us is there for everyone to see, from stronger and more frequent storms to the loss of Arctic Sea ice.

But today's guest says the threat isn't just to crops or the polar bears, but to American national security.

She's Sherri Goodman this week on "Story in the Public Square."

(bright music) (bright music continues) Hello and welcome to a "Story in the Public Square" where storytelling meets public affairs.

I'm Jim Ludes from the Pell Center at Salve Regina University.

- And I'm G. Wayne Miller, also with Salves Pell Center.

- And our guest this week is Sherri Goodman, In the Clinton administration, she served as the First Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for environmental security, and now is the Secretary General of the International Military Council on Climate and Security.

She's also the author of a new book, "Threat Multiplier, Climate Military Leadership, and the Fight for Global Security," chronically in both her career in the increasing recognition of climate change as a national security issue.

She joins us today from Cape Cod.

Sherri, thank you so much for being with us.

- It's great to be with you both, Jim and Wayne.

- You know, the term "threat multiplier" is one that you coined 25 years ago, I think, 20 years ago.

But this idea of climate change as a national security issue might seem novel to some, but you've been leading this movement for decades now.

What is the link between, generally speaking, between climate change and national security?

- Well, thank you so much, Jim.

Well, the link is that as climate change advances, our Earth system is being destabilized.

And in security, we're all about ensuring stability.

So now we have a destabilizing force in our natural systems, as temperatures get hotter, sea levels rise, we have more extreme weather events.

So that changing in the climate acts to amplify, or what we say multiply, all the other threats we face, such as strategic competition with Russia and China, terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, and the list goes on.

So all those threats become more complicated to address as we have to deal with them in that changing climate system.

So that's why we say climate acts as a threat multiplier leads to instability in fragile regions of the world, but it also affects our security here at home.

- Well, and so you coined the term in the context of the work that you were doing with the Military Advisory Board, which was part of an effort that you were leading at CNA Corp, which some people often still refer to as the Center for Naval Analysis, though that's not formally the name anymore.

But tell us about the Military Advisory Board.

Who was it, who was on it, and how did you pull them together?

- Well, these were the first group of generals and admirals senior, recently retired, three and four stars that I had worked with during my time in the Pentagon in the 1990s.

I organized them in 2007 to join me at the Center for Naval Analysis to spend a year examining the national security implications of climate change.

It included former Army Chief of Staff General Gordon Sullivan, former commander of Pacific Command, Admiral Prueher former commander of Central Command, Admiral Zinni, former chief of Naval Reactors, Admiral Skip Bowman, and many, many others from all the services.

We came together, we learned from the world's leading climate scientists, and we learned from intelligence and national security professionals in the US and among our allies, and we examined it from the lens of a war fighter, what would it mean to have to operate in the higher seas or more extreme weather events of the Pacific?

What does it mean to operate in an increasingly open Arctic, a whole new ocean that's emerged in our lifetime?

And so after a year of study, we released that report in 2007, "National Security and the Threat of Climate Change," where we characterized climate change as a threat multiplier.

And we recommended that the president's National Security Strategy and the Department of Defense National Defense Strategy and other related important government planning documents, assess and examine those risks.

And that has occurred since that time with the result that there is a very robust set of practices and strategies in the national security community today to both understand and act on climate risks.

- So going back to that group, was that the first time that military leaders in this country had come together to discuss this topic?

And was it considered exotic or bizarre, or what was the feeling then, and was that the first time?

- Well, you know, there had been some scientific studies.

There been a few analyses done by the Navy, earlier parts of the Navy to look at what this would mean for naval operations in the future.

But we hadn't had all the services come together and look at it in a global strategic perspective.

So in that sense, it was the first time, and it was the first time that leaders of that gravitas in significance lent their voice to the importance of this consideration and that it should be mainstreamed into national security planning and practices.

- So today, is there any doubt about the existence of climate change, and if so, who is raising those doubts?

- Well, you know, there are no doubters among the military, because our troops today have to operate in higher temperatures, hotter temperatures, colder temperatures in the Arctic, but hotter temperatures if they're deploying across the Middle East and North Africa, or just training in the United States.

And because we see those effects and because increasingly our forces are responding to support wildfires in the west to relieve those affected by flooding and hurricane and stronger storms.

