Threat Multiplier

Climate, Military Leadership, and the Fight for Global Security

By: Sherri Goodman

Narrated by: Teri Schnaubelt

Threat Multiplier takes us onto the battlefield and inside the Pentagon to show how the US military is confronting the biggest security risk in global history: climate change. More than thirty years ago, Sherri Goodman became the Pentagon's first chief environmental officer. Indeed, for much of the twentieth century, the Department of Defense (DOD) was better known for containing the Soviet nuclear threat than protecting the environment. And yet, today, the military has moved from an environmental laggard to a clean energy and climate leader, recognizing that a warming world exacerbates every threat—from hurricanes and forest fires, to competition for increasingly scarce food and water, to terrorism and power plays by Russia and China. The Pentagon now considers climate in war games, disaster relief planning, international diplomacy, and even the design of its own bases.

What was the key to this dramatic change in military thinking? What keeps today's generals and admirals up at night? How can we safeguard our national defense and our planet? No one is better poised to answer these questions than Sherri Goodman, who was at the vanguard of environmental leadership among our armed forces and civilian representatives. In Threat Multiplier, she tells the inside story of the military's fight for global security, a tale that is as hopeful as it is harrowing.

©2024 Sherri Wasserman Goodman (P)2025 Tantor Media

Unique insight to the conversations around defense and climate at the highest levels.

Gives a great sense of what is on leaders minds and what it’s like to have to work through bureaucracy in a new role with a strong fresh perspective.

Some parts make me wonder if we should frame climate security issues only in terms of security benefits and separate out non security benefits for non-defense collaborators and other stories felt redundant in messaging but that may be a con of my leisurely listening as opposed to focused reading.