UCF to Host Forum on Climate Change and Security
By: Mark Freeman
The growing threat climate change poses to national and global security will be the focus of an upcoming forum at the University of Central Florida.
The “Climate Security Update,” organized by the UCF Global Perspectives Office, will be held at 3 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 7, in the Garden Key Room (221) of UCF’s Student Union.
Jim Ludes, executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based American Security Project, will give the presentation. ASP is a nonprofit, bipartisan public policy and research organization dedicated to fostering the knowledge and understanding of national security issues, promoting debate about the appropriate use of American power and cultivating strategic responses to 21st century challenges.
In 2009, ASP released its Climate Security Index, an examination of the national security implications of climate change. The study found that “changes in the Earth’s climate are more evident every day, but the United States has failed to act, alone or with allies, to avoid disaster.”
Ludes served on President Barack Obama’s transition team from November 2008 to February 2009. He worked with the Department of Defense to identify critical issues that would need to be tackled by the new administration, and he later led the administration’s efforts to ensure that nominees for several key Department of Defense positions were confirmed.
Sponsors of the forum include the UCF Global Perspectives Office, The Sibille H. Pritchard Global Peace Fellowship program, Lawrence J. Chastang and the Chastang Foundation, UCF Office of Undergraduate Studies, UCF Global Peace and Security Studies Program, UCF Political Science Department, UCF International Services Center, UCF LIFE and the Global Connections Foundation.
