And were live this morning awaiting the start on the forum from the center for strategic and international studies. Live coverage should start in a moment. Thank you all for we really appreciate you joining us. Thats better. Thank you all for coming today. Really appreciate you joining us here today. Thanks for coming out this morning. I think weve got a really exciting morning of discussion. First of all, breeief introductions, im Whit Saumweber director of the stephenson ocean security project. And from my point of view, there is no better representation of that nexus than the issue of Climate Change and how its impacting our oceans and what that means for our broader world. A few weeks ago the ipcc released reports taking deeper dives into the effects Climate Change is having on this world. One focused on the impact on lands, and the ocean and the cry owe sphere. That report is fascinating. Its the current state of the science about what we know, what we understand, the impacts of Climate Change are going to be on the ocean. And it posted a really, really stark view of the differences between taking strong, aggressive action and taking no action at all, continuing on the course that we are on. It talked about a real divergence in paths with respect to change and adaptation. Now, theres been quite a bit of discussion i think over the past couple of weeks about that report. Were going to talk a little bit about that report today and whats in it. But i want to take a special focus on how the challenges and impacts of the report describes, translates into policy issues and in particular, how those issues are reflected in the security space. Climate has been called a readiness challenge, a source of instability. It poses acute threats for today and strategic threats for tomorrow. But the ways in which the physical and ecological impacts translate to specific Security Issues can be vague and unfortunately as we know, bureaucracies dont do well with vague. I hope our conversation can move that dialogue forward and think deeply about how theyre intertwined. If we do so, maybe we can move toward a more direct approach to coming up with solutions. We need to manage the coming world of today for the changed world tomorrow. The first panel is going to talk about the science of the report and some of those findings and how those findings might effect specific policy issues. The second panel is going to talk about how they translate into security challenges and close up with a keynote where ill be joined by richard john stevenson. I would like to thank you again for coming today and introduce our first panel. Ill run through everybody here and ask our first speaker to come up and say a few words. We have ko barrett, bob watson, we have paula bontempi, and weve got kathy mills. Thank you, again for joining us and, ko, i would like to welcome you on stage. Thanks, whit. Good morning, everyone. Its my job this morning to kick off the conversation by providing some of the most relevant findings from the report that we put out just two weeks ago. And as an introduction to the report, were looking at the ocean and cryoshere. From the very stops of the highest mountains, the polar regions, to the deepest parts of the ocean and what we find is that already there, and especially there, were seeing evidence of humancaused Climate Change. Is someone going to advance these slides for me or should i magically do something . Great, lets go to the next one too. Im not going to be able to talk about the high mountains thanks the coastal some of the coasting impacts in my initial presentation although happy to dive into those with questions. But i kind of view the report where do i point . So ill actually just kind of continue a little bit, well let the slides catch up to us. So kind of one of the main messages emerging just from a macro level from the report is that for decades the ocean and cry o the cryosphere have been taking the brunt of Climate Change. Okay. Great. So the way ive structured this report is to just focus in on a couple of the changes that the report finds have already been observed, to briefly touch on what possible futures could look like, and then to talk about some of the implications for the for marine policy and for species migration, et cetera one of the main report findings is not a new one in terms of green land and an arctic ice sheets melting. The new finding here is that these are the major drivers of accelerated Sea Level Rise. And these areas are melting from below which is causing its now kind of surpassed ocean thermal expansion as a major driver for Sea Level Rise. During the last century, we find that it rose by 15 centimeters. Its rising twice that rate now. With the highest scenario productions, we could be over one meter of Sea Level Rise by 2100. Also, over the last 40 years, Arctic Sea Ice has decreased for all months of the year, but sea ice changes in september which is when we usually see the lowest sea ice is likely unprecedented for the last 1,000 years. Next slide, please. The loss of summer sea ice and spring snow cover on land have contributed to amplified warming in the arctic where surface air temperature has increased by more than double the global average. The ocean has taken up 90 of the excess heat in the climate system and about a quarter of humancaused co2 emissions, making the ocean warmer, more acidic, and losing oxygen. Marine waves, which is a new topic, have doubled in frequency since the 1980s and have become longer lasting, more intense, and more extensive, especially harming warm water corals, kelp forests and the distribution of marine life. I know you cant see the details on this slide but i include it because this is a graphic representation of what our choices are Emissions Reductions look like for some key areas. On the top left is the projections for marine heat waves moving into the future. The blue is kind of a projection for the lowest emissions scenarios that we studied in our report. The red is a projection for the highest emission scenarios. And you can see quite clearly the difference if we choose a more intensive Emissions Reductions pathway. Below that frame is a graphic on Arctic Sea Ice extent which isnt something near 50 reduction. But with the higher emissions scenario, you see near 100 reduction of sea ice extent in the arctic in september. And the large graphic shows the difference that would happen with these two emission scenarios with regard to Sea Level Rise going out to 2,300. So stark, stark difference depending on what action pathway we take. Next slide, please. Clearly there are implications for marine stability and security. Since about 1950, many species have undergone shifts in their geographic range and seasonal activity due to warming, sea ice change, chemical changes to their has been has been talts. Our warms has contributed to a decrease in cash potential. In some areas, changing