“[W]e’re facing unprecedented challenges, literally things that have never happened in the history of human kind, and that should give us some pause… Not only rising temperatures but dramatic changes in precipitation, possibility of millions of people having to be relocated, and challenges to governance on scales that we perhaps haven’t seen before,” says Carol Dumaine, deputy directory of energy and environmental security at the
U.S. Department of Energy, in a conversation with ECSP Director Geoff Dabelko.
Dumaine emphasizes that tackling the 21st century’s broad energy and environmental security challenges requires study by experts from a range of fields, including zoology, virology, and information science. To this end, the Department of Energy hopes to leverage its years of investment and research with “the expertise that exists in the private sector and academia and think tanks.”
Looking toward the future, Dumaine identifies global cooperation as key. “The paradigm is a very diffuse, globally distributed risk, and the response must be very diffuse, globally distributed intelligence.”
A Publication of the Stimson Center.
