The Pentagon, Climate Change, and War
The U.S. Department of Defense is the largest single energy consumer in the United States and the world’s largest institutional greenhouse gas emitter. In The Pentagon, Climate Change and War, University of Oxford Professor and Quincy non-resident fellow Neta Crawford traces the link between US military primacy and rising greenhouse gas emissions. Is there a way for the US to break this link? Could a more restrained U.S. foreign policy end the cycle of high military spending and damaging climate costs by reducing American dependence on overseas interventions? Join us in addressing these questions with Neta Crawford and former California Governor Jerry Brown. Former Congressman John Tierney will moderate.
Topics
Panelists
Neta Crawford
Neta C. Crawford is a non-resident fellow at the Quincy Institute and the Montague Burton Professor of International Relations at the University of Oxford. She also holds a Professorial Fellowship at Balliol College, University of Oxford. Professor Crawford is a member of the Committee on International Security Studies at the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and co-director of the Costs of War Project based at Brown University. Her research focuses on war, ethics, normative change, emotions in world politics, and climate change.
Jerry Brown
Jerry Brown is the former Governor of California. Born in San Francisco on April 7, 1938. He graduated from St. Ignatius High School in 1955 and entered Sacred Heart Novitiate, a Jesuit seminary. He later attended the University of California, Berkeley, graduating in 1961 before earning a J.D. at Yale Law School in 1964. Brown was elected Trustee for the Los Angeles Community College District in 1969, California Secretary of State in 1970 and Governor of California in 1974 and 1978. In 1998, Brown was elected Mayor of Oakland and California Attorney General in 2006. He was elected to a third gubernatorial term in 2010 and to a historic fourth term in 2014. He currently serves as chair of the California-China Climate Institute housed at UC Berkeley, executive chair of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and on the board of the Nuclear Threat Initiative.
John Tierney (Moderator)
John Tierney is the Executive Director at Council for a Livable World, where his work focuses on national security issues in Congress, nuclear nonproliferation, missile defense, and other areas of peace and security. Tierney is a former nine-term Massachusetts congressman who served on the House Intelligence Committee and chaired the National Security and Foreign Affairs Subcommittee of the Government Oversight and Reform Committee. During his congressional career, Tierney spent considerable time advocating on nuclear non-proliferation and national security issues. Tierney’s 18-year career included oversight of the Government Accountability Office’s annual assessment of the Pentagon’s Weapons Selection Programs and reform of overall Pentagon spending. In 2009, Foreign Policy Magazine praised Tierney, noting that he “has a reputation for taking on thorny oversight issues the House Armed Services Committee shied away from.”