We have explored, at length, the basket of biophysical stressors climate change could produce. And we’ve looked at how floods, droughts, tropical cyclones, ocean acidification, coral degradation (and the list goes on and on) might impact our food security and lead to the displacement of a lot of people. But what does the climate crisis mean for national security? How does the intelligence community think about climate change?
Dr. Rod Schoonover is a member of The Center for Climate & Security Advisory Board. He is also the Founder and CEO of the Ecological Futures Group, and an Adjunct Professor in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. He served in the US Intelligence Community for ten years as the Director of Environment and Natural Resources at the National Intelligence Council and Senior Analyst in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research at the US Department of State.
On this episode, Dr. Schoonover joins Ross to discuss the foreign policy goals of the US and share his concerns around the current administration’s failure to call out anti-democratic values. He explains how the suppression of his written testimony for the House Intelligence Committee regarding the national security implications of climate change led to his resignation from the State Department. Listen in for Dr. Schoonover’s insight on what the US government should do to address the climate crisis and learn what could happen (from a security perspective) if we don’t take action on climate change.
More from the show
Ad-free episodes and other benefits come with a paid subscription.
Carbon Removal Newsroom, the news show that ran alongside this one, is over. Its episodes are still up, on the feed Climate Workers Anonymous now uses.
Carbon Removal Memes is still going.
Resources:
Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research
Dr. Schoonover’s June 2019 Testimony for the House Intelligence Committee
‘White House Tried to Stop Climate Science Testimony, Documents Show’ in The New York Times
Dr. Schoonover’s Op-Ed in The New York Times
Holly Jean Buck on Reversing Climate Change EP103
Holly Jean Buck on Reversing Climate Change S2 Bonus
Matthew Yglesias on Reversing Climate Change S2EP35
All Hell Breaking Loose: The Pentagon’s Perspective on Climate Change by Michael T. Klare
Sea Power: The History and Geopolitics of the World’s Oceans by Admiral James Stavridis, USN (Ret.)
Full Transcript
Ross Kenyon: Hello and welcome to the Reversing Climate Change podcast. I’m Ross Kenyon. Today I have with me Dr. Rod Schoonover. Rod is a member of the Center for Climate and Securities Advisory Board, the founder and CEO of the Ecological Futures Group, and an adjunct professor in Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. Hi, Rod. Hi, how’s it going? It is going well. How are you? I’m great. And I’m really happy to be with you here. I am happy to have you here too.
I don’t know how long it has taken me to do a show about climate and security. It is one of those intersections I find really compelling and certainly under discussed relative to things like polar bears. And I think is very, very important. So I am happy to have you here to discuss this. I don’t imagine many of our listeners have met someone who has worked inside of the intelligence community before. So how exactly did you come to be in this position?
Dr. Rod Schoonover: Right. That’s a really good question. It’s actually not a career path I would have ever expected for myself. Just my background, I’m a chemical physicist from, got my PhD from the University of Michigan. And I always wanted to be an academic. And not long after graduating with my PhD, I became a An academic in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, California. And, you know, I really loved being an academic. But, you know, I had been reading papers and journal articles about climate change for quite some time.
And, you know, during the 2000s, I became considerably alarmed about U.S. inaction on climate change. And I really was curious of how government and science policy worked. And so there’s a program run by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. It’s a science and technology policy fellowship where New scientists or mid-career scientists like I was at the time can be placed in the government for a period of one to two years and learn what’s happening. And I applied and was awarded that fellowship.
And I kind of knew that I wanted to go to the State Department. And... I thought I would be doing more science diplomacy because my brain was headed that way. But there was this opening in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research at the State Department. It was very intriguing where I would be working on climate change and water security and food security issues as they pertain to national security. And so I took that assignment. I was a senior analyst and senior scientist in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research.
And, you know, it was an incredible experience. I landed during the first year of the Obama administration when climate change was being taken on board as a priority in foreign policy. And so I stayed. So one year became two years and that became three. And then eventually I spent 10 years as part of the intelligence community. It’s that part of the State Department that is one of the 16 agencies of the intelligence community. And so that was my pathway there.
Ross Kenyon: And your time at the State Department involved to some degree, I am told, sharing an office with another alumna of the show, Holly Jean Buck. Is that when that happened?