conditions have contributed to the expansion of suitable habitat. But its not easy. Sometimes the governance structures regulating fishery dont make it possible to take advantage of the benefits that could be seen. Shifts in species distribution and abundance has challenged international and National Ocean fisheries governance including in the arctic and in terms of regulating fishing to secure ecosystem integrity. Food and water security have been negatively impacted by changes in snow cover, lake and river ice and perma frost. They have disrupted food availability within herding, hunting, sustenance living areas, harming the livelihoods and cultural identity of the arctic. I had a chance to visit alaska last month and saw firsthand how Indigenous Peoples are having to change where they go to hunt and its quite extreme. So they have adjusted the timing of activities to respond to changes in the seasonality and the safety of land, snow and ice conditions. Shipbased transportation has increased over the past two decades with sea ice reductions. It poses new risks to the arctic marine ecosystems. Just within a 24hour period, two tourist cruise ships came into port having traversed from green land across the north sea. Next slide. Just final slide for me, the main take away from these messages the faster we act, the more able we will to make changes. Thanks, whit. Thanks, ko. Its a pleasure to be here this morning. I was the former chair of the platform. Ko has covered this already in many respects. You heard how were changing the earths climate. Its becoming warmer. Oceans are rising, sea ice is melting, the glaciers are melting, more pollutants in the ocean, its overfished, most of the oceans. Weve got a problem. It just came back from an arctic meeting and the question they were posing is, is the melting of sea ice an opportunity or a threat to national security. And thats the and they were Foreign Ministers that were there, not environment ministers. But its clear that since the 1950s many marine species have undergone a shift in nature. Theres been a shift in boast speci both species composition in each of these ecosystems. Also, different interactions now between species and these are having cascading affects on both the structure and the functioning of these ecosystems. And just to put it in perspective, these we can Systems Services are absolutely essential to human wellbeing. Theres been a shift in different marine species, both towards the north, in the northern hemisphere, and the south, and since the 1950s, theres been shifts of up to about 50 kilometers per decade in organisms in the upper couple of hundred meters of the worlds oceans and 30 kilometers for species on the sea floor. These are significant changes. Arctic production has increased in the waters and springtime blooms are occurring earlier in the year. Unfortunately many associated Marine Mammals and seabirds have been very negatively affected by habitat contraction. 50 of coastal wetlands have been lost in the last 100 years. 50 . Changes in sea glass meadows and kelp, theyre expanding at high latitude. Significant changes. Coral reefs already adversely affected by the changes weve seen in that temperature more than anything else. But coral reefs are clearly one of the most vulnerable ecosystems in the world. Narrow sensitive to sea surface temperature, theyre sensitive to a lesser degree of Sea Level Rise, theyre sensitive to landbased pollution. Theyre already in serious danger and with these projected changes in temperature in the future, its not unreasonable to say that coral reefs have a very low probability of surviving. What i like about this report is it did look at the full range of plausible temperature changes. The 1. 5 degree report looked at 1. 5 degree celsius. This report did look that we might be on a higher trajectory to a world thats 3, 4 and 5 degrees celsius. And thats my view. The Paris Agreement is a superb agreement. The current pledges are totally and utterly inadequate to meet a 1. 5 degree world. Much more likely to be on a path of 3 to 4 degrees world and this report plays out what are the implications of these higher changes in temperature and one of the most sensitive systems to these changes in temperature are indeed coral reefs when also affected by these other pressures as well. I wont talk about fisheries. Were going to hear much more profound talk in a few minutes. Theres no question, Ocean Acidification along with sea ice changes, continued loss of sea ice is affecting the polar ecosystems, one of the major issues that was talked at the arctic forum a couple of days ago and of course and im sure youll hear more from the fisheries expert and that is to what degree is this going to provide opportunities for fishing in the arctic region versus, as i said earlier, potential issues that we have to look on that national security. But the key point that was talked about at that particular meeting and is raised in these reports, if one is going to have far more exploitation of the natural resources, theyre now much more meanable to extraction. Will we continue in the unsubstantial matter in the way weve exploited the worlds oceans to date, basically. And so fundamentally where are we . Were in trouble. Its very simple. Biodiversity is in trouble on the oceans, on land, everywhere, and these are not environmental issues. These are development issues, Economic Issues, Security Issues, their moral issues, and social issues. And in reality, the results are very similar, thank goodness. To the report we put out in may of this year, as we said, Marine Biodiversity is impacted at an unprecedented rate by human activities. 33 of reef forming coral sharks are threatened with extinction. Only 3 of the worlds ocean is free from human pressure. 3 , basically. Globally, fishing exploitation has had the biggest impact on Marine Biodiversity, but climate is likely to be the dominant driver in the next few decades which is why we have to look at change and biodiversity as one single issue. They cannot be looked at anymore as two separate issues. We have to get the conventions to Work Together and the key issue on all of these things is, these are issues that affect all Government Departments and the stove piping of Government Departments and the stove piping of u. N. Agencies means we do not have the right governance structures to address these particular issues. And the other issue which comes at very nicely in this report is the emerging of plastic pollutions, also a major threat to Marine Biodiversity. With that, all i can say is, we need to act now. We should have acted 10, 20, 30 years ago. [ applause ] good morning, everybody. I do have some slides, if its possible to use them. That would be great. Thank you to whit and csis for the invitation. This is not my normal crowd. I come from nasa. Whats probably more well known are things like, you know, exploration of