Threat Multiplier: Sherri Goodman on Climate Change, Security, and Global Resilience

Interview Transcript: Sherri Goodman, a leading voice in climate security, discusses her book Threat Multiplier: Climate, Military Leadership, and the Fight for Global Security.

“Climate change is a threat multiplier, exacerbating instability in already fragile regions.” — Sherri Goodman

Key Topics

- The concept of climate change as a "threat multiplier" and its national security implications

- Water scarcity and weaponization in Syria and other conflict zones

- The Arctic's melting ice: geopolitical tensions and environmental risks

- Efforts to decarbonize the U.S. military and achieve net-zero energy goals

- China's Belt and Road Initiative and its impact on global climate and security

- Building resilience through military leadership, diplomacy, and renewable energy innovation

Transcript

Sherry Goodman, welcome to Writer's Voice.

Delighted to be here with you, Francesca.

You were the first deputy undersecretary of defense for environmental security, the first such post in U.S. history. This was under President Clinton, and I believe you coined the phrase “threat multiplier,” is that correct?

Yes, that's correct.

That's amazing. In the context of climate change's impact on national security, this is a term I've been using for many years when I've spoken to people about the issue of climate change and national security. So I'm really honored to be talking with a person who coined that term. But tell us what it means. What is climate change as a threat multiplier to national security?

Well, Francesca, I coined the phrase back in 2007, working with the first group of generals and admirals to assess the national security implications of climate change.

And after a year of study with the nation's leading climate scientists, national security and intelligence professionals, it was clear, the evidence was clear to us that climate change would increase the risks to our national security.

And national security is all about managing risk, whether it's the threat of nuclear weapons, weapons of mass destruction, terrorists, or today we call it strategic competition with China and Russia.

And so climate change as a threat multiplier means that climate will act to increase instability in fragile regions of the world.

And we see today it happens even in our own stable regions of the US and Western Europe with regular floods, hurricanes, wildfires, prolonged droughts that are disruptive to society in so many ways. Disruptive to what we might call our homeland security, but also threaten the instability of entire regions and are underlying many of the conflicts that we see around the world today.

And when you first took that post in 1993, where was the military's understanding of the threat of climate disruption and how has it changed?

Such a good question, Francesca. Let me take you back to that first chapter, I call it, of environmental security as I tell the story in my book, Threat Multiplier, Climate Military Leadership and the Fight for Global Security.

Now, in the early 1990s, our focus was less on climate than on the more immediate environmental threats we faced at that time. And I will describe really there were three parts of that.

The first was in that era, we were cleaning up and closing many military bases in the United States and overseas. And we had many Superfund sites around the country, both in the Department of Defense and in the industrial areas in general, in the civilian. And so the mandate was to do a better job in cleaning up military bases. That was first and foremost, particularly so that property could be returned to for civilian use in a safe way. That was number one.

The second part of that first chapter of environmental security was about protecting our natural resources. Many people don't know that America's military bases are actually islands of nature.

The U.S. Department of Defense is the second largest landholder in the United States, after the Department of Interior, at over 25 million acres of land, and therefore it has very important stewardship responsibilities.

And also because most military bases are not heavily developed, they're used for training. They have a lot of wild open spaces that are good for protecting ecosystems and endangered species.

And so in the 1990s, training had been halted at parts of Fort Bragg, now known as Fort Liberty, for a failure to protect the endangered red-cockaded woodpecker, which lives in the longleaf pine tree, which is found in abundance on that military base and others in the southeast United States.

And the largest stand of healthy longleaf pine tree is now found on military bases throughout the United States because those areas have been well protected.

So in that era, the military determined that it could use the tree as a realistic training obstacle. Instead of cutting it down and therefore destroying the nest, it could leave the tree in place, intact, and it would actually enhance military training.

And so the Marine Corps actually had an environmental campaign in that era called Saving a Few Good Species, which is a term, a phrase on its traditional motto, a few good men. So that was the era of learning how to protect natural resources in ways compatible with military training.

The third dimension of environmental security, as we called it in the 1990s, was environmental cooperation with militaries around the world. We called it mil-to-mil environmental cooperation.

And that was sharing the practices that we were developing either in natural resources or in cleaning up military bases, other sound environmental air and water waste management practices with other militaries around the world so they could also raise their standards.