Dr. Rod Schoonover: Oh yeah, that’s right. We were part of the same unit in the Office of the Geographer and Global Issues. I think Holly was part of the State Department’s Humanitarian Information Unit. And so, you know, I knew her pretty well. And so I have watched her when she left the State Department. It was sad, but it’s been really amazing to see her career trajectory. And we are very proud of her. To what degree was your life in DC like Burn After Reading? Have you seen the Coen Brothers film Burn After Reading?
Oh, I have. But I saw it disconnected from my own experience. I will have to say, That working in the intelligence community and working, you know, I’d spent two years and, you know, a few months at CIA headquarters when I was part of the National Intelligence Council. You know, I visited National Security Agency often, visited, you know, many of the... The intelligence community buildings. And so that experience is kind of ruined watching any kind of spy movie because they are more fictional than you would ever imagine.
Although lately, I would say that Hollywood has gotten some of it right. I think Argo and Zero Dark Thirty show the intelligence community in a more realistic light. But the whole James Bond stuff is really outrageous. Yeah. Yeah, there’s no M or Q or that sort of thing. Well, there are, but they don’t call them that. And everyone is much less glamorous and the technology is much older. And, you know, it’s just not really representative of the intelligence community. I will say I visited Exxon headquarters down in Houston and That campus looks a lot more like what the Hollywood version of the intelligence community is.
Ross Kenyon: I don’t know that the average person really knows much about what the aims of foreign policy are, except maybe they think of this in terms of the great game of geopolitics, of just countries trying to one-up each other and be the world hegemon in so far as such a thing is possible for them. When I think about foreign policy, I usually anchor it to the best example I have is my understanding is that the UK, their goal was always to have a divided Europe whenever possible. Like having a Napoleon is a, you know, doomsday scenario for UK foreign policy.
So they want Europe fighting amongst themselves and to control the sea. That’s how I think about UK’s goals. What should I be thinking about maybe the US’s goals overall? And then how would you fit inside of it?
Dr. Rod Schoonover: Yeah, well, I mean, that’s a really good question. And it really, you know, it changes over time. But I think going back, Dean Acheson from the former State Department guru probably said it best in that... The United States seeks to preserve and foster an environment in which free societies may exist and flourish. And so it’s really about the so-called promoting the values of democracy and egalitarianism and rule of law that forms the foundation of the United States. So that in principle, You know, in terms of the different freedoms, different strengthening of human security and legal norms.
Again, ideally, making the world a place where free societies exist and flourish. And I think it’s very difficult to say it better than Dean Acheson did. So, you know, the levers of policies are different. And so how you achieve that... There are economic dimensions, there are security dimensions, there are political dimensions. And that gets into the discussion of smart power and soft power, where you use the considerable influence and assets of the United States in non-military ways and avenues to promote the interests of the United States.
So that, I think, is a rather important role for the United States in the world. And that’s one of the reasons why the world watches the United States so closely. So our retraction from the world stage, especially on these issues of democracy and fair elections and human rights, no one else believes. Has stepped up into the void that we’ve created in the last couple of years. So the role of the United States on the global stage remains quite important.
Ross Kenyon: I wonder how many people listening think that. I imagine this started to change around Vietnam, or you had the real politic of Henry Kissinger. That sort of Vietnam hangover, as it used to be called, I think it sort of made Americans lose sight of the fact that more often than not, America does stand for those things, or at least tries to. And past presidents have been, when America has failed to live up to that standard, I think that was a... Like a rather gigantic change ideologically, rhetorically.
I don’t know that I have the exact language to express this, but maybe you could help me out, Rod. Have you noticed this too? Yes, of course.
Dr. Rod Schoonover: It’s doublespeak. You know, it’s people from the Trump administration talking about American exceptionalism while at the same time rendering policies that undermine This same exceptionalism, this purported exceptionalism, the refusal to really call out what used to be considered anti-democratic and anti-Western values and actions. The whole proclivity to express admiration for authoritarians and strongmen across the world is a fairly radical departure from the Arguably 220-some years of U.S. history. I’m a scientist by training and not a historian, but, you know, you kind of pick up a lot of this when you work in government.