our solar system and beyond, the mars rover, and then of course the more well known program for looking at the moon and beyond. But we have part of our mission to explore the earth, to understand the earth and think about our observations, models and what we learn about the earth and our research for not only basic and applied science, but for societal benefit. And we do this at nasa using an earth observing satellite fleet. You may be thinking, whats the relevance to Something Like the ipcc report . We have 23 on orbit missions and as you can see from whats shown on the screen, a number of missions that are in formulation, development, and some that have lasted long beyond their scheduled missions and this becomes critical. If we want to look at the entire global earth system and look at the properties of the earth system over time, then this is one way to do it. This is not the only way to do it. This is at a global scale and the partnership with the observations which i have learned over time sustained observations of anything are a very difficult thing to sell and where they come into play is where you have reports like the ipcc. We dont just use the low earth orbit. We actually use our space station as well, owned and operate by a global community, peppered with earthobserving censers, critical for getting a higher spatial, higher resolution view of some of the earths system. This becomes very important when we think about reports like the ipcc. Now, i was tasked to talk to you about ocean production and i wish that everybody in this room knew what that was or why they should care. If you dont, im going to tell you. Im going to walk through this. The ocean has whats known as food changes and a food web. And theyre shown here in these photos. If you look at the righthand side, what you can look at are the producers, right here on the bottom. The primary producers. We have a type of fphytoplankto. They are the equivalent of land plants. They go through the process of photo synthesis where they take Carbon Dioxide and water and produce organic carbon. Why is that important . You just heard details about Carbon Dioxide and what that does to earths climate and the impacts of that on everything living and things not living. And why humans should care and the economics. So lets get to that. Who care is about these tiny plants in the ocean. Phytoplankton conduct 50 of earths primary production with their bio mass turning over in the ocean every two to six days. How do you gauge that change and has that kind of impact on the Global Carbon cycle . Phytoplankton mitigate onethird of human Carbon Emissions each year. You should start to see why these organisms are important in understanding our earths system. The economics of it, i did a simple Google Search of reports and came up with tidbits referenced in recent u. N. Reports. Youll hear more about this in a moment. But fisheries support about 12 of the worlds livelihoods. The ocean contributes greater than 282 billion to the u. S. Gdp. The commercial value of u. S. Fisheries from just coral reefs, just coral reefs, exceeds a hundred Million Dollars and the u. S. Harmful bloom events have an average act of about 50 million each year based on the region that theyre located in. When you start to translate those numbers and i footnoted them all in my notes, that adds up to big business and why we should care even more deeply about something not just for human wellbeing, but for our earth system and economics in general. Lets translate this even further. How do we do this from space . Some of the ipcc analyses conclusions are based on satellite data. From space, this is what a phytoplankton bloom looks like. Right there. The phytoplankton are responsible for going through photo synthesis and this has a huge impact on regional and Global Carbon cycling. Its these guys at play, doing their thing, turning over every two to six days. Remember, they sustain higher levels, secondary production all the way up through fisheries and apex predators that humans are familiar with and use for industry and economics, as well as recreation and et cetera phytoplankton blooms, they change the color of the water. If there are more of them, you can see the water appears different colors, in this case, greenish, certain type of phytoplankton which are indicators of Climate Change respond to Different Levels of cash b Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere. We can see a tight coupling between Something Like primary production and the physical state of the ocean. We observe these variables together. And then we can get things that are outcomes of changing the earths system, meaning shifts in ecological species and a carb carbon balance. If you change one thing in the system, its likely that Something Else in the system is going to respond and understanding those responses allow us to adapt. In this case, Something Like this bloom can do things like reduce water clarify effects. So now taking it all home, what we can do at nasa is do sustained observation at the start of a mission, the color bar on the upper lefthand side shows you how much chlorophyll is in the ocean. The purples and darker blues are lower levels and the greens and reds and yellows along the coast are the higher levels of phytoplankton. This can be coupled to Something Like the analog on the land. And the upper right, you see the land vegetation index. Where this becomes powerful over time is that we can watch the earth breathe. You are actually seeing monthly averages of whats going on in ocean phytoplankton bio mass supporting primary production and whats going on on the land over time. You can look at the arctic and the antarctic, you can see the snow cover and ice cover, you can see it change over time. You can look at areas like africa and see the greening going on, you can see the deserts in brown. You can see the lows, the response of the ocean to things like el nino when they occur in 97, 98 was a big one. You can see changes of phytoplankton at the lower levels. When you start to take some of these impacts that ko and bob have talked about, you think about your phytoplankton and the ocean and production and how important it is, if you think of your house plants at home, what do they need to grow . They need water, not so limiting in the ocean. They need sunlight and nutrients. And when you have effects like heating, warming its going to affect your levels and blossoom. Its a dynamic system and those changes are important to identify with some critical observations. With that, ill turn it over to kathy to talk more about fisheries. [ applause ] all right. I also have slides, hopefully they can get queued up. Im a science at the gulf of Maine Research institute and the gulf of maine is one of the fastest warming regions in the worlds oceans. Since we sort of realized how rapidly the gulf of maine was warming, a lot of my research has focused