We were also at that time working intensively with the Russians to denuclearize and safely remove waste, all the liquid waste from Russian nuclear submarines that was thought to potentially contaminate Norwegian fishing grounds, which led to a program called Arctic Military Environmental Cooperation.

But they were not thinking about climate.

How has that changed now? And what do you feel was the inflection point?

Well, later in the 90s, in the Kyoto 1997-98 climate agreement, which was actually considered to be Conference of the Parties 3, COP 3, was the first time that the U.S. looked at what its overall negotiating position with respect to greenhouse gas emissions reductions would be at the time.

So that was the first time sort of in the second half of the Clinton administration that we examined greenhouse gas emissions as it would apply to military activities.

It was still before the era where we actually looked at the national security implications of climate change on global security and stability.

So, but following from that first examination of what it would mean to reduce greenhouse gas emissions for the military and how you would make that energy transition, that gave way to the work that we started in the mid-2000s when I was at the Center for Naval Analysis with the CNA Military Advisory Board to examine the national security implications of climate change and then also to understand the nexus with energy and how we could therefore also advance an energy transition that would lead to where we are today, which is really ambitious goals on net zero for the military.

So before we get into a lot of the meat of this book, I actually want to kind of zero in on this point because the book really does demonstrate how the U.S. military has become possibly more committed to net zero than almost any other sector of the economy.

But on the other hand, I know a lot of my listeners are going to be saying to themselves right now, as I did when I began reading your book, is that the U.S. military is the single largest institutional consumer of petroleum in the world, according to the Cost of War Project, which is at Brown University. 1% of total emissions of the country in 2020 were from the military, and that's not to say anything of defense contractors, who are not required to disclose their emissions.

War itself is an incredible contributor to climate emissions, and the U.S. military is not required to report its emissions, according to the Kyoto Protocol that was changed a little bit later on in 2015, but it's still not required. So, explain to us this contradiction: On the one hand, the huge contribution of the U.S. military as the largest military in the world to carbon emissions, with this other climate security mission.

Okay, Francesca, yes, happy to explain that. Parts of what you say are correct, but parts of it actually are not.

The part that's not correct, and I want to correct for your listeners, is that the Department of Defense does report its military, its greenhouse gas emissions today, as does every federal agency, and it can be found online at a website that EPA manages.

So, yes, it is reporting and disclosing. The systems are much vastly improved today than they were back in 1997. So, the U.S. military is one of the few militaries around the world that does disclose and report its emissions.

Yes, the military is a large user of fossil fuels, and war is bad for the environment. Let's just stipulate that. If we could stop war, all environmental protection would be improved. On the other hand, we haven't figured out how to get humans not to have war. And I don't think we're going to figure that out in our lifetime.

So the question is, how do we manage to both secure our nation, improve global stability, and do so in a way that aligns with our climate goals to decarbonize?

So today, I would say there are major efforts underway to decarbonize in defense. And those take the form of net zero strategies, net zero goals for the Department of Defense.

First, starting with military bases. We already have some military bases that are net zero. The first net zero military base is in Albany, Georgia, Marine Corps Base, Albany, Georgia. One just opened recently also in California.

And the goals of the Department of Defense are to be net zero in energy by 2050, aligned with the administration's goals, and net zero in electricity by 2035. So there is a path to decarbonization. And it differs for different types of energy use.

When you look at total Department of Defense energy use, it is about 1% of US energy. And one third of that is in what we call installation energy. And two thirds of that is in what we call operational energy, which is for aircraft tanks, ships, what we use to conduct our warfight.

And most of that within the operational energy is in aircraft. So the big opportunity is in transitioning fuels for fighters and bombers away from fossil fuels.

How do you do that?

Okay, there are two basic parts of that. One is you can improve the design of your aircraft. And that's underway now. There's a very interesting blended body wing aircraft weapons design that the aircraft alone will save 30% even on existing fuels by having a wing that's actually attached to the body of the aircraft. That's called blended body wing design. That is going to be a significant improvement.

The other piece of that is how do you move to sustainable aviation fuels?

And within the world of managing carbon emissions and climate change, there are a number of what are called hard to abate sectors, where there are efforts to advance the sustainability and aviation fuels, maritime fuels, steel, cement, some other of these other sort of basic foundations of an industrial economy are all these hard to abate sectors for emissions. And there are efforts underway to transition.