And, you know, you mentioned the Kissinger years. You know, it’s really post-Watergate where I think the United States and its values were really tested. But what really transpired was a recommitment to the rule of law. One of the things I think, you know, whether you’re talking about Democrats or Republicans, you know, since the mid 70s, you never questioned whether the U.S. president valued the core tenets of American democracy. And so, you know, I wasn’t a giant fan of many presidents who came since, you know, Watergate, but I never really questioned The patriotism or the commitments to just things like human rights.
I think those are all on the table now. And the rest of the world, I think, really looks at the United States as what’s going on. What is up? What is with not the president, not Trump? What is with the electorate? So I think that’s a cause for concern.
Ross Kenyon: To what degree do you think those commitments are merely rhetorical? So I keep putting myself in the position of a listener, but I could see someone listening to this and saying like, yeah, America talks a good game about all these things, but what about all the coups? Yeah. There’s still quite a fair amount of intelligence operations that happen of that variety. Does that harm our stance on being pro-human rights or being pro-democracy or rule of law? Or does it fit into it in some counterintuitive way, maybe?
Dr. Rod Schoonover: Well, just talking about the history of foreign interference on behalf the United States, my sense is that is largely in the past, if not entirely in the past. You know, those types of influence campaigns by the United States. And again, I’ll just say, just be clear, you know, my role in the intelligence community as an analyst, so I wouldn’t have been able to see any of that anyway, because there’s a very big wall between those two sides of the fence. But, you know, certainly... I think it’s important for the United States to be consistent in its rhetoric and its actions.
And the promotion of American values and the promotion of free markets and promotion of trade, you don’t have to be clandestine to promote those. We believe enough in those ideas in the United States. That, you know, we can be upfront about it. But, you know, I certainly see a tension between promoting free elections on one’s hand and then undermining them on the other. But, you know, to my knowledge, that doesn’t happen and hasn’t happened for quite some time.
Ross Kenyon: I only bring this up in this context because we had Matthew Iglesias on from Vox and his new book, One Billion Americans, is quite interesting. I don’t know. I sort of like just talking about those assumptions up front. And also, we’re just going to take for granted, basically. We’re going to assume that cynical version of American foreign policy is not as true or as true in order to move forward and talk about climate. Because otherwise, I think the conversation might get off kilter in some way that’s not actually productive here.
Okay. So yeah, I’m going to pause the sort of like blowback Ron Paul kind of vibes and we’re going to move into something more, more classical and centrist in this. So, okay. So moving forward, assuming that America, it would be good that America is the world hegemon and not China or someone else. And that would be a good thing for the world. What should America do with regard to climate change? And what are these stressors that are going to happen? Or maybe a better way of saying this is, how does climate interact with the US’s foreign policy goals?
What happens next?
Dr. Rod Schoonover: Well, I mean, that’s a very good question and that requires a detailed answer. You know, there’s a number of things that we must do in terms of bringing the world to Aggressive climate action. And so in the run up to the Paris Agreement, the United States used considerable diplomatic levers to bring China India, Brazil, you know, other countries into, you know, what eventually became the Paris Accord. And so, you know, a lot of work behind the scenes and, you know, starting with, you know, the purported collapse of the Copenhagen negotiations and then And that was in 2009.
And then all the way up to the Paris discussions. And so the United States was able to do that because we had the respect. And quite frankly, we had a lot of personal connections between diplomats, between these countries. These diplomats forged real friendships and relationships with counterparts in other countries. And so, you know, that’s an underappreciated dimension to diplomacy. But, you know, who is behind that podium or that lectern in the negotiations really matters. And so one of the things that we need to do to move the world forward is to get our own house in order.
And so that means to recommit the U.S. government to scientific integrity. To aggressively bring down our emissions, deal with some aspects of adaptation. You know, we really need to get our house in order, otherwise our attempts to influence other countries and assert global leadership are going to fall quite flat. And so that’s, I think, a really important piece, you know, reclaiming Central role in climate change discussions. My time in government was really focused on better understanding the national security dimensions of climate change, which is a bit of a different argument.