on how these warming patterns are affecting fish populations, fisheries, and fishing communities and im here today to share with you some of the experiences related to fisheries in the northeast u. S. And hopefully using these examples to demonstrate that the findings and the key messages that are coming out of the special report on oceans and cryosphere are not far away and far into the future, they are messages that are relevant here and now. Were already seeing a lot of these changes occurring in fisheries in the northeast u. S. So i am going to in my talk today, attempt to highlight a few examples related to some of the key themes in this report and i thought this report does an excellent job of highlighting some of the physical changes were seeing in the ocean, particularly that the ocean is warming, warming rates are increasing and marine heat waves are increasing in frequency, and then also calling out and weve heard from a number of these speakers, how those changes are affecting the ecosystem, ecoSystems Services including fisheries and how those affect people on the ground and communities. And then i will conclude with a little bit of touching on some of the challenges were seeing in fishery Management Systems, governance, and adaptation challenges. Just to orient you to some of the warming that were experiencing in the gulf of maine, this is a time series of our sea surface temperature anomalies back to the start of the satellite sea surface temperature record. And we have been experiencing a warming trend over time. The overall trend that i show in this figure is that the gulf of maine is warming. 04 degrees celsius per year. That doesnt sound like a lot. Were warming four times faster than 99 of the rest of the worlds oceans. And heat waves have become something that we are seeing frequently in the gulf of maine. I think that in 2012 we experienced a major heat wave that spanned the northwest atlantic and i think our work around this heat wave was the first time that the word heat wave was used in association with ocean and marine settings. During this event, we saw temperatures running two to three degrees warmer than the longterm average, all the way from Cape Hatteras in North Carolina, over to iceland and north into the labrador sea. During that summer, the gulf of maine experienced temperatures that were about three degrees warmer and weve seen heat wave events for substantial portions of 2017 and 2018 since that time. The warming trend, as well as the heat waves all have ramifications for species in the ecosystem. Im going to go through a few examples of changes that were seeing and what that means for fisheries in the region. Im going to start with gulf of maine cod. Cod has historically been a really important fishery. Its the fishery at the heart of new england. It was the commodity that supported the colonial economy and fishing on cod has persisted for centuries. Over that time we have experienced periods of overfishing on cod, but in recent years, the systems that we put in place have really reigned in overfishing and what we have seen in more recent years, though, is that climate is throwing a new wrench into fishery management and introducing new challenges. So in the way that we do fisheries management, we take observations of fish in the ecosystem and put those together to try to develop an estimate of how large the population is. With gulf of maine cod, this process doesnt account for environmental conditions. But with cod, weve seen that not accounting for temperature really led to major challenges in terms of how we assess the state of the stock and manage it on that stock. By not accounting for the rapid warming that we have seen in the gulf of maine, we were not picking up on declines of recutement of cod that were tied to that warming trend and we were assuming that the stock could be fished harder than it could in reality. Even though the Management Systems was operating within the bounds of scientific information it was provided and fishers on the water were operating under those rules, the stock has been ov overfished in recent years because of the major changes that are occurring in the ocean. When we look forward into the future, under a variety of temperature scenarios, the warm scenario were using is roughly equivalent to the 8. 5 temperatures, and its aligned to the warming rates we have been experiencing in the region in recent years. When we project the population out to the future, under some temperature conditions, we expect the stock to recover to a sustainable level. But thats with no fishing happening on the stock. And under the warmest condition that we simulated, which is on par with our recent warming rates, we actually cant recover this stock to what we would consider a sustain level. This points to both the need for considering how we keep temperatures within reasonable biological realms but then also how we manage to support stocks that are operating under different and new physical conditions. The future of cod in the gulf of maine will depend on fishing rates, fishing levels and temperature. I want to describe a little about our experiences with american lobster. American lobster i want to show you in these figures, the gray dots are the time series of the population. You can see that the population has been increasing, while the population in southern new england is declining. Did that help at all . Its on . Okay. Ill just keep going. Hold it closer, got it. We have seen contrasting patterns in the gulf of maine and southern new england and through some modeling work that weve done, what were seeing in southern new england is that temperatures are exceeding thresholds that lobster can tolerate. Its contributing to the decline of that population. Whereas in the gulf of maine, weve moved into a sweet spot of temperatures that are encouraging lobster production right now. The gulf of maine is benefitting from this warming in terms of its ability to produce lobsters, but looking forward, that may not be the continued pattern. And i do want to highlight because it comes out in the special report on oceans and cryosphere the connection. We also looked at some of the management approaches that have been used for lobster in the different regions. In the gulf of maine, for over a century, theres been a practice of marketing female lobsters that have eggs and throwing them back. A strong conservation ethic to return these females so they can continue to producing future generations of lobster and what we looked at is, if we had not had that practice in maine, how would these populations look now. What we see here essentially do i have a pointer . Is if the gulf of maine had fished on those larger female lobsters, the population would have been lower than it is in actuality whereas in southern new england, if those large female lobsters had been protected, the population could have been doing much better