely deployed forces. With this experience as commander of Central Command, Lloyd Austin undoubtedly is already familiar with the burden that trucking energy and water to the front places on the lives of our soldiers and Marines. He is well placed to translate his war-fighting experience to enable the Department of Defense to lead by example in clean energy that improves mission performance and reduces our carbon footprint. While the Department already has a significant number of clean energy R&D efforts, bringing them together into a clean energy innovation office with additional investment would enable the Pentagon to more rapidly develop, test and deploy a wide range of clean energy technologies from better batteries to green hydrogen to advanced electric vehicles. The Department needs to lead not only on mission-driven clean energy research and development, but also on the transition of these technologies to the fleet and the field. Too often improved energy and climate technologies do not make it beyond what some call the Valley of Death in technology deployment because there is no military requirement deriving the acquisition. This can and should change with a clean energy transition fund that incentivizes the military departments and acquisition commands to both try and buy lower carbon. The Department of Defense can also lead in building resilient infrastructure given that it has one of the largest building stocks in the nation. Climate resilient infrastructure is a top priority for mission readiness. Here again, the Pentagon can lead by example in requiring that its military construction projects from buildings to water systems account for the changing climate. The Department of Defense is already investing tens of billions of dollars to build back better three major bases that were destroyed by hurricanes and floods in 2019. And fortunately, it has recently developed its own climate assessment tool and plans to review climate risk at over 300 bases. Secretary of Defense should direct the military departments to prioritize the actions recommended from these assessments to build back better the infrastructure of their most vulnerable bases. These actions will also help the surrounding civilian communities by providing jobs and improved interconnected infrastructure, such as water and wastewater treatment systems. As we all know too well, the military is experiencing the destructive potential of climate risk along with the rest of society. Our trading exercises and weapons systems have been degraded by extreme heat, our military installations damaged in historic floods and storms, and our troops increasingly deployed to climate accelerated humanitarian assistance and disaster relief missions. Just like the threats from nuclear missiles, terrorism and bioweapons ignoring climate risk will not make them go away. Going forward, each and every investment made by the Pentagon will need to be scrutinized for how well it will hold up to grow in climate extremes and how it will transition the sector away from vulnerable energy systems and infrastructure. We are already seeing encouraging steps to make sure that confronting climate threats will be central to our national security strategy. The appointment of a presidential envoy in John Kerry to the National Security Council means that high level attention will be dedicated to the interaction of climate change with all other items on the agenda in the situation room. Now the Defense Department can lead by example in its strategy and force plans, engagements with other militaries, and in clean energy and resilient infrastructure. By doing so, the US military will not only improve the ability of our men and women to be the best fighting force in the world, but will also show the world we are prepared to climatize our security policies. If I could recommend one policy, it would be to integrate climate security across all national security decision making mechanisms and to develop specific measures and metrics of progress by which leaders at every level can hold their units accountable. You all know you can't manage what you don't measure. One piece of advice for this audience would be to raise your climate ambitions now wherever you are in the national security community. 2021 will be a unique moment for climate action that can have a lasting impact for generations. Thank you for your attention and I look forward to receiving your questions after the panel presentations are complete. Thank you Miss Goodman for your thoughts on how climate change threatens our security and outlining a comprehensive list of actionable recommendations. We will now hear from Dr Scott Moore who will talk about China, a country which has been identified as our most significant adversary and threat to US interests and security. He will provide insights into how China views climate change as a national security issue, why they are such an important international player, how their climate goals support their broader national and security ambitions and the national security applications for the United States. Dr Scott. Hi, my name is Scott Moore from the University of Pennsylvania and it's a pleasure to have a chance to talk to you today a little bit about China and climate change, especially from the perspective of US national security. What I'd like to make today, the first of which is that China has done more than almost any other large economy, and especially any other developing country to try to reduce its contribution to climate change. At the same time, like every country, it's done that for reasons of its own self interest and motivations that differ from those of other countries, especially the United States. As we enter this period defined by great power geopolitical competition, I think that's going to complicate our cooperation going forward. The third point that I would make is that as important as China's contributions have been to trying to reduce its contribution to climate change, ultimately, what it's done so far has fallen far short of what needs to be