A panel consisting of Jay Gulledge, John Podesta, James Steinberg, and R. James Woolsey discuss Climate and National Security: Impacts on Foreign Policy at the 2008 Aspen ideas Festival.
Bio
Dr. Kurt M. Campbell
Dr. Kurt M. Campbell is Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs and formerly Henry A. Kissinger chair, senior vice president, and director of the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).
He is also the director of the Aspen Strategy Group and worked at the Pentagon during the Clinton and first Bush administrations. He lives in Washington, DC.
Jay Gulledge
Jay Gulledge is the senior scientist and program manager for science and impacts at the Pew Center on Global Climate Change. Dr. Gulledge oversees the Pew Center's efforts to assess the current state of scholarly knowledge about the science and environmental impacts of climate change and to communicate this knowledge to policy-makers and the public.
Dr. Gulledge is a Certified Senior Ecologist with more than fifteen years experience teaching and conducting research in environmental science. Prior to joining the Pew Center, he served on the faculties of Tulane University and the University of Louisville, where he developed courses in global environmental change and ecosystem ecology, among others.
His academic research program is housed at the University of Wyoming, where he holds an adjunct faculty appointment. His research investigates how environmental change alters the natural exchange of greenhouse gases between soils and the atmosphere, and he actively publishes in the peer-reviewed literature on this and other global change topics.
He also serves on the editorial board of Ecological Applications, a peer-reviewed journal published by the Ecological Society of America.
Dr. Gulledge earned a PhD (1996) in biological sciences from the University of Alaska Fairbanks and M.S. (1991) and B.S. (1988) degrees in biology from the University of Texas at Arlington. He was a Life Sciences Research Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard University (1997-1999) and a postdoctoral research associate with the Bonanza Creek (Alaska) Long-term Ecological Research Program of the National Science Foundation (1996-1997).
John Podesta
John Podesta is the president and CEO of the Center for American Progress and visiting professor of Law at the Georgetown University Law Center.
Podesta served as chief of staff to President William J. Clinton from October 1998 until January 2001 and was at that time responsible for directing, managing, and overseeing all policy development, daily operations, Congressional relations, and staff activities of the White House.
He coordinated the work of cabinet agencies with a particular emphasis on the development of federal budget and tax policy and served in the President's Cabinet and as a principal on the National Security Council.
Podesta has also held a number of positions on Capitol Hill, including counselor to Democratic Leader Senator Thomas A. Daschle; chief counsel for the Senate Agriculture Committee; chief minority counsel for the Senate Judiciary Subcommittees on Patents, Copyrights, and Trademarks Security and Terrorism and Regulatory Reform; and counsel on the Majority Staff of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
James Steinberg
James Steinberg is the dean and J.J. "Jake" Pickle Regents Chair in Public Affairs at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin.
Previously, he was vice president and director of foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institution. He served as deputy national security adviser to President Clinton and has also served in the State Department as chief of staff, director of the policy planning staff, and deputy assistant secretary for analysis in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research.
He is the author of many books and chapters on foreign policy and national security topics, including Protecting the Homeland 2006/2007 and An Ever Closer Union: European Integration and Its Implications for the Future of U.S.-European Relations.
Robert James Woolsey
R. James Woolsey is chairman of Woolsey Partners LLC and former United States Director of Central Intelligence, heading the Central Intelligence Agency and the U.S. Intelligence Community.
Specializing in a range of alternative energy and security issues, Woolsey serves in various capacities at VantagePoint Venture Partners, Paladin Capital Group and the law firm Goodwin Procter. Previously, he was a vice president and officer of Booz Allen Hamilton, and a partner at the law firm Shea & Gardner (now Goodwin Procter) in Washington, D.C., where he practiced for 22 years in the fields of civil litigation, arbitration and mediation.
Including his Central Intelligence tenure, Woolsey served in the U.S. government on five different occasions, holding presidential appointments in two Republican and two Democratic administrations. He was ambassador to the Negotiation on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe, under secretary of the Navy, general counsel to the U.S. Senate Committee on Armed Services and part-time delegate at large to the U.S.–Soviet Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START) and Nuclear and Space Arms Talks (NST). As an officer in the U.S. Army, he was an adviser on the U.S. delegation to the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT I).
Woolsey serves on a range of government, corporate, and nonprofit advisory boards, chairing several, and has served in the past as a member of boards of directors of a number of publicly and privately held companies, generally in fields related to technology and security. He is a frequent contributor of articles to major publications, and gives public speeches and media interviews on the subjects of foreign affairs, defense, energy, and intelligence. Having received his bachelor's degree from Stanford University, Woolsey earned a master's degree at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar, and a law degree from Yale Law School.
John Podesta, former chief of staff for President Clinton, discusses the complex and unpredictable relationship between climate change and the national security of various countries around the world.
Senior advisor to Senator McCain Jim Woolsey defines the threat posed by climate change and examines whether it is generally accepted by American politicians as a national security threat.
Former advisor to President Clinton James Steinberg speculates on what climate change challenges the next president will tackle first, giving three reasons he could use to quickly prioritize the issue and three reasons he could use to postpone it.
