Strategic Thinking for a Changing World: Environmental Solutions with Colonel ROBIN PHILLIPS

Strategic Thinking for a Changing World: Environmental Solutions with Colonel ROBIN PHILLIPS

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Retired US Army Officer with a Career in Current and Crisis Intelligence and Strategic Plans and Policy at the Pentagon

We need to work together to handle the migrations that will inevitably come because of climate change and loss of human habitat, loss of agricultural lands, things like that. The wisest nation going forward will be the one that can maintain its population through allowing immigration and thinking about where you can draw folks that are coming from stressed environments and they need a place to land and you're losing population. Why should you not accept those people and encourage them to fill the roles that you need them to fill and settle in the areas where you are being depopulated because of falling fertility by choice?

Dr. Jessica Hernandez - Transnational Indigenous Scholar, Scientist, Author of “Fresh Banana Leaves”

Dr. Jessica Hernandez - Transnational Indigenous Scholar, Scientist, Author of “Fresh Banana Leaves”

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Transnational Indigenous Scholar, Scientist
Author of Fresh Banana Leaves: Healing Indigenous Landscapes through Indigenous Science

I live my life embodying the teaching my grandmother instilled in me – that no matter which lens I walked on, I had to learn how to build relationships with the land and the Indigenous peoples whose land I reside on to become a welcome guest. As a displaced Indigenous woman, my longing to return to my ancestral homelands will always be there, and this is why I continue to support my communities in the diaspora. However, my relationships are not only with my community, but also the Indigenous communities whose land I am displaced on, and this is the foundation of my work while residing in the Pacific Northwest. I strongly believe that in order to start healing Indigenous landscapes, everyone must understand their positionality as either settlers, unwanted guests, or welcomed guests, and that is ultimately determined by the Indigenous communities whose land you currently reside on or occupy. This teaching has also helped me envision my goals in life. Every day I get closer to becoming an ancestor because life is not guaranteed but rather a gift we are granted from our ancestors who are now in the spiritual world.

Dr. Mona Sarfaty - Medical Society Consortium on Climate and Health | Dr. Ed Maibach - Communication Scientist

Dr. Mona Sarfaty - Medical Society Consortium on Climate and Health | Dr. Ed Maibach - Communication Scientist

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Executive Director & Founder of the Medical Society Consortium on Climate and Health
Director of the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication

Humanity needs to do three things if it wants to continue to flourish, and it will. The three things that humanity needs to do are decarbonize the global economy, drawdown, capture, harvest much of that heat-trapping pollution that we've already pumped into the atmosphere over the past hundred years because as long as it's up in our atmosphere, we're going to have continued warming. And the third thing that humanity needs to do is become more resilient to the impacts of climate change, which unfortunately will continue for the next several generations at least, even as we succeed in decarbonizing the global economy and harvesting that heat-trapping pollution from the atmosphere.

So these are the three things that have to happen. These three things will happen. The open question is how rapidly will they happen? Any business that can play a vital role in making any one or two or all three of those things happen, those are businesses that are going to flourish going forward. And any business that's sitting on the side and not contributing to one of those three areas, I really think they will become increasingly irrelevant, if not completely antiquated and increasingly understood to be harmful.