The U.S. Military is Taking the Fight to Climate Change

Back in 2012, the Department of Defense issued a first-of-its-kind “Climate Change Adaptation Roadmap.” It was designed to prepare the U.S. military for increasing threats to national security in the form of rising sea levels, increasing global temperatures, and growing conflicts over basic resources like food and water. It stated that “Climate change is expected to play a significant role in the DOD’s ability to fulfill its mission in the future.” Fast-forward to today, and Sherri Goodman says the DOD now sees combating climate change as central to its mission.    Sherri was appointed the first-ever deputy undersecretary of defense focusing on environmental security. One of her first assignments was cleaning up nuclear weapons development and production sites. And in 1998, she helped develop the military’s first climate change plan, focused mainly on reducing emissions. This week, host Bill Loveless talks with Sherri about her latest book, “Threat Multiplier: Climate, Military Leadership, and the Fight for Global Security.” Sherri explains how far the military’s approach to climate change has come over the past 25 years.  Sherri is secretary general of the International Military Council on Climate and Security and a senior fellow at the Wilson Center. She’s also founder and former executive director of the Center for Naval Analyses Military Advisory Board and is board chair of the Council on Strategic Risks, which includes the Center for Climate and Security.

It’s no secret that Republicans and Democrats don’t see eye to eye on climate change.  According to a Pew Research Survey conducted earlier this year, just 12% of Republicans and Republican-leaners think climate change should be a top priority for the president and Congress. Meanwhile, the official 2024 Democratic party platform states there’s “nothing more important than addressing the climate crisis." Energy and environmental law professor David Spence says today’s news and social media are partly responsible for the divide.  In his new book, “Climate of Contempt: How to Rescue the U.S. Energy Transition from Voter Partisanship,” David argues it’s all but impossible for the government to take significant action to address global warming in a media environment focused on persuading more than educating.  This week host Bill Loveless talks with David about his book and his perspective on the ideological polarization and negative partisanship that’s been building in the U.S. in the past 10-15 years. And how he believes getting us all offline and engaging with each other in person can help push regulatory politics forward. David is the Rex G. Baker Chair in Natural Resources Law in the School of Law at the University of Texas at Austin. He’s also a professor of business, government, and society in the McCombs School of Business at UT Austin, where he teaches courses in energy and environmental regulation. And he’s co-author of a leading casebook “Energy, Economics, and the Environment.”

Thanks to the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act, the Department of Energy has been flush with cash for the past couple of years. Between the two measures, the DOE now has nearly $100 billion to put toward clean energy and grid development projects around the country through funding and loans. There’s an expectation that these contributions will drive private investment—and they have been. This July, the DOE reported nearly $50 billion in funding awards already, with more than $60 billion in private investments matching federal dollars. This week, host Bill Loveless talks with David Crane about where these funds have been going and what effects they’re having on clean energy applications around the country. They also discuss how the DOE is addressing nationwide energy challenges like transmission line permitting, storage, and other hurdles to decarbonization. David is the under-secretary for infrastructure at the Department of Energy. He previously served as director of DOE’s Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations. He was also CEO of Climate Real Impact Solutions, as well as NRG Energy.

China’s dominance of global supply chains for many goods, including clean energy technology, is increasing concerns about resilience, security, and geopolitical influence in today’s new era of great power competition. At the same time, efforts to curb China’s dominance are raising concerns about the cost of clean energy at a time when its rapid deployment is needed.  So are we in a new Cold War with China? Should American policymakers try to decouple from China? And how should policymakers address China’s supply chain dominance of the materials needed for the energy transition? This week, host Jason Bordoff talks with Dmitri Alperovitch about his new book “World on the Brink: How America Can Beat China in the Race for the 21st Century.” They discuss what the strategic challenges from China mean for American policymakers, how the U.S. can diversify critical supply chains away from China, and the security of America’s energy infrastructure.  Dmitri is the co-founder and chairman of Silverado Policy Accelerator. He is a co-founder and former CTO of CrowdStrike. Dmitri previously served as special advisor to the Department of Defense and currently serves on the Department of Homeland Security Advisory Council and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency's Cyber Safety Review Board.