done to avert catastrophic climate change. And both China and other countries are really going to have to up their game. If we are going to do that, and avoid catastrophic climate change in this century. So first of all, just to take a little step back and talk about why China is so important and so significant an actor, when it comes to climate change, it really has to do with both the scale and the structure of China's economy. China is of course the world's most populous country has the second largest economy in the world, but just as important as all that is the structure of the economy and how it's made up. It's the manufacturing center of the world and host the largest concentration of some of the most highly polluting and emissions intensive industries that we have industries like concrete manufacturers steel manufacturer that produce a lot of emissions directly and also require a lot of energy inputs which themselves generate emissions, since most of the electricity comes from burning coal in China. And one other point is worth making here in that China's industrial sector has historically been pretty in part because a lot of the kind of industry in areas like steel had been a state owned enterprises, some of which were privatized some of which remain state owned and those enterprises had always been pretty inefficient. In terms of their use of resources had employed for the most part older less efficient technology. And so what that meant is that producing a ton of steel or a ton of cement in China until quite recently and in some cases is still this is still true. It resulted in more emissions per unit than what have been the case if you would produce that, that ton of steel or that ton of cement in some other place, especially Europe where you would have pretty stringent pollution regulations for much longer. In addition to that kind of scale and structure issue. The fact that China is such a manufacturing heavy economy means that it drives a lot of natural resource use worldwide. There are a lot of processes like processes like deforestation that that themselves contribute to climate change. And then finally you've got China's role as one of the largest overseas investors, particularly infrastructure things like power plants oil pipelines, fossil fuel infrastructure and major implications for emissions, not just within China, but also beyond its borders. So for all those reasons China is really an indispensable player in global climate change. Fortunately for the world, it has taken a number of important steps to try to reduce its contribution to the problem of global climate change over the last couple of decades and I would say there are three main contributions that it's made the first and most important of which is a set of policy supports including financial subsidies, other forms of that have resulted in a pretty dramatic reduction in the manufacturing costs of renewable energy technologies, especially wind and solar power. And that in turn has driven a large expansion in renewable energy capacity worldwide, not just within China but also in places like the U.S. Substantial portion of the solar power that we use here comes from panels that were manufactured in China. That's been less true since the onset of the U.S. China trade war, but it's nonetheless contributed to this pretty dramatic expansion of renewable energy use around the world. The second set of policies that I think are quite important are really intended to address that efficiency problem that I mentioned in China's economic structure and to try to make China's industry in particular emit fewer emissions per unit of economic activity and again to really try to sort of reduce that efficiency problem and that's been attempted through things like a carbon intensity target, air pollution control policies that have had impacts on emissions. And what that's done is bent the curve of China's overall emissions below what it would have been without those policies. So even though emissions have still kept increasing, they've increased at a slower rate and produced fewer total emissions than they would have otherwise without those policies. And that has been a significant contribution. The third category in which I would say China has made some some taking some really important steps have been more in the international climate negotiations space. So since global climate negotiations started in the early 90s, they've really been hamstrung by this deep divide between developed and developing countries. And the issue was really over money and who would bear the costs of reducing emissions the position of most developing countries have been that a developer world because it had benefited most from industrialization and from emitting the vast majority of historical greenhouse gas emissions that therefore developed countries should bear the financial costs especially of reducing emissions not just in their own countries but in developing countries as well. If you put aside the kind of moral principles there politically that was of course ever unpopular in countries like the US and really kind of prevent a global climate negotiations from moving for quite a long time. In the late 2000s though, thanks mostly to a concerted diplomatic push by the US to some extent European countries as well. China agreed to take a leadership role in global climate negotiations and that was really important, because China has historically been a leader and very influential in particularly a group called the g 77 which is a grouping of developing countries so China agreed to make a joint announcement with the United States of specific actions intended to reduce its contribution to climate change. And that really kind of helped to break the log jam in global climate negotiations, paved the way for the Paris agreement in 2015 and hopefully will continue to provide some momentum to future negotiations but that was a critical diplomatic contribution that China made to global climate change. However, China has done all these things, not out of altruism but