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Joshua Busby is a Professor in the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas-Austin. From 2021-2023, he served as a Senior Advisor for Climate at the U.S. Department of Defense. His most recent book is States and Nature: The Effects of Climate Change on Security (Cambridge, 2023). He is also the author of Moral Movements and Foreign Policy (Cambridge, 2010) and the co-author, with Ethan Kapstein, of AIDS Drugs for All: Social Movements and Market Transformations (Cambridge, 2013). His main research interests include transnational advocacy and social movements, international security and climate change, global public health and HIV/ AIDS, energy and environmental policy, and U.S. foreign policy.

Recent Posts

World AIDS Day 2014: Five Data Points, Four News Items, and Three Films

World AIDS Day 2014: Five Data Points, Four News Items, and Three Films

by | 1 December, 2014 |

Today is World AIDS Day, an annual day of remembrance and reflection on the global AIDS crisis held since 1988. Overshadowed this year by the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, we should keep in mind that this problem is not over even if it has receded from news coverage in recent years. Here are 5 facts and 4 news items about the state of the current epidemic to keep in mind, and 3 recent films - How to Survive a Plague, Fire in the Blood, and the Dallas Buyers Club, which help bring some context to understanding grassroots mobilization in the U.S. and internationally to combat the AIDS...

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Ebola is Not Over

Ebola is Not Over

by | 26 November, 2014 |

The Ebola crisis isn't over. In the absence of new infections in the United States, Americans have moved on to other preoccupations (Ferguson anyone?), but the problem hasn't gone away even if Google searches have plunged. There has been some positive news out of Liberia with a decline in the rate of new infections from 80 new cases per day to about 20 to 30, but the news from Sierra Leone suggests the problem is far from under control, with the end of the rainy season potentially making transit easier and facilitating the spread of the virus further. More troubling still is the new hot spot...

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Historic Bilateral Climate Agreement Between the US and China

Historic Bilateral Climate Agreement Between the US and China

by | 12 November, 2014 |

Here was my Tweet the other day. Today we have an answer. Tweeps, best case scenario on climate coming out of APEC? — Josh Busby (@busbyj2) November 7, 2014 If you went to bed early on Tuesday night, you might have missed some very big news out of Obama-Xi meeting in Beijing, other than announcements on trade and regional security. I'm talking about the potentially momentous bilateral agreement on climate change where China announced for the first time a date -- "around 2030" -- for peak greenhouse gas emissions and the United States announced a 2025 emissions reduction target. This is big...

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China Tries to Come to Grips with Pollution

China Tries to Come to Grips with Pollution

by | 5 November, 2014 |

In the lead up to the APEC summit about to start this week in Beijing, China’s leadership undertook a series of emergency measures to avoid the continued embarrassment of a string of poor air quality days that had bedeviled the country over the previous year. The government reinstated the familiar practice of restricting car travel to certain days of the week based on license plate numbers. Government workers and schools were closed for an “APEC holiday” to reduce traffic. Factories have been ordered to shut down during the summit. Interestingly, those plans seemingly backfired as companies...

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Advice for a Junior Colleague

Advice for a Junior Colleague

by | 2 November, 2014 |

What kinds of advice do you give junior colleagues early on as they think about what it takes to get tenure and promotion? With some new colleagues, I've been giving that some thought based on my own pretty recent experience. Obviously, some guidance is institution-specific, and I have a fairly idiosyncratic circumstance in a policy school. Nonetheless, I think there may be some generalizable lessons, with the focus here on research. Where Are You Thinking of Publishing? Some schools have point systems for particular journals. Some have informal guidance about what journals matter.  If you...

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The Future of Climate Governance: Lessons from Failure

The Future of Climate Governance: Lessons from Failure

by | 25 October, 2014 |

As I mentioned in my previous post on climate and security, I went to Colorado College last week for two talks that Andrew Price-Smith organized. The second talk covered the theme of global climate governance (slides here). Last month, both Jennifer Hadden and I wrote about the People’s Climate March and the renewed optimism about possible international progress on climate change that accompanied the UN leaders meeting in New York. I wanted to expand on the theme, not simply because of the talk in Colorado. The strategy for next year’s climate negotiations has been in the news of late. Just...

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Climate and Security Revisited

Climate and Security Revisited

by | 17 October, 2014 |

I made two presentations yesterday at Colorado College where I first talked about climate and security and then spoke about global climate governance. I'll post about each issue in turn. With the Pentagon this week releasing its new strategy on climate change adaptation, this is a timely moment to revisit how far we have come with climate and security (slides from my presentation here). In the mid-2000s, climate activists began casting about for new ways to frame climate change as a way to broaden their coalition. One way was to frame climate change as a security threat. Tom Friedman and...

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The Strange Death of Liberal Zionism

The Strange Death of Liberal Zionism

by | 3 October, 2014 |

This is a guest post from Ariel I. Ahram (@ariel_ahram), an assistant professor of government and international affairs in Virginia Tech’s School of Public and International Affairs in Alexandria, Va. He is the author of Proxy Warriors: The Rise and Fall of State Sponsored Militias (Stanford University Press, 2011). Laments over the state of Israel have become increasingly common. Especially in the midst of this summer’s war in Gaza, Israel’s erstwhile sympathizers and supporters have come forward questioning the Jewish state’s viability and morality. Israel, they claim, has lost the...

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Thursday Ebola Linkage

Thursday Ebola Linkage

by | 2 October, 2014 |

Well, this has been a very difficult period to watch as we see the unfolding tragedy of the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. We have seen dire warnings for the region, with a dramatic uptick in reported infections and some heartbreaking (and problematic) images from hospitals. There have been credible projections that left unchecked Ebola could have as many 1.4 million infections by early 2015 in Liberia and Sierra Leone, which would amount to more than 10% of the population of those two countries. With President Obama's announcement of $500 million (perhaps up to $1 billion) and the...

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“and Elinor?”: when winning a Nobel Prize isn’t enough…

“and Elinor?”: when winning a Nobel Prize isn’t enough…

by | 1 October, 2014 |

This is a guest post from Leslie Johns, an Assistant Professor of political science at UCLA.  The Public Choice Society---an academic organization of scholars who study the interaction of politics and economics---recently announced that it has created a new award for scholarly research: the Vincent and Elinor Ostrom Prize.  The announcement of this prize is provoking an intense reaction because of its name: “The Vincent and Elinor Ostrom Prize”? Elinor Ostrom was well-known to political scientists, policy analysts, and economists.  As a graduate student during the 1960s in the Political...

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