In 1953, the New York Yankees beat the Brooklyn Dodgers in the World Series, “From Here to Eternity” won the Academy Award for Best Motion Picture. And on May 24 deep in the  education section of The New York Times, there was a short piece titled “How Industry May Change Climate.” In the years after, scientists went from writing about the possible impacts of pollution on climate to warning U.S. presidents. And energy policy expert and scholar Jay Hakes says there’s much more to the story. From scientists who quietly worked to address growing environmental threats, to lawmakers who deliberated in Congress and the White House over what to do about them, Jay says there’s a history that hasn’t been told. In his new book, Jay looks at these early climate change pioneers and asks about the challenges they faced.   What was it like trying to influence the White House? What solutions did these pioneers offer? And how can their stories further our discourse around climate change today?  This week, host Bill Loveless talks with Jay Hakes about his book “The Presidents and the Planet: Climate Change Science and Politics from Eisenhower to Bush.”  Jay is a scholar and author on U.S. energy policy. From 2000-2013 he served as the director of the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library. He also served in both the Obama and Clinton administrations, including a seven-year stint as director of the U.S. Energy Information Administration.  Jay’s other books include “Energy Crises: Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Hard Choices in the 1970s” and “A Declaration of Energy Policy Independence.”

With her historic victory in Mexico’s presidential election in June, Claudia Sheinbaum will be the country’s first-ever female leader. And because of her background as a climate scientist who contributed to influential UN climate reports, many hope she will reverse Mexico’s drift away from climate leadership. But it’s not simple. Sheinbaum is a political protégé of outgoing president Andrés Manuel López Obrador. In his six years as president, López Obrador was a popular leader, but failed to advance climate policy. In fact, Mexico is one of just two countries out of the G20 without a net-zero target for carbon emissions. Even as López Obrador propped up the oil sector, the primary state-owned petroleum company Pemex is deep in debt and seeing four-decade lows in production. And Mexico’s heavy dependence on the U.S. for natural gas is a growing energy security issue for the country. Sheinbaum has promised to boost clean energy – how effective will she be? Will she be able to address the country’s growing power demands and energy infrastructure challenges? And will she break from her predecessor’s lagging record on climate change? This week, host Bill Loveless talks with Carlos Pascual about what a Sheinbaum presidency could mean for Mexico’s addressing the country’s energy issues, and encouraging more investment in clean energy in Mexico. Carlos is senior vice president for Global Energy and International Affairs at S&P Global Commodity Insights, where he leads all business lines in Latin America. He was previously at IHS Markit, where he concentrated on worldwide energy issues and international affairs.  Carlos served as U.S. ambassador to Mexico from 2009 to 2011 and to Ukraine from 2000 to 2003. From 2011 to 2014 he was a special envoy and coordinator for international affairs at the U.S. Department of State, where he established and directed the agency’s Energy Resources Bureau. He was also a former resident fellow at the Center on Global Energy Policy, Columbia SIPA.

Global clean energy investment has risen by 40% since 2020, reaching an estimated $1.8 trillion in 2023, according to the International Energy Agency.  The cost of wind, solar, and batteries have fallen rapidly, often competing with fossil fuels, thanks to tech innovations, manufacturing scale, and policy support.  But the world still isn’t on track to reach its emission reduction targets. And now new forms of demand, such as data centers running artificial intelligence, are raising concerns about rising energy use and emissions.  So how do we encourage more innovation in clean energy? How do we mobilize investment to scale-up and commercialize emerging technologies? What is the role of the private sector and what kinds of policies do we need?   This week, host Jason Bordoff talks with Arun Majumdar about some of his views on emerging technologies and energy policy. They also discuss how higher education can adapt to provide the knowledge and skills needed in the clean energy economy. Arun is the inaugural Dean of the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability. He also serves as the Jay Precourt Provostial Chair Professor at Stanford University and Senior Fellow and former Director of the Precourt Institute for Energy. Formerly, he served as vice president for energy at Google.  In the Obama administration, Arun served as founding director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy and as the acting under secretary of energy. He also served as a Science Envoy for the U.S. Department of State and currently serves as the chair of the U.S. Secretary of Energy Advisory Board.