And so, you know, that’s basically looking at what effects are ongoing on Climate change impacts. What are their effects on US national security interests? And it’s tied to things like the Paris Climate Accord, but not closely because, you know, I think your listeners almost certainly know that, you know, we’ve got some amount of baked in warming from past emissions, whether that’s 20 years, whether that’s 30 years. We are looking at extended warming on land and in the ocean. And those trends have security ramifications. And just, you know, I can talk about those security ramifications if you’d like.
Like what happens if we don’t do anything or what’s locked in? What happens if we don’t deal with climate change from a security perspective? Right. So if we don’t deal with climate change and just keep emissions going and also at the same time, not really dealing with the impacts, although I think it’s human nature that we will deal with some of the impacts, but probably more in a reactive way than a proactive way would be a pretty terrible outcome. And so basically, there’s a whole number of changing meteorological variables that trigger climate.
Other biophysical, ecological, and sociological outcomes. I think it’s really important when you look at the security dimension, not to just look at, oh, there’s heat and heat waves or there’s sea level rise or there’s a decrease in Arctic sea cover. You have to look at them all. You have to look at all the stressors that you can think of. Even those, and if you’re going to really think of the risk of climate change, you have to even consider those who may be somewhat less likely, or we know with less confidence.
So if you read the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, you see a number of effects. And then the scientists will say, we know this with medium confidence, etc. But if you’re really going to look at the risk analysis, you should look at things that are even known with low confidence, because you need to consider the possible rather than the probable when looking at risk. Basically, you know, there’s just a whole basket of changes in Earth system processes that are occurring. So, and the way that you normally, you know, that I normally talk about this, it just kind of enumerate these changes in these Earth systems, and then just talk about what ramifications they have for people and societies, because that’s how you get the security outcome.
It’s the connection through people. And so when you look at the big system processes that are underway, it’s not just increase in temperatures and sea level and decrease in Arctic sea cover, but it’s also increase in terrestrial heat waves and marine heat waves, increases in drought, increases in some tropical cyclones and intensity and frequency, increases in global mean precipitation. Increasing contrast between wet and dry regions, decrease in permafrost stability, a poleward shift in storm tracks, an increase in wave heights, ocean acidification, a decrease in oceanic oxygen content, increase in floods, increase in mountain phenomena like slope instability and glacial lake outbursts, increases in coral degradation, Poleward movement of animal and plant species, desynchronization of springtime ecological processes, shift in algal, plankton, and fish ranges.
And that’s just a few that we know. There’s a report that came out a couple days ago that really talked about ocean stratification. We need to think about that as well. And so these are the basket of biophysical information. But the impacts on humans and societies, you know, there’s the impact of single extreme events and then compound extreme events, risk to food access and storage and utilization. Disruption of food networks, decreased water, risk to global supply chains, increased displacement of people. You know, I could keep going on and on.
This list is wild already. Dozens of things you’ve just named. Right. Well, I mean, so I think this was my contribution when I was preparing a testimony to Congress on the national security implications of climate change. One of the things I tried to do was to show them all, all that we could enumerate, because these stresses don’t land in isolation. They land in the context of other things going on, which almost means in an amalgamation of Or amplification of stresses. There’s the economic piece.
There’s the loss of shelter and housing. There’s loss of territory and infrastructure or rights from sea level. We’re living through a pandemic right now. Climate change affects on distribution and impact of disease, carrying organisms and pathogens and You know, increase in toxicity and frequency of harmful algae. I mean, I could just sit here and go on and on. And I think one of the reasons why it’s important to do this is climate change is not about one thing. It is this hydra of stresses to biophysical systems, hydra with many tentacles.
And as I said before, Almost no one will feel these stresses in isolation. And so when you start really moving past these stresses, and these are stresses, but then you start talking about security. And so there’s implications for human security from death or injury or water stress or food insecurity or erosion of economic livelihoods or loss of residence and property. Risk to human health, negative impacts on education, intensified violence or crime, or effects on human mobility. And that’s just human security. And when that gets bad enough, it can have effects on the national security, especially of other countries.
And, you know, we’re talking about state conflict issues. Political instability, heightened tensions over resources like water, fish or arable land, adverse effects on militaries, you know, in terms of operations or missions or basings or training or readiness, risks to global systems. And there I mean global systems. Ecological resources like ecosystem services and reduction in marine fisheries or risk to global supply chains, especially the global food supply chain. And I could just keep going on, but I think we’re looking at... The intersection with security that really demands a rethink or a reboot or a remix of what constitutes US national security.
