Article and video on Cleo Paskal's talk at the New America Foundation, Washington, DC

In March, Cleo gave a 90 minute presentation on her book and research to a packed room at the New America Foundation in Washington, DC. The NAF's Kalie Pierce wrote that: 

Paskal began her talk by stating a simple but powerful argument: environmental change will have dramatic political, economic and security consequences for us all. She discussed how environmental changes would pose a challenge to physical, services, and legal infrastructure in the future. [...] Paskal concluded her talk by warning of the many geopolitical conflicts that could arise over something as seemingly apolitical as changing environmental circumstances.

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Review of Global Warring on the Natural Security blog of the Center for a New American Security

Daniel Saraceno, at the Center for a New American Security's blog, has reviewed Global Warring, saying, in part:

What makes this book unique and such a solid reading of natural security-related issues is the security and political scope Paskal uses to explore the consequences of a changing climate. For example, a melting Arctic could open the Northwest Passage, which could also open up new Asian markets to the European Union, in addition to exposing a sparsely populated Great White North to real security concerns for North America. Such concerns have already been voiced by Canada, and tensions have increased somewhat with America’s claim that the passage is an international waterway, creating a small political schism between us and our North American neighbor.



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National Geographic interviews Cleo Paskal on vulnerability of energy infrastructure

Christine Dell'Amore's interesting feature for National Geographic News on the vulnerability of energy infrastructure to environmental change uses research from Cleo's Briefing Paper on the topic, as well as interviewing Cleo herself. A sample excerpt:

[A lack] of foresight in planning energy infrastructure is common, especially in the U.S., where billions of stimulus dollars are being poured into new energy projects that haven't factored in future catastrophes, Paskal added. "We are underestimating our own vulnerabilities," she said, "quite dramatically."

You can read more here. 

Nice blog coverage of Global Warring

Several important blogs have been covering Global Warring recently. Some excerpts:

• Keith Kloor's Collide-a-Scape wrote: after reading Global Warring, Cleo Paskal’s excellent new book on geopolitics in the era of climate change, I’m convinced that someone should amend the Wikipedia entry so that in addition to Eurasia, Africa and the Arctic are included as geopolitical battlegrounds for control over the world’s energy resources.

• Resilience Science used the Nature review of Global Warring to expand the discussion on the Arctic. You can read the post here.

• Jason at Carrots and Sticks reviewed Cleo's talk at the New America Foundation in Washington, D.C. An excerpt: In order to truly understand the geopolitical and geoeconomic paradigm of the world, we have to understand the geophysical. That was the main point Cleo Paskal made at yesterday morning’s New America Foundation event. [...]Her speech touched upon a few topics, the main ones being how environmental change presents challenges for physical infrastructure, service infrastructure, and legal structure. Before we take a quick look at these, let me clarify on what Cleo Paskal means when she says environmental change. Environmental change is a broader term which includes changes that would exist in the absence of climate change. So Cleo Paskal cites hurricane Katrina as an obvious example. The levees broke, there was a lack of town planning and there was large scale subsidence. The damage to physical infrastructure was immense. The main point being that all of those things could still happen in the absence of climate change.