than it currently is. These issues are intertwined and need to be sort of factored together with one another. And i also i dont have a slide for this, but since we have talked about heat waves, i want to mention that the 2012 heat wave that we experienced had major ramifications for the lobster fishery. During that year, the temperatures warmed up earlier than usual, lobster landing started coming on line really early. What we saw was a breakdown in the supply change beyond that point. There wasnt capacity in place, there was an overlap between the american and canadian lobster season, it resulted in a glut of products sitting on the market and a backlog even at the processing stage that led to a major price collapse. And it triggered a change in the conversation in new england. So i want to highlight that even though i dont have it in my slides. And then the last example i want to offer you is that we are experiencing changes in species distributions. In general, many species in the northeast are moving northward and to deeper waters as they try to track cooler temperatures. This is affecting fisheries as well. Here im showing you in the map a figure for where summer flouder are being caught and what you see in blue is that in the 1990s, summer flounder were being caught in North Carolina and virginia. Around 2010, those summer flound flounder catches were taking place in new jersey and long island. And this type of pattern playing out across many species is also also creates the potential that new opportunities could arise as species move into waters that they havent previously occupied. But this is where how we governor fisheries comes into play. For summer flounder and species along the east coast of the u. S. , we use a process where the overall allowable catch is proportioned out to states. So states are given certain shares of the quota based on their historical landings in the fishery. For summer flounder, these were set in the 1980s and we didnt design a system that would plan for change in the future. We used similar types of systems for multinational arrangements for sharing the catch between countries. So this is a system that is currently sort of breaking down as we see shifts in species and it has a lot of implications for adaptation. Im going to end with a few comments related to one focused place, stoningtown maine. It lands 50 to 60 million worth of lobster every year and most of the landings are just lobster. 99 of the landings. In stonington, what we see is we expect those lobster the availability of lobster to decline by about 20 . There are new species moving in, like black sea bass and squid. So really the future of stoni stonington will be shaped by the ability to tap into some of the resources that are moving into waters that they currently fish and that gets back to our ability to create arrangements that will support that adaptation. But the future of stonington is not just about its ability to adapt, looking at the prospect for a 20 decline in lobster has major ramifications for the tax base of this place. At the same time that theyre confronting a variety of adaptation needs and infrastructure investments. One of the issues is Sea Level Rise because stonington is connected to the mainland by a cause way. The future of fisheries in stonington isnt just about adjusting to the species available, its also going to be tied to the ability to preserve shoreside infrastructure and the transportation network. And so thinking about adaptation in more holistic matters and integrating those together i think is a realm that we havent really tackled in our approach in the past and its an approach that we need to invest in much more heavily moving forward. Thank you. [ applause ] thanks, kathy. We had a really great compelling conversation about what the ipcc report has to say with regard to coming impacts and about how those impacts translate into ecosystem change. And i wanted to touch on a little bit something i think that is there but maybe gets lost in the dynamic of conversation around different pathways, mitigation pathway, business as usual pathway. And weve locked ourselves into dewa decades and centuries of change. I guess this is a question to the panel generally which is maybe you could comment about how weve moved beyond the steady state ask how were going to continue to see change and what that might look like in the coming decades. Ill ask anybody who wants to take a stab at that. Well, as i said, the Paris Agreement, which was endorsed by literally every country in the world including u. S. Is on paper a superb agreement. It argues we should keep global warmings to less than 2 degrees celsius. All the evidence is such that were not on that pathway now. Were on a pathway to three to four degrees celsius. Even a 1. 5 or 2 degree world has significant impacts on Marine Biodiversity, fisheries and the terrestrial system. Were focusing here on the ocean, but the terrestrial implications of the 1. 5 degree are still quite bad. 3 to 4 degree world. Therefore we have to put as much effort on adaptation to these changes as we do to mitigate them. Weve fwaut to get governments working with the private sector, working with Civil Society to realize there are incredible opportunities for transformational change to make our carbon system low carbon, to try to get close to the Paris Agreement. As i say, we equally at the same time have to learn to adapt to changing climate. This is going to be a real challenge to be quite candid. By diversity terms, ecological terms, its the rate of change thats going to make adaptation incredibly hard. Not just the magnitude but the rate of change. Well see further changes lost in both terrestrial biodiversity and in Marine Biodiversity. As i said, the problem is these are not simply vooirenvironment issues. These are development issues. They affect food, water, security, human health. Migration patterns of people being displaced by Sea Level Rise around the world. Youre bringing social conflict, even potentially armed conflict. We really do need to recognize the Economic Issues as well. Climate change causes significant economic costs, actually. Loss of biodiversity causes economic loss. As they say its a security issue. I think the challenge however, what i would say is i think most governments do now realize were failing in implementation. Theres a vested interest in trying to control the status quo we have today. All Government Departments have to Work Together on these issues. All u. N. Agencies. We have to work with the private sector. Its doable. Weve laid down what are the technologies, what are the policy changes. Evolution of economic system, getting rid of perverse subsidies in Transportation Energy fisheries, for example. So its doable. We just need to have the political will. I would also add building off your comment about the rate of change and its importance for biodiversity. I think the