And so we see and live it now every day.

- Yeah, Sherri, I think inherent in Wayne's question is sort of the well ingrained cultural skepticism, because of the fact that the debates about climate change have been politicized.

And I think, when you gathered the military advisory board 20 years ago now, there was still some question about exactly how extreme conditions might manifest themselves.

And that uncertainty, you write in the book, drove some of the deliberations, and it was General Gordon Sullivan, former Army Chief of Staff, who said it, and I'm quoting, you quoting him here, "If you wait until you have 100% certainty, something bad is going to happen on the battlefield."

Can you talk a little bit about the uncertainty that military leaders are used to operating with and how it informed their approach to climate change 20 years ago?

- Yes, absolutely.

So military leaders are used to dealing with a whole range of risks.

Every time you plan a military operation, you have to assess the risks.

The risks that, for example, in the D-Day landing, you know, General Eisenhower had to assess the weather and the likelihood of getting those major forces onto to the beachhead in the very small window that he had, therefore, that very important and war changing effort.

So there are a range of risks from weather to, of course, the enemy, and now today cyber, and all sorts of other threats.

So you're always assessing the risk and you're assessing how much risk are you going to take.

It's not a question of whether something is a risk.

So back in 2007, we actually talked about projected climate change because at that time we didn't know as well as we do today that we would be living this on a daily basis.

Now you don't need that term, projected.

You know, that ocean temperatures have continued to rise, and we have these, you know, we're boiling the ocean off of parts of our own country that we've had the hottest year on record again this year, that the Arctic is melting at four times the global average, and that we could see open sea lanes in the next decade and a half even during certain times of the year.

So we know those risks are out there.

The question then becomes how do you plan against those risks and what risks are you willing still to take?

- [Wayne] So can you- - In the Cold War, we said, you know, that a bolt out of the blue nuclear attack by the Soviet Union was a low probability, but very high consequence event.

So it was worth investing billions of Americans GDP in order to deter and defend against that nuclear threat.

Today, climate is a high probability with many high consequence events.

So you can think of it in much the same risk framework, how do we be prepared for those risks, particularly the ones we know are most likely to happen in the coming decades.

- So Sherri, how does the US military prepare for that?

The pace of climate change is quickening.

And the second question would be, are other nations, military powers also studying this and planning?

- Yes.

Well, let's take the first question.

Let me break it into three parts.

So, you know, we prepare first by being aware of what those changes are.

And of course, we know today what the weather is maybe out for the next week with some great deal of reliability, but we don't know what the climate is going to be, for example, reliably in the next few years, we are trying to close that weather to climate gap.

And that is going to be important in many sectors of society.

And that comes from advances in both science and technology with AI.

And I call it sort of precision climate prediction.

You know, we had precision weapons that we developed in the Cold War.

Now we need precision climate prediction that moves us from short term weather to sort of medium term climate prediction, so you could do everything from plan your military operation to plan your infrastructure and the next kind of weapon systems, they have to operate in higher sea states.

They have to operate with changing ocean conditions, they have to operate in hotter, aircraft have to be able to fly in hotter temperatures.

Sometimes aircraft are grounded today because it's actually too hot to take off.

So that's one thing, awareness and prediction.

The second is we have to become resilient to the climate changes that are already baked in.

Unfortunately, even as we move to reduced greenhouse gas emissions, we've loaded so much carbon into the atmosphere that we have to become resilient and adapt today.

That means making our bases, for example, able to withstand a certain amount of sea level rise.

That means hardening the hangers at, for example, Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida, so that the roofs don't get blown off in the next strong hurricane, which damaged many of the roofs of the F-35 hangar there in hurricane Michael a few years ago.

Those are just a couple of examples, and we need to do that in communities, too.

And third is we need to accelerate in the energy transition.

You know, we're in the middle of that now and we learned the hard way in Iraq and Afghanistan that we were putting troops at risk, deploying them to the front with long supply chains, and fuel supply chains, and they often put their lives at risk if they got struck by an improvised explosive device.

And most of the convoys in those wars were moving fuel and water.

So now we're looking at lighter logistics.

For example, can you use batteries or advanced solar or other renewables to power remote bases?

Can you have alternative fuels?

