Dear Readers

As you know, we've been semi-absent from real blogging for about a week as we wrapped up two reports and prepared for our big event yesterday, Natural Security: Navigating the Future Global Environment. We're going to be relaxing a bit today and tomorrow after a marathon few months, but promise to be back in full force on Monday.

For those of you who joined us, this repeats Nate's opening remarks as he introduced Carol Browner, but it is worth repeating. At our first major energy, climate change and security event at CNAS's June 2008 annual conference, of about 750 registered guests, only about 50 attendees stayed for the discussion. Browner, then moderating the panel, noted her disappointment but declared it an improvement from the norm at that time.

CNAS had over 525 guests register for yesterday's event. We'd planned for about 400, and the room was packed with guests standing around the periphery. And that was on just one week's notice for the event. An order of magnitude improvement in the course of two years.

Natural security issues are clearly taking hold, growing in importance, reaching new audiences, and becoming more mainstream. And rightfully so. As Dave Kilcullen, Bob Kaplan and Rear Admiral Philip Hart Cullom discussed, these issues are global and they shape the world in which we operate. They involve every element of U.S. security. I'm so thankful to our speakers, to all of our guests yesterday, and to you, the readers who check in with us daily to grow our understanding of resources and security issues.

Here are a few things you can expect from us on the blog as we enter our second year. We will design some week-long themes so that we can dig a bit deeper on cool topics. We are going to begin doing more podcasts. We're going to more directly tie our blogging to ongoing projects - in other words, we will sculpt our thoughts and ideas publicly via the blog, and we encourage you to help us debate them. And if there is anything you readers particularly enjoy and find useful for your research, we will try to do more of it.

Thanks again to everyone who joined us yesterday, and to the rocking CNAS team who made the event happen. And thank you all for reading!

-CP