And I say US national security because I’m a former member of the US government, the US intelligence community. But we’re really talking about the national securities of many nations. And so I think it’s really critical to really embrace what it means For protecting the health of U.S. citizens and U.S. national security interests by really taking on board these non-military threats to the nation. And so, you know, traditional national security really thinks of it through a military lens. And, you know, that’s still important.
But, you know, just in the words of former chairman of the Joint Chiefs Maxwell Taylor, he wrote back in 1974 in Foreign Affairs that he was fully convinced that the most formidable threats to the nation were We’re in the non-military field. And he mentioned not just energy security, but he talked about environmental issues and natural resource constraints. And, you know, others around that time were really talking about the biological degradation as an input into national security. And so even back in the 70s, even when the Cold War was still raging, there was a, you know, a real...
I think a widening aperture of what was happening on the planet. Climate change was well known inside of the national security establishment. And it’s mentioned in a number of places inside the U.S. government. But really thinking about what do these threats to U.S. national security interests, how do we Think of the U.S. national security enterprise when the threats to our citizens and our interests abroad, when the threats come from something other than malign actors who we can point guns at or point spy satellites at, when they arise out of the natural world or whatever our natural world is right now because of its enormous human footprint on it.
We’re living an example of a non-military threat through this pandemic that has completely undercut our economic interests and has killed many, many times more than were killed in 9-11. And when 9-11 came... There was a significant, some would say radical, restructuring of the U.S. of the executive branch to address these threats. And so, so much of what the U.S. intelligence community focuses on and the national security community focuses on is counterterrorism. And that’s still important. But I think what this time we’re living through really exposes is a mismatch between the dangers that the 21st century presents and how our national security enterprise is constructed.
Ross Kenyon: So much there, Rod. Wow. Great set of comments there. Thanks for laying all that out. I think that’s a great foundation for people listening. Yeah. When I get worried about climate change, I usually focus on how those ecological stressors will impact human societies. I think about something like changing weather patterns or droughts, causing crop failures. Then there’s maybe an immigrant crisis and people have nothing and are moving to wealthier global north countries. Those countries don’t necessarily want all of those migrants there.
There’s a right wing backlash. This is maybe how you get resource wars or genocides or depending on how bad it gets, I could see like some very, very severe conflicts coming out of this that exposes the worst of what humans are capable of. Is that what keeps you up at night about climate change too? Is it in that ballpark?
Dr. Rod Schoonover: Yeah, you know, I think so much of us worrying about wars and state conflict, and maybe for good reason, but where my brain goes more really is two places. And one is more about And basically... To illustrate this, I often tell people, you know, think about the movie Children of Men, where it’s, you know, a lot of informal government actions or, you know, low-level fighting, but pretty miserable experience that arises out of political instability, social discohesion, unrest. And some of that Has a migration element, but I’m often careful when talking about migration in the context of security, mostly because migration in many ways is the right move when confronted with changing environmental and ecological patterns.
And so I think what’s incumbent is our international policies on migration really need to think about and really come to grips with what we’ll probably be looking at unparalleled movements of people, both electively and some in response to events. But I think we’re going to see a lot of stresses to our international and national migration policies. And the second thing is climate effects land in the context of other social and economic and political conditions. And so one of the other things that really worries me is the rise of disinformation and misinformation.
Or social media does not seem to have much control or decides not to exert control. You’re seeing these disinformation issues. Trends across the board in the environmental space. We’ve, of course, battled it in the climate space. It led to me resigning in protests from the U.S. government, in fact. But you’re also seeing that denial show up in terms of Well, we’re not really facing many extinctions in nature. Oh, the coral reefs aren’t really bleaching. Oh, we’re not really seeing an over-harvesting of fish.
The threads of disinformation that are being fueled by really an enterprise of disinformation producers looking for people online to spread information. That information through misinformation. I sometimes make the parallel that the analogy that disinformation is the infection and misinformation is how it spreads. And so both are really critical in terms of toxifying the information landscape. I think it’s hard to address problems Like climate change or the extinction crisis. If you can agree on the problem to begin with. And it’s really important to consider the human dimensions of this problem as well.