Can you have more efficient weapon systems designed, better aircraft that save efficiency?

And many other technologies that help you accelerate and move towards net zero that improve energy security as well, because you have distributed energy resources that are no longer as connected to the more vulnerable large power grid we have, but enable us to move towards islanding particular bases or particular regions and protecting that power supply.

- Yeah, Sherri, in the book you go region by region around the world to discuss how climate has either manifested itself as a security issue or how it will.

I wanna do maybe a little tour of the planet with you here, and let's start with the Arctic.

I don't think anybody can even have a passing conversation about climate change without trying to grapple with what it's gonna mean for the Arctic.

When you think about the national security considerations at the top of the planet, what are the things that leap to your mind?

- Well, in the Arctic where temperatures are warming four times the global average, we have sea ice retreat and higher warmer temperatures and permafrost thaw and increasing collapse.

So we have a region now that is becoming increasingly navigable, and Russia under President Putin eyes its long northern sea route along the Russian coastline as a toll road for transportation from ports in Asia across two ports in Europe.

So we're seeing an increased economic activity and also a potential rush for resources, because there's vast storage of energy and minerals locked in the Arctic.

And as the ice retreats, it becomes potentially more accessible.

Not without risk, there's still a lot of risk of operating up there, but potentially more accessible.

China itself has declared that it is a near arctic power and eyes certain resources, riches, or shorter shipping routes across the Arctic as well.

So we've moved from an era when the Arctic was characterized by cooperation in the 1990s to an era increasingly of competition.

- Yeah, so I understand why, if there's a scramble for resources, particularly on the seabed, I understand how that could potentially lead to great power competition and potentially conflict.

I struggle a little bit more to understand what the security dynamic is if shipping routes change.

Can you unpack that a little bit for us?

- Well, I mean there are a whole range of risks.

First of all, if shipping routes change, you could see more traffic through the Arctic, which will raise the risk of accidents.

It's still very treacherous to operate in.

And also Russia and the US have different views of the legal status of the Northern Sea route.

Russia sees this as internal waters and the US sees it as international waters.

We haven't tested that question yet, but so, you know, in most of the other major shipping routes around the world, the Strait of Formose, Panama Canal, we have general international agreement on the international status of those waters.

You know, that brings us then to, let's say, the South China Sea, where there of course is not agreement on the status of those waters, where China has been taking advantage of a changing climate to build its artificial reefs and to offer assistance to various specific island nations or others in the region as a way of courting their diplomatic affiliation.

So it's another region in which a changing climate has to be very much a of our own foreign policy and security engagement strategy, because as you asked me earlier, do other countries think about this?

Yes, and China is of course thinking about it, and they're one of, you know, the major manufacturers and exporters of renewables.

So they're also thinking about how do they green their energy system?

Of course, they're still building a lot of coal plants, they're doing all of it, but they're also thinking about it in a strategic sense.

And we have to understand their long game so that we can be on our best game and that we can counter, you know, what's happened is climate's changed the chess board, and so we've got to match them and actually we've got to overmatch them in being able to understand how that affects our own security.

- I want to get back to preparedness.

You talked about hardening hangers, you talked about the use of batteries in some combat equipment and many, many other things.

That is not gonna be cheap.

I don't know if there's an estimate of what that would cost over the next many years.

It is not going to be cheap.

It's gonna cost a lot of money.

Congress and the president ultimately control the purse strings.

Will the American public support this?

Will they get the money that they need?

- Such a great question, Wayne, because you know, it, it really is a matter of do you wanna pay now or pay more later?

First of all, we're already paying a lot now, we've had just another year in 2023 where we had almost $30 billion disasters in the US.

So we're already paying for that.

As a society, in many parts of the country, you can no longer get insurance because of the changing climate.

Parts of Florida or even parts of California.

So I think it's not a matter of whether we're going to invest in it, but are we going to do it after the next disaster, which is oftentimes what happens, or are we going to prepare in advance and become more resilient before the next disaster strikes?

You know, we often say in national security that a disaster is a terrible thing to waste.

So often that's what we learned from, right?

So when Hurricane Michael struck, Tyndall Air Force Base about five years ago now and caused a billion dollar of damage, it's now become the Air Force's climate and resilient base of the future with an investment of about $5 billion supported by US Congress and the Department to make that be.

