What kind of strategic, collaborative and critical thinking skills will we need to adapt to climate change and biodiversity loss? How can we learn to cooperate and avoid the conflicts that arise from competition for resources?

Robin Phillips, a retired US Army officer with a distinguished career in National Security, has extensive experience in Asia, Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East. She served as commander of the Virginia Defense Force's 1st Regiment and was the first female colonel in the VDF to command at the brigade or regimental level. Proficient in Russian, she holds a Master's in National Security Affairs from the Naval Postgraduate School and has worked on Current and Crisis Intelligence and Strategic Plans and Policy at the Pentagon. Phillips' background in geology also informs her perspectives on environmental impact and climate change adaptation.

ROBIN PHILLIPS

We have a serious lack of critical thinking ability in our population today, not just in the U.S., but I think worldwide. A lot of people really have lost, if they ever had it, the ability to critically analyze: What source did this come from? How believable is it really? A lot of that has to go back to education and a good, solid basis in the reality of the world. We need to focus more on a good, solid scientific education.

The Future of Climate Adaptation and Migration

We need to work together to handle the migrations that will inevitably come because of climate change and loss of human habitat and loss of agricultural lands. 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?

The Role of Billionaires in Climate Solutions

I think a lot of people's view, is that billionaires have ravaged the planet to enrich themselves, and now they're going to go hide in their bunkers and leave the rest of us to die out, out in the apocalypse. And, I think that's a very popular view, but I also think that billionaires have money and things like arks – people who are trying to preserve species or seeds or live plants or some habitat for a creature or trying to manage migrations, any of the things that we need to do going forward – that's going to take a lot of money. Governments have money, but they also are beholden to their constituents who might have other ideas. You talk about how, in America, climate change isn't even on the radar. How are we going to get money for climate change? Thank you. When we don't want to contribute our tax base to that, businesses could be a source, but there's a lot of businesses that are not interested in helping the environment, they're only interested in profit. So, who's left? Well, there's billionaires. Billionaires can spend their money whenever and however they choose, and they have a lot of it.

AI and The Future of Humanity

We have to be really careful that AI doesn't perpetuate the worst things about humanity that have already gone into our systems and our literature, and also that it has some kind of actual judgment in what it turns out. So I would be really, really cautious about giving AI too much leeway at this point. It can be useful as long as we put it inside constraints that we closely manage with great caution.