And so I’m quite worried about this information pollution that has been happening For quite some time, but it seems like it’s accelerating. I hesitate to add that I saw from the inside while I was in the intelligence community the efforts of other countries to intentionally disrupt the integrity of information platforms. So I’m no longer in the intelligence community, but I can see the hallmarks of it in many places.
Ross Kenyon: The main thing is, how did I bury the lead? Because I was looking for a way in to talk about your process of resigning and how did it take 45 minutes of recording to get to this? Well, yeah, well, what happened? Why did you resign? What were you presenting? And how did this all unfold?
Dr. Rod Schoonover: So when I was in government, I basically worked for two parts of the intelligence community. So I started out in the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research. And then I took a two-plus year tour at the National Intelligence Council, which is part of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. And in that role, I spanned the Obama administration and the Trump administration. And so, you know, I worked on issues of climate change and water security and wildlife trafficking throughout my career. And so...
I bring this up because over time, I pretty much developed a reputation of being, oh, that’s the person that you want to go to in the intelligence community if you want to talk about climate change, especially climate change. In an unclassified setting, because part of my work was engagement with the public on environmental and ecological issues as they pertain to national security. So basically, I had returned to the State Department because my tour was over, but my reputation was still there. And in 2018, when the Democrats took over the House, They started having holding hearings on climate change, whether it was the Foreign Affairs Committee or the Budget Committee or the Science Committee or the Intelligence Committee.
So I was asked to testify publicly. To the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, which is Adam Schiff’s committee that became more famous during the impeachment hearings. But I was asked to testify for a June 2019 unclassified hearing on climate change. And because it was Intelligence Committee, it was natural to discuss the national security implications because that is a core component of the intelligence community. And so I was back at the State Department. And when you go and testify to Congress, the typical thing to do is to develop a statement for the record.
And it would be entered into the congressional record and available to the American public. And it was broadcast on C-SPAN or some other thing. So I thought this was a good opportunity for the intelligence community To show, especially since it was unclassified, to show that it not only understood climate science, but also could really speak to the repercussions for U.S. national security interests. And I think it was a good way to illustrate for the public how scientific findings from the academic literature... Propagate into statements of risk.
And one of the things I never really liked was when people from the intelligence community would testify to Congress and just pull national security language seemingly out of thin air and say, we assess that China is this or Iran is that. Because this was about climate change and it was unclassified, And whenever you talk about climate change and the ramifications, the foundation of that analysis is climate science. You have to talk about climate science. What do we know? Why do we know it? And where is it going?
And so, you know, out of this 12-page document, there were maybe... Six, seven pages devoted to climate science and kind of going through the argument that I made earlier. Here’s the biophysical, climate, meteorological factors. This is how they affect people. So this document had a substantial amount of climate science. So unfortunately, the National Security Council and the White House Office of Legislative Affairs balked at the inclusion of climate science in this document. And it was already weird that they were demanding to have a say in this because it’s not a normal thing for the intelligence community to get White House approval when it’s responding to its own oversight committee, unless it was very unusual.
One of the hallmarks of the intelligence community is to have analytic independence. Otherwise, why would you believe anything that the Intelligence community says publicly if it has to be vetted by the policy folks, either in the White House or in the upper echelons of the State Department or wherever. So basically, not to go into the full details of this story here, but it was pretty ugly confrontation with the White House folks. And so the White House was staffed with a pretty notorious climate denier. But it wasn’t just this person.
It was several culprits in the White House. But basically demanding that we strip six pages, all of the science out of this and just go with the implications. And the intelligence community is very sensitive to having its analysis interfered with or massaged or whatever. So my bureau at this point, it was the statement from my bureau, not from me. And so, you know, again, it got ugly. But the White House basically made the decision to suppress the testimony. And from being transmitted to Congress.
They allowed me to go to Congress and testify, but I was not allowed to submit the written statement that, again, was 11, 12 pages. And I was granted a five minute summary of my points. And of course, I used that. Five minutes. And I talked about climate science and it was nerve wracking. My heart was pounding. I was worried sick that Adam Schiff was going to ask me whether the White House had tampered with my testimony. But that question didn’t come because I knew if I answered truthfully, which I would have to do because I was under oath, I knew that was going to make the news.