rate of change is also the real sort of key element for adaptation of Human Systems as well. We see that in many cases people can cope with change, but only to a certain point. And being able to move beyond that humans only have the ability to adjust so quickly in terms of how they do things. We need to think about putting governance and Management Systems in place that can inherently accommodate the dynamics of the ecosystemecosys. Were moving into a new era where were seeing change happen so quickly. Building systems that inherently accommodate that change is going to be really important moving forward. Its a great point. You talked about how our management structures here in the u. S. Where we have the the best in the world, quite frankly, are not able to account. Its not like theyre migrating to an end point. Theyll continue to move as the Climate Changes in the coming decades. To your point, the idea that we need to build systems and institutions that are dynamic. Able to deal with changing status quo. You talked a lot about biodiversity and how that climate is going to become the biggest driver of biodiversity loss in the coming decades. Can you talk about the resilience to change and how theres a real negative impact, not just from the loss of biodiversity on existing services but the ability to withstand change. Im not quite sure what youre looking at, but theres no question that as were losing biodiversity were using resilient systems. No question at all about that. Both terrestrial and the marine biosphere. These are fragile systems. And the problem is once you lose biodiversity, its irreplaceable basically. This is obviously both marine and terrestrial. We actually said that one million species out of eight million were in threat of extinction. We lost 75 species in the historical past. As you lose individual species, you change the interaction between the species and it very much changes the dynamics, the resilience of the systems, the ecoSystems Services they provide to us human people. We have to basically see how you keep these eco systems intact. People focus on individual species but the big change is keeping the ecosystems intact, especially terrestrial eco systems. Fundamentally, we have a major challenge. As i said there are practices and technologies that can address these issues in a fairly straightforward way. There really is a moral dilemma here as well. In my day job i have a program under my jurisdiction that looks at ocean exploration. We are still discovering new species every time we go out with an explosion toration tour. Its a travesty that has to be considered. Excellent, thank you. We have a few minutes for audience questions. Do we have mics . Given we have a short period, maybe we could take three questions and well go to the panel with those three questions. Try to keep them brief as possible. So i see one person up here. Two people up here. And is there a third . One over there. Can you pass the mic around . Thank you, appreciate it. Good morning, everyone. Im a graduate student talk a little louder. Is this better . Yeah. Okay, beautiful. Im graduate student from Johns Hopkins university. Thank you very much for your sharing. Theres a very insightful point during your discussion about how this Climate Change is a systemat systematic manner and how political governments can make a big difference. Heres my question. Please bear with me. I want to push forward. Instead of discussing the impacts, maybe you already have the solutions and approaches to address this problem. Is it possible that we can utilize what poses as challenge right here into an advantage. Because of heat waves is one of the biggest impact that comes along with the climate, global warming. But is it possible that we can transfer this Thermo Energy into something that is a Usable Energy . Also, this lady, she mentioned there would be loss of work on the plants or, you know, like bacterias, like a microwave, like agents that can transform the Carbon Dioxide and sunlight into oxygen. So the emerging biology editing techniques as well, is it possible we can utilize some of the bacterias or the plants that is sensitive to this heat or sensitive to this warming temperature, you know, to actually do something good and transfer all this Carbon Dioxide into the oxygen . Thank you. Im steve barks. Retired physicist. Ive been looking at the regulatory issues about surrounding the zones and how Development Processes in both europe and the u. S. And probably everywhere else has put a great deal of pressure on the nursery are areas. How does this affect the fisheries and what do you think can be done to enhance the preservation of these . Because the rising sea levels will push the marshlands back, but the cities will block that progress so youll end up with limitations and reduction of those marshlands. Thank you, and then one more over here. Thank you, im a aaasdp fellow. You spoke on the need to come up with ways to manage our fisheries better. I think theres been a push to eco system based management of fisheries. But if were changing the base lines and were changing the distributional ranges, how do we then basically have a moving system . Right . The eco system is moving across the space. And youre going to have to have a Management System that has to be transboundary dealing with maybe even rethinking the law of the sea and the eez to be able to if you could speak to that that would be great. Really good question. Ill summarize quickly. We had one about the opportunities, winners and losers in any changing system coming with Climate Change. One about the challenge having to do with i think im going to summarize by saying the loss of coastal ecosystems and the tension between the need to adapt coastal infrastructure and the loss of systems and impacts. And then the third, which is the challenges of building around the system, especially if it comes with international and intergovernmental relationships. I can probably start on the engineering. But the every time theres a report, an assessment, a recommendation, an idea about engineering of some sort coming to the rescue of any sort of climate challenge, we read it with great interest. Nasa is not a policy institution, were more on the r d side. But theres been reports of geo engineering can we do things with it. People study all kinds of alternatives. I think its good to encourage that. Ive yet to see a proposed idea or solution that really understands the earths system or an eco system as a whole and takes every aspect into account before implementing everything. Its kind of like before you flip that switch you may not be able to flip back and changing something or introducing a species into an ecosystem that may decimate it for a short term fix, i think we have to have a better understanding of all the aspects of an ecosystem and what the longterm implications of Something Like that is. You can draw, dump a