out of a profound sense of its own self interest and here is where I think the prospects for cooperation and implications for US national security really start to become clear. The first and biggest factor behind China's actions on climate change has been economic China's leaders became persuaded fairly early on that as they were seeking to move China from relatively low value added manufacturing intensive highly polluting economic structure to a much cleaner higher value added more modern one. Clean technology would play a really important role in that so especially renewable energy technologies alongside electric vehicles and other clean technologies and the idea was that if China could dominate these sectors if Chinese firms can really be in the lead of manufacturing these technologies and deploying them around the world. That would really position China for future growth and that those new sectors those clean tech sectors could really propel and drive future growth. The problem though is that lots of other countries have the same aspiration so under the Obama administration and now under the incoming Biden administration, there's been the same idea to use clean technology investment to drive economic growth drive employment growth. Not every country can have the world's leading clean tech manufacturers and so you kind of start to enter this more competitive dynamic. That's exacerbated by the second major factor that influences I would say China's climate policy and that's geopolitics. One of the really notable things about China. And something it's easy to forget is that China soft power is really limited in comparison to countries like the United States. Certainly it lacks a lot of the deep multifaceted alliance relationships that the United States has. And one consequence of that is that China has been searching for areas in which it can enhance its geopolitical influence and its soft power and climate change has a number of advantages as an issue there. One of the advantages of that is that climate change is an extremely important issue for America's European allies, and especially when under, as under the Trump administration the US is perceived as a dagger in terms of action on climate change it's a very effective wedge issue for China China to try to separate the United States from its European allies. The second reason it's so attractive is that because climate change is such an important issue across the developing world. Certainly it's the developing countries that are most affected by risk from climate change effects, a certain leadership is a really useful way of trying to enhance China soft power. I would say, though that the key thing from a US point of view about that is that it's, it's pretty cheap for China to do that simply by giving rhetorical support to the need for climate action for example without really taking on board ambitious commitments themselves so I think it's really kind of a lost opportunity for the US and easy gain for China geopolitically and in terms of soft power. That leads me into talking about one other very significant action that China has taken recently. And that was the announcement made by China's president and General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, Xi Jinping, at the September UN General Assembly meetings when he pledged that by 2060 China would cut its net carbon dioxide emissions effectively to zero. That is probably the single most ambitious climate policy. Any major economy has ever put forward. There are lots of concerns about how achievable it is. Initial estimates suggest that even if it is achieved, it'll probably only reduce global temperature rise by about point two to point three degrees Celsius so an important contribution but nowhere near enough. What that pledge almost certainly will do though is drive lots of investment in clean technology research development and deployment it'll almost certainly improve the efficiency of clean technology as well as reduce the cost. And that has some significant implications for the United States as we're in this kind of era of competition as we really cut down on trading between the US and China. There's a real prospect that the US maybe left out of those advancements and those benefits. And as a result it may suffer economically as well as geopolitically if the United States loses its claim to leadership on climate change. So that leads me into my policy recommendation, which is particularly under the next presidential administration the United States see to reassert climate leadership, both at home by formulating a really ambitious domestic climate change policy and abroad by reasserting its leadership in global climate negotiations. And then, in addition to that, I would advise the US really grant of its investment in clean tech research and development. Increasingly the science is telling us that we need to not only get to net zero emissions which is what China has pledged to do, as well as Japan, but also really to get to net negative so to take more emissions out of the atmosphere and that's going to require some new technologies. In terms of advice, I would say that as important as it is to slash our emissions we are going to be living with some degree of climate change, almost no matter what we do, especially things like sea level rise that are really long term phenomena. And so as a result of that I think we need to devote equal attention and resources to adapting to climate change as well as to mitigating it. And that's going to require additional investment of resources, but also just a greater intellectual effort to think through how we can help, particularly the poorest and most marginalized populations around the world, adapt to climate change effects. So I'll stop there and look forward to some discussion. Thank you, Dr. Moore, for your comments. You clearly highlighted how China will use the issue of climate change to expand their influence and do an advantage and great power competition so very insightful. Our final remarks will come from Dr. Nigel