November 22, 2024

Colloquium Topic: Threat Multiplier: Climate, Military Leadership, and the Fight for Global Security

In this fireside chat presentation, Sherri Goodman will discuss her new book, where she tells the inside story of the military’s fight for global security, a tale that is as hopeful as it is harrowing. Threat Multiplier takes us onto the battlefield and inside the Pentagon to show how the US military is confronting climate change. More than thirty years ago, when Goodman became the Pentagon’s first Chief Environmental Officer, no one would have imagined this role for our armed forces.

Goodman’s expertise makes her uniquely positioned to answer today’s most pressing questions about climate change and national security: how military leaders’ thinking has evolved, what their contingency plans are, and where they see conflict coming next.

"Over the course of my naval career, I came to appreciate how climate change was affecting global politics—literally altering the geostrategic landscape. Sherri Goodman tells the untold story of how many of our nation's military leaders came to appreciate this challenge and recognize climate change as one of the key global threats of our age."
Admiral James Stavridis, former NATO Supreme Allied Commander and co-author of '2054: A Novel'

---

Colloquium Speaker: Sherri Goodman

Sherri Goodman is a Senior Fellow at the Wilson Center’s Environmental Change and Security Program and Polar Institute, and Secretary General of the International Military Council on Climate & Security. She is credited with educating a generation of US military and government officials about the nexus between climate change and national security, using her famous coinage, threat multiplier, to fundamentally reshape the national discourse on the topic.