bunch of iron into the ocean, draw down co2 but most model show its back in the atmosphere within 40 or 50 years. So short term fix, you know, longterm problem. Thinking about the Management System issue. I can comment on the fishery questions. Thefirst question im glad that paul can handle. You know, to the public questions related to fish, obviously the question about habitats is important. We recognize those are sort of critical habitat areas for many fish species that do then go on to either provide important prey in the ecosystem or to support fisheries directly. I would say this is something ive been interested in for a while but havent moved down the path of. We dont have a lot of information on how that habitat area and quality goes up to a level. Without that framework in place, its hard to determine if you see changes in aggregate area or location of different areas. How it will affect populations at a higher level. So i think this is a science gap that will be an important to area to address moving forward. Particularly as we see distributions changing as well. Do you want to add anything to that one . All right. What about the idea that International Institutions need to adapt . International institutions need to adapt and how we think about our relationships across boundaries. Theres no question whether its a Climate Change issue or biodiversity issue. As i say i think they one issue now. We need institutions and organizations to adapt both nationally and internationally. Theres no question whatsoever about that. We dont have the right institutional organizational structures at the National Level or interNational Level. When we say transformative change is needed, one of those transformative changes is in government structures basically. The basic problem is theres no trust. Theres limited trust between governments developed, let alone developed and developing. Limited trust between governments and the private sector and still until we all recognize where the major challenge for the survival of earth. We need to Work Together. Were not going to traeaddress e issues to be quite honest. Building trust is going to be an issue. Another reason we have to look at Climate Change and biodiversity, literally every large scale climate model that says we have a chance of getting to 1. 5 or 2 degrees celsius relies heavily on using bioenergy, often coupled would Carbon Capture and storage. The trouble is, if you do go to large score monoculture, it potentially could threaten biodiversity if youre replacing a culture, a native forest or grassland with a mono culture. If you encroach on the land, you threaten water security. You need to look at the issues together. Some biodiversity can be good. We have to look at the synergies and trade offs, both technologies, policies and factors. And thences Sustainable Development goals. All these are coupled together. They cant be look at one at a time. On the geo engineering we need to do a lot more research to understand the potential benefits and the potential risks. And we clearly should not be trying to geoengineer a world we cant understand at the moment. Thank you so much. Id like to break there for our coffee break. We do have time to get coffee. Thank you all, really appreciate it. We look forward to getting some of these questions and the nexpanel as well. Thank you. Were back with the president of the American Vaping Association. Were going to talk about the recent Health Concerns related to vaping and e cigarettes. Greg, good morning. Thank you for having me. Lets start off with who does the American Vaping Association represent, which companies . We dont represent any companies. Were a 501 c 4. When i was in law school i quit smoking with vaping. In 2010 i became an advocate for vaping. We do receive our funding from small and medium sized businesses in the vaping industry. When you say small to medium sized businesses, are we talking about people vaping shops . Who are we talking about. A mix of independent manufacturers, distributors, retailers, as well as concerned consumers. What is the intended purpose of e cigarettes . Why do they even exist . Sure, vaping products exist because in 1976, it was written smokers smoke from the nicotine but die from the tar. There was no way to deliver nicotine in an inhaled form that was pleasurable but you el eliminated the smoke. The purpose of vaping, why they were invented, was to provide adult smokers, ones who have tried to quit many times to give them nicotine without smoke. Weve succeeded. Weve had well over 3 million american smokers make the switch to vaping. Virtually all in Public Health, including the fda and National Company of science agree. As long as the make the complete switch and no longer smoke any cigarettes theyre benefitting their health. You said earlier that you used e cigarettes yourself to stop smoking. Yes. Do you still use e cigarettes as a pleasure product, or is this something that should only be used instead of medical uses. Its not a medical use, but its a replacement. Harm reduction is about meeting people where they are. I use nicotine and i enjoy it. When i tried today get off nicotine using the gum, patch, i reverted back to smoking. Thats the last thing many in Public Health want to happen to smokers or ex smokers. Weve seen a lot of news lately about people being harmed through vaping. So what is your response to these public concerns about whether any type of vaping, e cigarettes can be safe to use . The word safe shouldnt be us used, its safer. Theyve estimated it to be 95 less harmful. Whats been happening in america is that contaminated thc cartridges. Those made and sold by the drug dealers. Its not the thc thats the problem, its the cartridges that ends up just yesterday, we as well as many in Public Health have been criticizing the cdcs slow response to this. Even though multiple state Health Departments were saying whats happening in our state is contaminated thc cartridges, not the nicotine products. Finally the cdc came out with evidence showing that overwhelmingly cases are linked to these illicit products and its one particular brand, a fake brand. Its not a real brand thats sold in any medical store, its a product that in wisconsin and illinois, 70 plus of the patien patients that got sick reported using the product. Lets back up two steps to make sure we know what were talking about. Thc. Marijuana. So the thc, which gets you high from the marijuana plant, and you put it in a cartridge designed for oil. That was my next question. Explain to us what youre talking with the cartridge. What is the difference between the cartridge and e cigarette. Oil inhaled into your lungs, especially with additives and pesticide chemicals, thats how you get pneumonia. Vaping products are water soluble and the main ingredient, Vegetable Glycerin doesnt have oils in them. Theyve been trying to get the message out that its not nicotine