And so my heart was pounding. And I didn’t even really hear his first question because it wasn’t the question I was anticipating. And so anyway, we went through the hearing. It was pretty dull, actually. I thought the questions were quite tame and even from the Republican side. And, you know, I thought that was that. And then... And then the news story broke that they had suppressed the document. And even someone had leaked our actual testimony. I can’t remember who got it, whether it’s the New York Times or the Washington Post or the Wall Street Journal, but basically it became a news story.
And then, you know, and then Chairman Schiff had a follow-on request demanding or requesting that For the State Department to transmit the suppressed document. And I worked immediately afterwards to try to convince State Department leadership to do the right thing. Reject White House interference and in scientific integrity and analytic independence of the intelligence community. And they refused. That was really the killer blow. That was the second round of suppression for the Bureau of Intelligence and Research of the State Department to not be backed by the leadership of the State Department, who by that time Was Secretary Pompeo.
So that was, I think that was when, okay, this is wrong. This is really unusual, inappropriate. And basically, my ability to be analytically independent had been compromised. And I wouldn’t expect anyone to trust what I necessarily said, whether publicly or behind closed doors. So I realized I couldn’t do the job that I was hired to do and had been doing for 10 years. And so I stepped away from a job that I love dearly. And it was incredibly painful getting to that I ended up writing a New York Times op-ed on the matter.
I tend not to be a very public person, especially against my will. I really came to realize that if you see wrongdoing in the government and decide to resign, you have to resign noisily. You can’t just resign and go in the corner and disappear. You have to resign. It was something I thought this was egregious. The inclusion of really mainstream climate science in this document being the reason for suppression, which is so egregious and so bizarre that it needed to be called out. And so I resigned in July 2019.
And then walked away and left government. Wow. That sounds incredibly stressful and like a difficult decision. And public, you know, it was unusual. It kind of tells you a little bit about what’s going on inside of Washington, D.C. You know, I was an intelligence analyst that happened to cover climate change, but I was the focus of at least four rounds of news stories in Washington, D.C. And so it was kind of bizarre, you know. But, you know, it’s funny because... You know, that was July 2019.
And then, you know, I had, you know, some other stories that continued into the fall. But that feels like a thousand years ago now, right? There are just so many things that have happened and so much suppression and so many, you know, instances of not honoring requests from Congress. And, you know, it just, you know, it just kind of incredible, but, you know, Some of my colleagues, you know, will write emails to me and say, well, look what you, you were on the, you know, front end of this.
You started a wave of scientists and other officials leaving government and calling it out. So...
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, it’s certainly a big deal and a lot of integrity to do that. I don’t really get it though because I’ve read some books on this topic like All Hell Breaking Loose by Michael T. Clare and Admiral Stavridis' book on sea power. I know the military and national security folks are preparing for climate change. They’re seeing bases go underwater in the Pacific and in Virginia. They’re worried about Their military readiness being affected by climate change. They’re worried about the Arctic opening up. They’re preparing for battles and jockeying for power in these new theaters of war.
So, I mean, I imagine the White House is doing this for some sort of theatrical panache because the military is certainly preparing for climate change.
Dr. Rod Schoonover: That’s right. I mean, the military has... They’re not ideologues, right? They are... Responsible for the military aspects of the national security of the United States. That makes them very pragmatic. They also tend to be a little bit more long-term thinking in terms of strategic planning because a lot of their financial outlays require it. If you’re building a big battleship or if you’re building an air fleet, You have to consider what the operating conditions are going to be over 10, 20, 30, 40 years, not just one year or two years.
But one or two years is the timeframe the White House tends to operate on. And I would say that both the intelligence communities and defense communities have been thinking about and really doing work. Very serious and sober assessments of the effects of climate change for probably 30, 40 years.
Ross Kenyon: Wow. I didn’t know it was that long. That’s wild. Yeah.
Dr. Rod Schoonover: Well, you know, there are some, I’ve seen documents where, you know, climate change was mentioned in And some of White House documents that go back to the 60s in context of national security. I think the earliest I’ve seen is an LBJ’s White House, I think is the first that I’ve seen. Yeah, it’s either LBJ or Kennedy. LBJ sounds right to me, actually.
