By Brigitte Hugh

Welcome to “Read, Watch, Listen” from the Center for Climate and Security (CCS), a monthly round-up highlighting some of the articles, interviews, and podcasts featuring the CCS network of experts.  

A hot August around the world had CCS experts discussing the security implications of heatwaves, the opening Arctic, and the energy transition. 

Op-Eds

• Elsa Barron, CCS Research Fellow, writes that the heatwaves across the northern hemisphere this summer show climate change is not a future crisis, but a crisis of today. She further notes that the Balkans is one of the most vulnerable regions in Europe to the security risks which arise in a climate-changed world. (Geopolitical Monitor)
• Nonresident Research Fellow Cullen Hendrix joins Morgan Bazilian of the Payne Institute for Public Policy at the Colorado School of Mines, to examine how the war in Ukraine is driving changes toward sustainable energy security and what a good transition will need to include. (War on the Rocks)

Articles 

• As the Arctic warms and becomes an area of increased international attention, the addition of Finland and Sweden to NATO offers the Alliance an important strategic foothold, comments Senior Strategist Sherri Goodman. (AP News) 
• Bob Barnes, Senior Policy Advisor, participated in a panel event at the American Security Project focused on energy security in West Virginia, wherein he noted that some former mine lands in West Virginia could be used for solar power arrays. (Herald-Dispatch)
• A definition of Responsibility to Prepare and Prevent (R2P2), written by Francesco Femia and Caitlin Werrell (CCS Co-founders), was published in The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Urban and Regional Futures. 
• The confluence of poor governance by the Taliban and disruptions to subsistence agriculture will likely result in an increased number of internally displaced people in Afghanistan, warned CCS Director Erin Sikorsky. (Thomson Reuters Foundation)