Following decades of economic integration, the cost of clean energy technologies have fallen sharply. But the rising costs of fragmentation, industry-friendly policies, and geopolitical tensions risk slowing the energy transition.  With the recent launch of the Trade and Clean Energy Transition initiative, the Center on Global Energy Policy has prioritized navigating the tensions between climate and trade, and focused on the potential to use trade policy as a tool to accelerate the pace of clean energy deployment. So how can the rules of trade be better aligned with climate goals and policies? How can the international trading system be modernized to tackle a challenge like climate change? And how can countries reconcile low-cost, clean energy technologies, often made in China, with concerns about economic competitiveness, security, and supply chain resilience? This week, we return to a conversation from earlier this year between host Jason Bordoff and Dan Esty focused on Dan’s career, his recent work at the World Trade Organization, and the intersection of climate policy and trade policy. Dan is the Hillhouse Professor at Yale University and director of the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy. He has written numerous books on environmental responsibility and economic progress, including Green to Gold and Greening the GATT. Dan also served as commissioner of Connecticut’s Department of Energy and Environmental Protection from 2011 to 2014.

So far this summer, politics has dominated the news. Which makes sense – it’s a presidential election year after all. But climate change and its effects haven’t gone anywhere and are getting worse. Just last week, Europe’s climate change service Copernicus announced that Earth hit the hottest temperature ever recorded for two consecutive days.  The same service also said we’ve lived through more than a year now of record-breaking temperatures. During the June presidential debate, climate change did take center stage – but only for a moment. CNN moderators asked former President Donald Trump what he would do, if re-elected, to slow the climate crisis. His answer deviated quickly to other topics.  For his part, President Joe Biden – who has since announced he’s leaving the race and endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris – played up his landmark Inflation Reduction Act, the largest investment in clean energy and climate action in U.S. history. But where is the American public in all this?  How worried, frustrated, or hopeful are people feeling about global warming? And how do those sentiments compare to other countries around the world?  This week we return to a conversation from last fall, when host Bill Loveless talked with Anthony Leiserowitz about Yale’s Climate Change in the American Mind surveys, and what they reveal about public opinion around climate change both here in the U.S. and around the world. They also discussed the current discourse in American politics, and how attitudes differ among registered voters.  Anthony is the founder and director of the Yale University Program on Climate Change Communication, and a senior research scientist at the Yale School of the Environment. He has worked with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the National Academy of Sciences, the World Economic Forum, and many other major organizations to understand the psychological, cultural, and political factors that shape climate change beliefs. Anthony also hosts "Climate Connections," a daily 90-second podcast about the climate crisis. Since Bill’s interview, Anthony’s program at Yale has released its Spring 2024 Climate Change in the American Mind survey results for Beliefs & Attitudes and Politics & Policy.

Russia’s energy exports, including its significant natural gas capacity, are geopolitical currency for the country. Before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Russia was Europe’s single largest supplier of imported natural gas. But since the global fallout after the invasion, Russia is setting its sights on China as a new market for the country’s gas and as an important ally.  The proposed Power of Siberia 2 pipeline would transport Russian natural gas to China via Mongolia. The project is a window into Russia’s energy export strategy and the evolving relationship between China and Russia.  So what is the strategic importance of Chinese-Russian energy diplomacy? How significant was Russia’s loss of the European gas market? And has Europe left its energy crisis behind? This week host Jason Bordoff talks with Erica Downs, Akos Losz, and Tatiana Mitrova about their recent CGEP commentary, The Future of the Power of Siberia 2 Pipeline. They discuss the geopolitical significance of the proposed pipeline and the evolving Russia-China relationship. They also cover a range of other topics including the outlook for European energy security and climate goals, China’s energy demand, and the global gas market.  Erica is a senior research scholar at CGEP focusing on Chinese energy markets and geopolitics. She previously worked as a senior research scientist in the China Studies program of the CNA Corporation.   Akos is a former senior research associate at CGEP where he specialized in natural gas markets and the role of gas in the energy transition. He recently left CGEP and is returning to the International Energy Agency as its lead natural gas analyst.  And Tatiana is a research fellow at CGEP. She’s spent her career focusing on Russia and global energy markets. Tatiana previously served as the executive director of the Energy Centre of the Moscow School of Management and the head of research in the Oil and Gas Department in the Energy Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences. She is also an independent director of SLB, the large energy services firm. (Note: This conversation was taped prior to President Joe Biden’s July 21, 2024 announcement that he was suspending his campaign for a second term in office.)