Now those are led when you look at aviation fuel use, it turns out that while for the military aviation fuel use is a large part of its overall energy use, military aviation fuel use globally is a very small part of total aviation fuel use.

Most of it is used by commercial aircraft. So think of your airlines today that fly all over the world. So the initiative, the technology, the R&D initiatives in sustainable aviation fuels are really being led in this commercial sector.

The defense sector, the U.S. military is a part of it with its defense industry, but it's a small player in that overall transition, but it's an important player. So the advantages for what the military can do in certain sectors where its use, where its energy use aligns with the military mission and its need for new energy sources.

For example, we need to have reliable power wherever the military operates. And that's also true in our communities that are hard hit by climate disasters around the country. They're often from the recent hurricanes or the Texas grid disaster. Communities can lose power for a long period of time.

So how do you make them more energy secure and at the same time decarbonize? That aligns with the military's mission to be able to operate 24-7 even when the grid goes down.

So the transition now by the use of micro-grids, so most military bases are on a path to have a micro-grid within the next decade and a micro-grid which will enable you to have secure power and also to put decarbonized distributed energy resources on that grid from renewables to geothermal to small modular reactors to hydro to even the first net zero installation in Albany, Georgia has a waste to energy plant where we take an old landfill and capture the methane out of the landfill and convert it to energy.

So there are a variety of innovative ways to provide baseload energy sources onto a micro-grid that can help power either a base or a community.

And that's the innovations that are occurring today that are very exciting in the transition to a decarbonized clean energy economy.

Well, that's great. And we want to just let our listeners know that net zero means that the carbon emissions are balanced by, I assume, carbon negative installations. Is that correct?

Yes, that's correct. That means that total net emissions on the base or in the net zero means that there's fewer emissions, greenhouse gas emissions, in a total balanced output of that particular unit. So whether it's the community or the military base.

And in some cases, military bases are going to be net negative. In other words, they're going to be producing more renewable power, just as if, you know, today, when you put your solar on your house, sometimes you can generate power into the grid, you could be net zero in your own home.

Yes, exactly. And I do that every month. My electric bill is about $14 a month, because I'm, in the summer at least, I'm banking a lot of energy into the grid.

So, Sherry Goodman, let's go to the threat multiplier aspect, chapters of your book, really fascinating discussions of the different regions of the world that express these conflicts. You know, the Middle East is top of mind these days. Let's go right there.

Temperatures are soaring in that region. I mean, we saw temperatures of up to 140 degrees, I believe it was, in Iraq a couple of summers ago. Desertification is growing. You talk about water as being the critical component here, from drought to the weaponization of water systems to also some initiatives toward cooperation between countries over water. So let's take each of these.

Let's start with Syria, because you discuss the war in Syria, saying, like I've heard before, that it was, in fact, brought about because of climate change. Explain.

Well, the prolonged drought that occurred in Syria starting in around 2008 made it difficult for farmers and herders to live peaceably in the rural areas of Syria, because there was not enough water.

And so there were either local conflicts or, as the water dried up and couldn't support both farming and herding at the same time, people started to move into the urban areas.

That combined with civil unrest and other political tensions to spark a very prolonged civil war in that region, and the deadly conflicts that we have also given rise to.

Terrorists taking advantage of vulnerable populations, as particularly the young male youth, then don't have adequate livelihoods, and they become targets for terrorist recruits. So we call it a petri dish for terrorism.

And the prolonged droughts often occur a combination of climate-fueled drought in the region, and you can very easily track that in Syria and other places.

It's often mixed with some level of mismanagement and inadequate allocation of water within the country, and that also combines with food insecurity.

And so we've seen this movie now play out a number of times across the region, from Syria to Somalia, to other parts of the Sahel, Niger, Mali, Iraq, also very water-stressed, used to be sort of abundant.

You think back to biblical times, you know, a region that was sort of the land of milk and honey, and now is one that is just more subject to drought and displacement.

So talk a little bit about how that in Syria, how the weaponization of water happened in Syria. You talk about ISIS, but I don't think we can also forget the role of the Assad government either.

Yes. So Assad clearly took advantage of the vulnerabilities being created by the prolonged drought to really pit different regional factions within the country against each other, and then to seize power and also to use his armed forces and the forces that he had under his control to weaponize water against his opponents, either by withholding it, by using it to tactical advantage, by threatening to take out its targets.