Boldades. Dr. Boldades will address how Russia use the issue of climate change with respect to national security. How Russia matters to global effort to combat climate change, how the effects of climate change confer risks and benefits that will drive their future actions in great power competition, and the implications of these for US national security. Dr. Boldades. Good morning. It's a pleasure and an honor to take part in this Naval War College conference. I'd like to thank Commander Andrew Cameron for a kind invitation to do so, and Colonel Erica Cameron for moderating this session. We are changing climate effects global power competition. You have given us, in the best sense, a provocative title for climate change is usually thought of as a source of natural cooperation of all states against the common threat. But what I'd like to draw attention to in discussing Russian thinking on climate change is that more disconcertingly, it can be a source of competition too. And I'll make three points very briefly. The first is that Russia matters very much to the global issue of climate change. Russia is the fourth largest carbon emitter and hydrocarbon production dominates the Russian economy. Overall Russia is the second largest producer of hydrocarbons in the world after the United States, but hydrocarbons are much more important to Russia, than they are for the United States that is vastly more diversified and sophisticated economy. So that raises questions about where Russia's interests will lie in the issue of climate change and I'll return to that in a moment. Russia is also a very large producer of coal and indeed, unlike most countries now plans to ramp up its output and its sales abroad. So Russia is very significant. It's hard to deal with the issue of climate change unless Russia is on board. The second point, though, is that there's no significant tradition of environmental policy in Russia in Soviet times crash industrialization was the absolute priority intensely materialist agenda. There's essentially total disregard for the environmental consequences, nor was any civil society allowed to develop in this highly authoritarian system civil society in the West has been the driver, of course, of environmental consciousness and activism. There was even in the 1990s, even after the fall of the Soviet Union persecution of some brave environmental activists, including those concerned with pollution of the seas in fact interesting for this naval audience. Fast forward to today, we have a Russian political system that is in most respects conservative in nature, resistant to change, dominated by entrenched vested interests in the status quo. And I think across the board. Now we can say that there's been no significant Russian reform of any kind in the last 15 years or so, except an important exception, a military reform. So this is a system not inclined to think creatively or innovatively. And the third issue is to look at Russian official thinking and policies today. Russia is warming at two and a half times the rate of the global average warming. Does that mean Russia is more concerned about global warming. That's not so clear. And I see causes of pessimism, rather than optimism. Russia is the coldest country in the world. It has the lowest temperature per capita. It's not just a fact of physical geography, where Russia is located, but if human geography, where a disproportionate number of people are sent there to inhospitable places they would not choose to go by Soviet planning. The fundamental book to read on this issue is the Siberian curse written by Fiona Hill, we all know, and Cliff Gaddy in 2003, and it sets out very clearly the deadweight economic costs to the Russian economy, or this extreme cold. This little evidence therefore that Russia official level sees a benefit to, sorry, a risk to global warming. On the contrary, it sees benefits. There is awareness of some of the problems that global warming creates for Russia, especially in precipitating forest fires in Siberia, which would be very serious the past couple of years. This is also a melting of permafrost, so that the hard permanently frozen ground into which city foundations are laid as that melts and gets, and gets loose of course buildings collapse. But that's not uppermost in Russia's minds. Instead, we see evidence that Russia views positive outcomes of climate change and we see this expressed in a couple of recent strategies. There was a short term action plan that was signed off on in December of 2019 and the emphasis there was not on mitigating climate change, but adapting to it and reaping its benefits. And the strategy set these benefits out lower energy consumption for a warmer Russia melting of Arctic ice. That means easier access to the continental shelf of the Arctic for oil and gas exploration production. That also means interesting for this naval audience, easier and better trans Arctic transportation routes, not only for trade with Asia in particular, but also for military and strategic access and Russia is about to take over the leadership of the Arctic Council in a few months it has made very clear its priority in defending its what it sees as its national interests and its strategic role in the region. And also, Russia sees benefits in more crop cultivation and livestock production, again in a warmer Russia. So that's the, that's the emphasis we have seen and that has been amplified in the longer term strategy passed in March of last year. Again, the language is all about adaptation. It's worth looking also at Russia's actions as well as its words. So, it's only in 2019 that Russia ratified the 2015 Paris climate change agreement and Russia's baseline level of carbon emissions for assessing progress is 1990 as it is with other countries. It presents the peak of Russian carbon output 1990 was just on the brink of the post Soviet collapse in this heavy, inefficient polluting environment. It's been easy for Russia to reduce its carbon emissions since it hasn't even had to try to do so as a conscious policy is