Now, can we afford that at every base or every community?

That's a good question.

Can we help bring down the cost?

Because some of the things that you start doing for the first time as you're learning about how to install more resilient infrastructure, maybe the costs go down when you can replicate it.

For example, you know, where the Department of Defense is putting micro grids across many bases now as a way to ensure energy security and protect itself from the vulnerability at the larger grid, and also to be able to eventually hook on more renewable sources and achieve its net zero goals.

Other communities can do the same.

And so you'll eventually see many more communities across the US and around the world using microgrids as a way to power the future.

And then, of course, costs will begin to come down on those solutions.

- Sherri, are there already examples of conflicts that were either caused by or made worse by climate change?

I've heard often the Syrian Civil War referred to as an example.

Is that valid?

- Well, the prolonged drought that occurred before the Syrian Civil War certainly put farmers and herders who had lived peaceably prior to that prolonged drought period into conflict because they were competing for the same water resources.

And when there wasn't enough, many moved to the urban areas.

And that combined with political unrest, weak governance, and a number of other factors led to the Syrian Civil War.

So it certainly was a contributing element.

There were a lot of other factors in the mix as well.

And we see have seen increasingly across parts of Africa, particularly in Somalia and other areas that already started out as water scarce with weak governance, where communities are primarily dependent on the land, that as the land becomes parched, it can't support the same number of people for farming, herding, or even fishing.

And so people have to seek other livelihoods.

I mean, general Zinni tells a story I retell in the book that when he was providing relief operations in Somalia some years ago, he observed that former farmers were now having to move to fishing areas, but they weren't natural fishermen.

That was not how they had been raised.

And so they even broke through their coral reefs in order to access the fish.

And remember the whole era of piracy across those coasts and Captain Phillips, I mean, that grew out of the desperation of many young people, of the youth who couldn't find work.

And so all of this is aggravated by food and water insecurity.

That's the secondary sort of effect of these prolonged droughts fuel by climbing.

- So Sherri, in recent decades, we've asked our military to respond to more humanitarian crises as storms and extreme weather events threaten to disrupt states.

Is that an appropriate use of our military?

- Well, we always go first to our local first responders, whether it's the firefighters or the emergency search and rescue.

But we often have so many crises going on at the time.

So state governors wanna call up the National Guard, because they wanna protect their people.

And our military is trained to be able to operate 24/7 in all kinds of conditions.

I mean, that is the wonderful resilience of the American military, whether they're active duty or in the National Guard.

But increasingly, we find that the number of person hours devoted to firefighting, for example, in the National Guard, has grown more than 10 times in the last five years, because the firefighting demands are just so great across the west.

And so as citizens, we have a choice.

We either have to invest more in the local firefighting community.

We either have to reduce the risks that are causing these climate hazards in the first place, but in many ways, you have to do both.

You have to do all of the above.

For firefighting, you've gotta be able to reduce the hazard.

And some of that is how you manage the land and the force, but it's also how you start to break down emissions.

But we're not doing that fast enough, so we've got to be able to respond.

- And Sherri, we've got literally about 40 seconds left here, and this question's way too big for that, but I'm gonna ask it anyways.

When we think about the totality of this threat, is the United States doing enough, not just on the military front, but also on that policy side, when we think about America's engagement in the world and efforts to reduce the worst of carbon pollution, is the United States doing enough from a policy perspective?

40 seconds.

- Wow.

Okay.

I mean, that's a hard question to answer, Jim, but what I'm gonna say is, I think our military and our national security community is really showing the way today, because they're leading by example, both in improving climate prediction, so that they can be targeted in understanding what the risks are.

Second, by ensuring that our forces and our bases are resilient to that changing climate.

And third, by accelerating into the energy transition, so that we can in future, rely more on renewable energy, but also be more operationally effective in the future.

- Well, it's a hugely important issue.

Sherri Goodman, the book is "Threat Multiplier."

Thank you for spending some time with us today.

That is all the time we have this week.

But if you wanna know more about the "Story in the Public Square," you can find us on social media or visit pellcenter.org.

We can always catch up on previous episodes.

For Wayne, I'm Jim asking you to join us again next time for more "Story in the Public Square."

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