vaping products that are causing people to inhale oil into their lungs, its thc carts. Is this a battle between the established companies who are making the e cigarettes that are sold in stores and bootleg sorry. Bootleg cartridges that people are finding out on the streets . Yes. Its not so much a war, its just the fact this is a natural consequence of prohibition. Once you had colorado, washington, california legalize and regulate marijuana, they created these products and if theyre sold in a legal market where they have regulations and testing, by and large, if youre an adult theres no chases of a link to illegal products. Once you have states that open up and create this technology, people in wisconsin, new jersey, they want to access those product and they cant buy them legally. Who do they turn to . Drug dealers. Drug dealers dont abide by any regulations. Lets let our viewers join in this conversation. If you want to have a question to ask or if you want to have your point on the show, we want you to call. Were going to open up the regional lines for you. If youre in the eastern or central time zone, you can call 2027488000. If youre in the mountain and pacific time zones, you can call 2027488001. Keep in mind you can always text us at 2027488003. Were always reading on social media on twitter and on facebook. One of the things the government has talked about, sfat atate an federal government is removing flavors. Whats your organizations opinion of that . And what if the government includes flavors like mint and menthol . I think those are the ones that the industry is pushing back the most on, why . Its really only one particular company, juul that is pushing back. The vape shops across the country, about 10 of their sales on any given day are tobacco or mint or menthol. Fruit and sweet favors, theyre the most used product by adults despite the rhetoric saying that flavors only exist to lure youth. Consumers, long before the Tobacco Industry thought that this was viable, they started creating their own. The industry responded. Users of tobacco flavors are more likely to still be smoking because tobacco flavors are a poor imitation for what a cigarette tastes like. That leads people to continue to smoke. Fruit and sweet flavors, not just the most popular flavor among adults, but among the adults who have switched. What type of regulation does the industry think is appropriate . No ones arguing that children should not use these products at all. What type of regulation does the vaping industry think should be in place . Advocates have come around on the idea of tobacco 21. We recognize that when you have 18 and 19yearold High School Seniors who are able to purchase products and become dealers at their school to freshmen, sophomores, juniors, thats bad news. For the past six seven years weve been advocating for congress to set up a standards based standards. If theres harmful chemicals they dont want to be in, they should set a standard. What we have instead is the prohibition. You have the prospect of one year from now, four companies all of which sell cigarettes as well. They subsidize their season. All these small businesses, theyre gone. Lets go to our telephone lines and talk to michael who is calling from leland, mississippi. Michael, good morning. Good morning, how are yall . Good morning. I dont remember if you remember me, but you came down and met with representative thompsons office here in mississippi. I first off want to see thank you for the advocacy. I cannot stress to you how important this industry is to werent smokers and former smokers as well. Because i have thousands upon thousands of stories from customers who this has helped. This has done so much for people that have tried everything. When nicotine its in the same drug category as caffeine. Its a stimulate. If you asked a doctor, its not they dont want you to do anything. But if you lay a pack of cigarettes and a vape down in front of your doctor and you tell them im going to do one of these, you choose. Every one of them will choose the vaporizer over a cigarette because they know. They cant prove it because the science it hasnt been out long enough to do these longterm studies, which we do need. But when i see every day people come in and say thank you for this, this has helped me so much. I feel so much better. Food tastes better. I smell better. My family can tell the difference just in the amount coating my lung with tar anymore. It sounds like you sell e cigarettes . Do you own a store . I own a vape shop and im a vapor as well. My wife quit using vaping about six years ago. She was a pack and a half a day smoker. Whats truly special about him is that he is as i recall in greenville, mississippi, one of the poorest areas of mississippi where 25 plus of the Adult Population still smokes. And so especially in those areas of the country, where certain areas of this country youre down to 10 and below adult smoking, those are the areas where big tobacco is truly killing people and they need the competition, or else people are going to continue to smoke. Thank you. Lets go to ann who is calling from maryland, good morning. Yes, first of all, i want to say that i know what im talking about, i worked for nih, National Institutes of health. And the chemicals they put in cigarettes is whats killing everybody. These new gadgets, vaping, thats what is killing people. People need to roll their own. Another thing what . Dont smoke things in general. Dont smoke tobacco. Hold it. Hold it. God did not invent tobacco to kill us. As long as you do it moderately theyve been smoking tobacco for thousands of years. The only it started killing everybody when they started putting all those chemicals in it. Secondly people should watch a program, a documentary called a wolf in sheeps clothing about sal alinsky. Thats the truth of whats happening in this country. Thank god for donald trump. One more thing you had hillary on this morning, the show before this one, and Georgetown University was purchased in a private were not on topic there. Let me let you respond to she seems to think rolling your own cigarettes would be safer. Your argument is that no cigarette is safe. Certainly added chemicals as well as the fact they spike the nicotine in order to keep it consistent and make you get a big puff of nicotine that makes you smoke more, but ultimately, inhaling smoke into your lungs many times a day is not a good idea. And the science, including people who used to work at nih have stated that vaping is and remains far less harmful than smoking. I have to bring up the fact that juul announced its replacing its current ceo with an executive from a Tobacco Company. If youre saying the two things are not really good, why would an e Cigarette Company bring in someone from a Tobacco Company . Juul sold off 35 of their company to again, thank you to the panel. Im going to sit down and be quiet and t