One of my colleagues has written a whole book on the weaponization of water, Marcus King, who's been my colleague both at the Department of Defense at CNA and now leads the Earth Commons at Georgetown University, and he has very carefully reconstructed the cases of weaponization of water across Syria and Iraq and categorized its both strategic and tactical uses by Assad as well as by Saddam Hussein.

You know, I just wonder if you would also include Israel's long-standing control and restriction of water towards the Palestinians that it controls in Gaza and in the West Bank as an example of the kind of weaponization of war, especially now when Israel has been so relentless in, you know, expanding the war beyond Gaza into Jordan?

Well, no, Francesca, to me that is a completely different case. First of all, Israel is defending its own territorial integrity and was attacked, Hamas terrorists, on October 7th. That is very clear.

Now, Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East, has long had understood water as an element of its own national power and one of the few countries in the region to have a national water carrier.

It has carefully managed, you know, water resources for its own use. I cite in my book, I tell the story of EcoPeace Middle East, a group that has been working since the Oslo Accords in the 1990s to broker water sharing agreements between Israel, Palestinians and Jordan.

And they have been on and they have done some excellent and exceptional work to create and maintain dialogues among those three countries and to improve water sharing.

If you go to the Jordan River that runs between Israel and Jordan, where Jesus is said to have been baptized and millions go each year to bathe in those waters, that water is essentially sewage today.

It's a trickle and it's because of overuse upstream, starting in Turkey and Syria and Israel and Jordan all together have responsibilities for that lack of water running adequately through that region. There have been proposals greatly to improve that water flow in that region.

Of course, much of it disrupted by the current conflict begun by Hamas on Israel on October 7th. There are still plans in the day after to revitalize some of this cooperation, which would have included a very important Green Blue Deal, which would have allowed Jordan to provide solar into Israel and Israel to provide water into Jordan, which is very much needed.

And that deal might still be able to be revitalized.

You know, I'd say there also had been a time when Gaza's water problems, let's say, they could be addressed by greater cooperation between Israel and Gaza had not Hamas used those tunnels to weaponize against Israel, because the construction equipment that would have improved the sewage flow in Gaza, which was at one point going to be supported by both Israel and the U.S., was then weaponized by Hamas against Israel.

So it's very unfortunate for the people of the region, the civilians of the region, the innocents, those who were killed on October 7th by the deadly attack, and those who have suffered in Gaza over the last year.

It's my hope that, you know, in the future when there is a broader arrangement for peace in the region, that again, water sharing arrangements, water and energy sharing arrangements in the interest of all the civilian communities will be able to be at the center of focus.

Let's move on to the Arctic, because I think the Arctic is absolutely a terrifying example of what you talk about in this book, Sherry Goodman, in Threat Multiplier, Climate, Military Leadership, and the Fight for Global Security. What is happening in the Arctic and why should I be so scared about it?

Well, the Arctic is an ocean that has essentially opened in our lifetimes because temperatures are rising higher than the global average air, about four degrees higher, and we could experience ice-free summers in the Arctic as soon as the 2030s.

It's a region that's become much more navigable because of climate change, and now President Putin of Russia envisions a toll road for transit across the northern sea route from ports in Asia to ports in Europe, and would like to monetize that route.

Meanwhile, China eyes that region, has declared itself to be a near-Arctic stakeholder, and would like to take advantage of the increasingly open Arctic, both for shipping, shorter shipping lanes, particularly as we see other global sea routes, Straits of Hormuz, Straits of Malacca, more at risk of attack, particularly in the Gulf regions by the Houthis.

Although it's still very dangerous to operate in the Arctic, we need to stipulate that, and it will be for some time, even as the ice retreats and the permafrost thaws and collapses, it could be an accident waiting to happen, with more shipping in that region, either to extract the energy and minerals, or for the shorter shipping lanes, and in the future, potentially the fish, as fish stocks migrate more towards both poles, with warming waters, and increasingly overfished and illegally fished waters around the world.

Exactly, so I'd like you to add a little bit of detail to this, because we have a race to extract more climate-destroying fossil fuels, that is really being initiated in large part by Russia, which really sees the Arctic as its own, and Russia is totally not interested in decarbonization.

We're talking about Russia monopolizing shipping lanes to supply petroleum and gas to China, so there's the extraction of these minerals, there is more shipping lanes, and there is overfishing.