just happened as Russia's policy has changed and adapted to market conditions. Today, Russia's carbon emissions amount to about half of its 1990 level. That means it can easily increase the current level of carbon emissions while remaining in compliance with the Paris climate change situation. Russia's proposed carbon emissions targets are very, very modest. Indeed, again, compared with today, Russia will almost certainly increase the amount of carbon it it emits into the the environment. It's nothing like the ambition we see, for example, from China to make to make China a carbon neutral by 2016, 2016. Russia, to repeat, envisages a net increase compared to today in the amount of carbon it emits into the environment. There is evidence of other interests within Russia who are more concerned. It's true that there are civil society activists who worry about environmental issues. Frankly, they count for little in the Russia of today. This is interests are firmly against emissions targets they made that very clear, successfully lobbied against attempts to impose them, nor is there any evidence that the Russian military is particularly concerned about global warming. So the conclusions of this then put all this together. Russia matters for climate change. It lacks a tradition of prioritizing environmental issues. It today sees the benefits, more than the risks of climate change at an official level. And this is based on a hard-eyed assessment of its own interests and its own geography. But under a different leadership, Russia would take a different view, but I do not see Russia's leadership as changing in any significant way in the near term. So to sum all this up, if I could recommend one policy, it would be to pay attention to the degree to which Russia sees climate change as an opportunity, as well as a threat, both economically and also strategically, especially in the Arctic. The one piece of advice I would give is to understand that Russia, under its present leadership, is unlikely to see combating climate change as the basis for significant cooperation with the West. On the contrary, in important respects, Russia sees global warming as something likely to confer competitive advantage on Russia. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Dr. Goldadies. Your remarks are helpful to understand how Russia might approach future climate initiatives, particularly the view that climate change will confer national benefits and advantages and strategic competition that outweigh their concerns of risk or global interests. So very insightful. Thank you to all of our panelists for your insightful remarks. The Honorable Alice Hill will join the panel for our Q&A session. I've been given instructions that we're going to focus on one kind of overarching question and have each of the panelists reply to that question. So there are a number of questions, outstanding questions in the Q&A recommend that you go back and look at the answers posted by panelists, but in an effort to create kind of an overarching overarching discussion. There are several bits and pieces from a number of different places to try and get some broader insights from our panelists. So there's some observations that the Biden-Harris administration is convinced climate change is a national security issue, which is outstanding, consistent with all of your remarks. And that this issue requires full engagement of U.S. diplomatic military intelligence and scientific capacities. I think we should be organized to most effectively engage and build institutions that will endure beyond this administration. And how do you think, what is it that we can do concrete actions that we can take immediately for domestic change, as well as helping our allies and partners, which are critical players in great power competition. With that, I'll turn it over to Miss Hill to lead us off, and then I'll proceed to Miss Goodman and then the panelists in the order they presented. Miss Hill. Well, thank you. And what stellar presentations. Always interesting, learned so much. So I want to thank my fellow panelists and you, Erica, for really deep insights into a challenging area. What climate change mean for geopolitics, but as to the questions asked, the first is very insightful. We really need to knit together the scientists and federal government has extraordinary scientific capability, including within the climate science, as well as the intelligence community for them to interpret the science. And then following that we need to have the intelligence community provide that analysis to the policymakers so that we can develop the policies and strategies to help guide the United States to a safer future in the face of climate change. For the Biden-Harris administration, there's a quick thing they could do. It's dust off the National Security Executive Order. When I was at the National Security Council, I led the development of an executive order which President Obama eventually signed that did exactly that. Called for the science community to contribute to the intelligence, better cooperation there, and then share that with the policymakers, form a working group that would really look at the risks and then determine what we need to do what we should prioritize. President Trump, when he came into office almost immediately rescinded that, and not surprisingly, climate change has basically disappeared from all of our major national security documents. So I think that will quickly change as of January 20th. I think you'll see that where those two words reappear, perhaps even more vigorously than they did in the Obama administration, but that order would set in motion. It's a start. We need to go beyond what we were able to accomplish in the Obama area because the impacts are accelerating. We're seeing record losses from 2020. We need to address this now in a more dedicated fashion, but we could start with that. And similarly, on the domestic side on the homeland security side, we need to make sure that we are incorporating considerations of climate change in all of