“The U.S. Navy’s Economic and Strategic Impact from Florida around the Globe” Meredith Berger, Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Energy, Installations, and Environment discusses the Navy's priorities in energy, climate resilience, and infrastructure, including hurricane impacts, before an October 10, 2024 meeting of The Economic Club of Florida.

Show Notes (for complete Show Notes, please visit https://economic-club.com/podcasts-and-summaries/)

Assistant Navy Secretary Berger spoke to the Club by a live video stream as Hurricane Milton was just leaving Florida. She pointed out that hurricanes, storms, fires, other forms of bad weather and climate change are something the Department of the Navy has to prepare for all around the world.

“It's a threat that we see that's not bound necessarily by geography, season or time. It happens in other parts of the world, too,” she said. She referenced a typhoon that struck Joint Region Marianas (Guam and the Northern Marianas) last year.

“Ahead of the storm, we protected our critical infrastructure, secured systems, moved our platforms, everything from cars to ships to aircraft, and we sheltered our infrastructure the best we could so we could get the power back on to our community, both inside and outside the fence line. Because that's how a defense community works. We prepared fresh water, charged devices, aggregated supplies, and then you just sit and wait,” she said.

In her role as Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Energy, Installations, and Environment, she supports what she called the three “C’s”.

• Community – “These are the ecosystems that allow us to survive and thrive, succeed and achieve the economies that support our way of life. It's where our values that we hold and defend reside. It's the institutions you're all a part of, regions, cities, towns. It's where we lead and serve, where our base is and the environment that surrounds them and supports them.”
• Critical Infrastructure – “These are ports, natural and man-made structures, roads and runways, barracks and depots, utilities, energy and water that connect us, sustain us, prepare us, and ultimately protect us.”
• Climate – “We consider this a war fighting advantage, a tactical and strategic enabler and significantly, a conflict deterrent.”

Ms. Berger also serves as the Navy’s Chief Sustainability Officer. “As we think about climate change and whatever term you want to assign to the impact that we're seeing, so extreme weather, heat, drought, floods, resource scarcity, this is a national security threat for us. It's a threat that we take seriously, and we are on the front lines of it.”

One way of being on the front lines is by investigating the need for buried power cables. She discussed last year’s fires in Maui where above-ground power cables were burned. (for the rest of the Show Notes, please visit https://economic-club.com/podcasts-and-summaries/) A TeleDirections podcast