Ross Kenyon: Okay. Is there any upside for national security with climate change? I know there’s going to be relative winners and losers, but is there anything that the United States or other national securities around the world might be improved by climate change? Right. Right. Right. Right. That’s right. Right. I mean, the pressures to move.
Dr. Rod Schoonover: Are going to be enormous. Again, some of these will be economic reasons to choose a better life proactively. And, you know, a lot of this is people moving forward, whether you’re in the In the global north or the global south. But that’s exactly right. People, this is not in human nature, just to sit and watch other people have a better life and not want to be part of it. And, you know, the reality is that, you know, despite our, you know, our pretty accurate migration policies in the United States, the United States, you know, the demographers tell us has avoided some of the demographic time bombs that other industrialized nations like Japan or Russia are facing.
Precisely because of this influx of new workers into our system. You know, that’s a bridge too far for a lot of people, but I suspect as the world changes under our feet, not just physically, but, you know, the social and economic and political structures, you know, I’m at least hopeful that we will really reassess and rebalance the positive impacts that immigration has brought to this country. Again, if you do comparative demography to other countries, we look really well off because of that. And, you know, I have not read Matt Iglesias' book on 100 people.
Yeah, 1 billion Americans. Yeah. 1 billion. 1 billion. That’s right. 100 people. Yeah, 1 billion. That’s certainly too many even for Matt, I think. Yeah, 100 would break. You know, it’s an interesting argument. And, you know, certainly that really requires us to think about our own demographics strategically. And, you know, some of that’s migration and some of that is, you know, reproduction policy. But, you know, it’s migration and human movement and the patterns that we kind of see coming.
Are going to present challenges to every country, right? Whether there are the one, the destinations or the sources, they have all kinds of effects on those societies and those nations. And we see this coming. The real question is, how are we going to prepare for it? And I think the worst possible thing that you could do is to not plan and not game out or not to do some kind of strategic forecasting and just act completely reactively. When you react, when you only react, Then you almost never follow the optimal path.
And so we’re in great danger solving one problem at the expense of another problem. And we have so many stresses on us from climate change and disinformation and nationalism and economic and biological and ecological disruption and just so many stresses. And the way that you can optimize this multivariable system is to plan ahead and really think strategically about the future. Otherwise, we just flail.
Ross Kenyon: Well, Rod, I think we should wrap it up there. All right. There’s so much more to cover. I don’t know that we really did this topic justice at all, but I suppose you spent your career talking about this, so maybe I shouldn’t feel too bad.
Dr. Rod Schoonover: That’s okay. You know, I used to teach quantum mechanics. That was my career at one point, and now this is my career.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, you certainly have a lot of different experiences and intellectual pursuits. Rod, where could someone learn more? Is there any resources you might recommend for someone looking to dive into this literature?
Dr. Rod Schoonover: Well, I would say that the website, the Center of Climate and Security, probably has the best repository for They have a podcast too, right? I think they have an emergent podcast, yeah. And so I have not been on it yet, but I think climateandsecurity.org is a really great place to look. And they can Google some of the documents that I have had some hand in producing in terms of worldwide threat assessments. In the past, there was a 2016 report National Intelligence Council white paper on climate change and national security implications that I drafted.
But yeah, I mean, those are at least two. Our European partners have done a lot of great work on this as well. The Potsdam Institute, for one, really looks at this as well. Yeah.
Ross Kenyon: Okay, we’ll link to those documents will be in the show notes as well as your various documents related to your resignation, etc. Books that we’ve referenced. Well, thanks for being here, Rob. Thank you. It’s a pleasure. And thanks for having me on. It was my pleasure indeed. And you can tell because this episode ran way over normal and we could probably do a whole second one if we wanted to. To be continued, I think. Is that okay with you? Absolutely.
All right. Thank you, Rod. Thank you so much for listening. If you like the show, please rate and review it in Apple Podcasts and or Stitcher. It really helps us a lot to get this content to a wider audience. If you think what we’re doing is useful, interesting, fun, hopefully all three, we’d certainly appreciate your rating and review. You can keep up We are also now on Patreon at patreon.com slash noripodcasts if you’d like more content, engagement, and community. And thank you so much for your support.
