https://www.youtube.com/live/uQVCFTc5MCg?si=E0Ik42hYcwH5VK9U
I never thought that a Bush-era Colonel - Chief of Staff to Colin Powell -would be someone I would ever interview, but here we are!
Col. Lawrence Wilkerson spent 31 years in the U.S. Army and was Chief of Staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell during the George W. Bush administration. So obviously, Larry and I come from very different places politically.
But that is also why I wanted to talk to him.
Over the years he has become an outspoken critic of American foreign policy, our endless wars and the people who keep getting us into them. The big thing for me, what caught my attention is that he talks about something I don't hear enough former military people discussing -climate change and what it is doing to geopolitics.
I have spent years talking about climate change, ecosystems, wildlife and what humanity is doing to this planet. But climate change isn't staying neatly inside the "environmental" box.
The Arctic is melting. Russia has an enormous Arctic coastline. Shipping routes are changing. Access to resources are changing. Nations are already looking at what a warmer Arctic means strategically and economically!
There really is something pretty disturbing about watching the planet melt while governments look at the melting ice and see new shipping lanes, oil, gas, minerals and geopolitical opportunity- yet we are increasingly disturbed.
Then there is the Middle East - extreme heat, water, food, migration, war and instability -all happening on a planet that continues to warm. Enter 1.5 ++++++++
I wanted to hear from someone who spent decades looking at the world through a military and national-security lens.
Welcome Col Larry.
I think this is going to be a fascinating conversation and certainly one I never expected to be having.
Sandy