our work, including the outreach that the DHS does to state and local governments to help them prepare for impacts, as well as their recovery from damaging events. We need to have a nation that focuses on risk reduction. If we spend $1 now in risk reduction, we will save at least $6 in terms of recovery costs. We need to flip the paradigm right now. What we do is we wait for a disaster and then the federal government just opens the Treasury and says, here, take a lot of money, states and locals. But then we don't say you need to get prepared for the next bigger, stronger one. So we need to do that as well. As we go forward, there will be many challenges. But the most important thing, and I think you've heard that here repeatedly, is that we all need to make this a part of our decision making. It can't be a separate subject. It has to be integrated across decision making and all fronts. And that includes in the military and in the greater national security establishment. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Well, thank you all. Thank you to the organizers of this conference and my fellow panelists and to Alice and the many still to come. There's so many great, there's so much great talent coming on today and to all of you participating. You know, I think it's time we have to get beyond the lies. Look, there's been climate denialism has pervaded recent thinking and nowhere's that more true than in that Navy blue arctic strategy. I mean, let's just be honest about it. Okay, so we need to be climate forward. We need to recognize reality. In the 1990s when I served as the first Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for environmental security, people ask the question, what is environmental security? Why should we care about it? What does it mean for our military and our mission to defend and protect our nation? And over time, we came abundantly clear that protecting our natural resources and reducing environmental risk is very much a part of our military mission, keeping our families, our military families, our soldier, sailor and airman safe, and preserving our American way of life. And that is even more abundantly true today in the climate era. I agree with Alice that a good start is is not only to rejoin the Paris climate agreement on day one, but to reinstate the climate security executive order that's just to start. I think it will be included in all on the national security strategy, national defense strategy, and then we need to put resources against that strategy. You know, as it's well, as it's often said, a strategy without resources is hallucination. We have a lot of good directives on the books already in in DOD and elsewhere. We just need to enforce them now and we need to have the metrics and measures that will hold commanders that will hold institutions and command accountable at every level. We did that in the 90s when we were, for example, had goals for cleaning up our military bases, complying with air, water and waste laws, conserving natural resources. It's possible to set those metrics and then hold units accountable. Now we need to do that for the energy transition as we move to a low carbon future with goals that the incoming administration has set for net zero in the electricity sector by 2035 and net zero by 2050. Ingesting those goals in the Department of Defense is going to be a big, big challenge, but it can be done. In the 1990s, we looked at how we would comply with the Kyoto Protocol if we had to. We didn't in the end have to, but we looked at how we would reduce greenhouse gas emissions at installations and with non tactical vehicles. We need to go back and look at some of that compliance again, but look also look at how we transition in energy and that's why I refer to having a clean energy innovation office and a clean energy transition fund. We've got a lot of good environmental technology and energy technology programs already today across the federal government we need to increase investment in them and in science but also in the technology across our federal agencies and in defense but then we need the pull of the transition fund to in some way mimic what we have in weapons acquisition where there's an incentive to actually deploy the technology after it's developed goes through 62638 even the 64 programs we have now that some of which I helped create in the 90s like the environmental security technology certification program. They need the next step where there's an incentive for the commander the installation command or the cocom to actually deploy that technology, and I think a transition fund can help provide some of that incentive. So I'm excited about the opportunities we have because there's so much we can do, and there's so much talent across our national security community and I'm excited about the opportunity to re engage with our allies and partners so I also want to acknowledge many of you joining from overseas. Despite the tragedies that we've experienced this week in an unspeakable way that never us could imagine we look forward to resetting for a better day and for America to be back with all of you around the world. Thanks Jerry, I would like to now turn it over to Dr more thoughts. Well, I begin by just echoing that incredibly eloquent statement from Sherry Goodman I think that's absolutely the message that I don't want to speak for anybody else but I think a very large majority of Americans would want to send at this moment to our partners around the world. I would also just quickly echo the thanks to the Naval War College and to everyone here for bringing us together, despite all those challenges actually that have taken place to talk about such an important topic and Erica you you posed a pretty concrete question. I hope you'll forgive me for giving a conceptual a more conceptual answer, and it's in two parts the first is that there was a question about the linkage between climate change pressure on various natural resource systems and conflict which of course underlies a lot of you know what we've talked about