What is the U.S. doing to try to moderate or meet this challenge?

Well, the U.S. is increasing its capability to operate in the Arctic. We've long had a presence in the Arctic, because we are an Arctic nation.

With Alaska, we have an Arctic coastline of our own, and because with a more open Arctic, there are increasing risks, not just of the traditional missile and nuclear threat.

Throughout the Cold War, we defended against a nuclear threat from the Soviet Union, both with submarines and with land-based missiles and bombers, some of which are in America's Arctic.

We operate the NORAD with Canada, the North American Defense System, with our Canadian allies, our strong partners in the Arctic.

Now, fortunately for the US and our allies, Russia's invasion of Ukraine has given us two new NATO allies, Finland and Sweden, and so we have a strong alliance in that region, but we also have more risks, more risks of accidents with an open Arctic, more risks of attack or threats by ineradic and aggressive and defensive Russia.

I recall what Senator McCain used to call Russia as a gas station with nuclear weapons.

And so, yes, you alluded to Russia being primarily a resource-based economy that both hopes to extract its fossil fuels, including in the Arctic, before that could become a stranded asset.

You know, in the climate era, as we transition away from fossil fuels, and also with potentially longer agricultural and growing seasons in its southern reaches.

So in the near term, Putin clearly sees Russia as a potential near-term winner in climate change, so is not aggressively seeking to decarbonize the economy or take climate action.

Unlike China, which, of course, is manipulating its climate change for its own strategic interests, but does well understand the vulnerabilities its country faces in different regions from climate risk, either growing flooding and storms and typhoons in its coastal regions in the south or prolonged drought in its northwest.

So it is on a path to ensure that its massive population also has the resources it needs to keep its economy continuing to grow, and that poses challenges for the rest of us.

Yeah, let's talk about that. A few years back, I interviewed Michael Klare, who wrote a book about the climate threat multiplier, and he discusses China.

He thought at that time that China would be so hammered by the impact of climate disruption that it would cease to become—now, this was quite a few years ago, I say probably around 2015—but he said it would cease to be the kind of threat that, at that time, the U.S. was talking a lot about.

But I think that you present a much more nuanced view here that, in fact, China is well aware of its vulnerability, and it is employing a kind of strategy globally to deal with that vulnerability that could be a threat to us. Talk a little bit more about that.

Well, China has sought to use its strategic engagement in the Indo-Pacific to include the climate vulnerabilities of, for example, small Pacific island nations that are existentially threatened by climate change.

And so while offering ports and infrastructure and airports and seeming to address the infrastructure and climate needs of some of the countries in the region, take the Solomon Islands, which switched its diplomatic allegiance from Taiwan to Beijing a few years ago, it's also putting some of these countries into a debt trap by the way it offers the financing and then with inability to repay the loans become subject to increasing obligations to China.

So that's been the kind of theory of the case of China's Belt and Road Initiative now complying with so-called climate outreach to vulnerable nations.

But meanwhile, it's engaged in the South China Sea in a standoff with the Philippines invading the Philippines' own waters and claiming certain atolls belong to it and building up others as military bases in order to gain strategic position within the region.

So I think China is able to take some strategic patience, if you will, with its view and has a long-term strategy, particularly when it comes to how it operates globally and in the Arctic.

It won't necessarily be seeking those resources right away, but it does have a plan to gain more experience in the region in growing cooperation between Xi and Putin.

Certainly is one that is both opportunistic on both of their parts, but strategic in the case of China and also enables Xi to use Putin almost as a junior partner in gaining the resources it needs to continue to fuel its own economy.

So it's getting oil and gas from the Soviet Union.

I've also understood that China is engaged in a huge land grab for agricultural land, which I think threatens the food security of the nations where it's doing that. But how does this threaten the United States? Connect the dots for us.

Well, as China goes around the world seeking, as you say, not only energy resources, but also agricultural land, both for the value itself and for the virtual water inherent in some of the more fertile lands around.

Even in the US, China has bought land in parts of our southwest through its own entities and particularly in Latin America and for the critical minerals that it both mines and processes, both throughout Africa and Latin America.

They seek to control the markets in some ways for the sources we need for the clean energy transition, which are very heavily dependent on critical minerals.