here today and the link between climate and national security, lots of folks who have thought very intently about that both on our among our panelists as well as that within our audience. I would just say from my perspective I focus specifically on water security and water issues. And I would say that the pressure that you see on a lot of natural resource systems, especially water actually can be just as good as a catalyst for cooperation as a kind of conflict and I think we're wise to remember that from a national security perspective. One very positive example it's not perfect and it's kind of been going the wrong direction lately but one example is the US relationship with Mexico when it comes to transboundary water issues and the Colorado in particular. And we've actually had a remarkable kind of. I mean not perfect but a remarkable success story over the last couple of years in terms of cooperation between water and Colorado river basin within the US as well as, as well as internationally so I think we shouldn't forget that. On the other hand, that sort of prospect and promise for cooperation as well as conflict. On the other hand, you know we are in this period of competition, particularly with countries like China and India I don't see that changing anytime soon. I think there are ways that we can do good things for the planet while also operating within that paradigm and furthering US national interest at the same time and one other example I'll point to from water in particular is the example of Mekong hydrological data sharing. And many of you will will have heard and will know upstream large dams that China has built both within its territory as well as financed and the lower reaches have really disrupted Mekong ecosystems affected food security in inland fisheries and Cambodia for example. In the US, just within the last two years or so, mounted I think a very effective science and technology and public diplomacy campaign to finance alternative hydrological data sharing sources so that water users and countries in the lower Mekong could get independent scientific information, especially from remote sensing assets that would be able to show for example exactly how much water China is impounding behind its dams and the time of year that it's doing that. There are sometimes a year where that's especially damaging. And so it's a good way of highlighting the environmental impacts of some of the investments that China is undertaking in Southeast Asia it's also a great way of building capacity and and collective action among our partners in the region and also emphasizing I think America's role and its its commitment to to the region and to bolstering environmental security so I think you know we should we should keep in mind that first of all, there is an opportunity for us to kind of build cooperation but second competition does offer us some opportunities to do good things for our planet, as well as for our country and our partners. Thank you that was great really enjoyed your very specific examples there. Dr. Thank you. The basis of my earlier remarks was on the fact that Russia as a resurgent great power and a major carbon producer and the coldest country on earth is less likely to see climate change as a source of cooperation than we would wish on the other source of competition. Does that mean it's hopeless for us engaging with Russia. No it's never hopeless. So here's two things that we could at least look for. The first is that Russia this year takes over chairmanship of the Arctic Arctic Council. So, returning to Secretary Braithwaite's remarks earlier this morning. We see in broader perspective, an aspiration by Russia to re militarize the Arctic and indeed to use global warming as a way to make that easier. So again there's a worrying backdrop. Nevertheless, it's a significant multilateral organization. It's a formal and systematic means of engaging with Russia on a whole range of issues so let's explore that have no illusions and doing so, but not assume it will be a failure. Secondly, we need to play in all matters I think a long game with Russia. We are faced with a very adversarial and instinctively adversarial power now things will certainly become more difficult before they become easier. But regimes come and go in longer time. And it's important to invest in the relationships, particularly at an expert scientific level with those who see things in a more constructive way and those people are in Russia has an excellent role of scientists who are as aware as we are about the longer term challenges and difficulties so let's make sure we don't cut a wall all dialogue, and make sure we continue to invest intellectually and sustain and support those who we must hope in happier times will have more influence. Thank you. Yes, amazing. Thank you so much couldn't agree with you more I think that applies kind of universally with making sure our scientists are linked up with other scientists globally. So, with that, I want to conclude this panel. Thank you so much for your thoughtful presentations and answers to the question it's really been my privilege to moderate this panel. At this time I'm going to turn the conference back over to our host committed Cameron thank you so much. Thank you so much to Colonel Cameron Alice Hill, Sherry Goodman, Dr Scott Moore and Dr Nigel Gold daveys. What a fantastic way to start the day. It wasn't any live event it was good and it was so good it went a little long so we'll shorten our break and we'll come back at 1025. Before we go to the break I have our first poll for the audience today we will launch a poll for one minute if you'd like to provide an answer. Again we'll come back from the break at 1025 and you'll get your answer when we come back. Our question for today is what is the most important partner to address climate change going forward. You have one minute 30 seconds and we'll close the poll. We're about to close the poll that was quick. You'll get the results when we come back. Again please join us at 1025 as we start the next panel.