We've woken up in the last few years in the US to recognize that we have to diversify our own supplies of those critical minerals and we have to ensure that our allies and partners, particularly in Latin America and throughout Africa, are not overly influenced and indebted to an aggressive Chinese leadership.

Now, at the same time, we have to approach our diplomacy with some humility. Many of these countries are not going to choose between the United States or China.

So we have to, in this new era, this almost tri-polar era of strategic competition, we in the US have to determine how we can be a reliable and predictable partner, how we can help make an offering that is better to these nations, that doesn't result in debt trap diplomacy that helps build not only infrastructure, but education, provides reliable livelihoods, and is comprehensively considers climate resilience and security.

I would point you, Francesca, you and your readers to a new US framework that was released just a week or two ago called the US Framework for Climate Resilience and Security, which is intended to account for how we build collective resilience with nations around the world.

And increasingly, as we think through our diplomatic and our national security strategies and policies, we have to think through not only deterrence against aggression, but also how we affirmatively build resilience within societies, which includes resilience for water and food and human security.

Yeah, I think that's such a critical part of the story. And it's a story that you do tell in this book, Sherry Goodman, in Threat Multiplier, Climate, Military Leadership, and the Fight for Global Security.

And, you know, I think diplomacy is unfortunately often the poor stepsister to military intervention. And the kind of climate resilience you're talking about, I think really does depend so much on diplomacy.

Let's talk a little bit about another area in which I think that this is really key. You know, immigration is one of the two top issues, and the economy, of course. And you mentioned Latin America. Talk a little bit about Latin America. Briefly tell us, what are the climate impacts that are driving immigration to the U.S. from Latin America? And how is this policy of climate resilience beginning to be brought to bear by the U.S. military, at least under the Biden administration? I couldn't say the same if there's a Trump administration.

Yes.

In Latin America, you have some, you know, very large, important, economically significant nations like Brazil.

You have a number of, in Central America, sort of weak and fragile governance that have the prolonged drought that we've seen in that region, combined with increasing intensity of hurricanes, has put these more agriculturally dependent economies at risk for the same types of problems we just talked about in the Middle East and Africa, where in Latin America, you have narco-terrorists, narco-traffickers, human traffickers, a lot of extensive corruption.

And when that gets combined with the climate vulnerabilities that we see from both prolonged drought, combined with increasing intensity of storms, and then you already have a lot of out-migration from Venezuela now over a number of years.

The receiving countries from Colombia, Panama, and as you move up north towards the U.S., are less capable, and even into the Caribbean, are less capable of absorbing that.

And then you have people in those own countries who can no longer, partly also because of the coffee rust that has devastated much of the coffee crop in these regions, we've had a general migration northward.

Now, that's of course been challenging for the U.S. to manage.

We are conflicted ourselves about immigration.

Let me just say, I am the daughter of Holocaust refugees, and I feel fortunate to be an American, and I know that our country is made up of a melting pot of diversity, and that's a problem internally the U.S. has to resolve.

And we haven't done a good job of it in recent years.

At the same time, many of these countries that are increasingly at risk from a combination of natural and political instability, earth natural system and political system instability, need to have more hope and resilience of their own economies and livelihoods where they live and to be made more sustainable.

So what can the military do?

I mean, the military's role here, first and foremost, is to protect America's security and ensure that threats don't reach our borders.

But at the same time, it has the ability to engage with other types of partners, particularly diplomatic development, disaster relief, many other partners in the region and help to be a convening force.

And that's what I tell the story of in my book, Threat Multiplier, about General Richardson, the first female four-star commander of our Southern Command, who is working with allies and partners across the region, also bringing in a lot of America's National Guard through the State Partnership Program.

So you've got a lot of Americans from states all around the U.S. engaging in their National Guard status, going to the region to offer services, everything from understanding infrastructure to water to environmental management, as well as security protection and many other dimensions of defending against the malign actors in the region.

And just having the presence sometimes, because particularly with China's increasing presence in the region, it's foreign direct investment, it's building of ports and infrastructure and extracting energies, having the presence there to counter those malign influences is itself a value to our own security.

Well, there is a lot we covered today, but there is so much more that is in this fascinating book, Sherry Goodman, In Threat Multiplier. I want to thank you so much for talking with us here.

You know, the military is here to stay, and I, for one, would love to see its dedication to soft power, to building climate resilience to become a major, major part of its operations. And thank you so much.

Thank you, Francesca.