The Duck of Minerva

Josh Busby

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.

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Recent Posts

Thursday Linkage: Hey! A Non-World Cup/Brazil post

Thursday Linkage: Hey! A Non-World Cup/Brazil post

by | 17 July, 2014 |

I'm ready to move on from Brazil and football/soccer news. Really I am. Here are some links related to climate change and I've thrown in a link to Will Moore's post about using satellite rain data rather than rain gauge data to track rainfall (the latter may be subject to variation due to conflict. Hard to collect rain gauge data in conflict zones!). In other news, Australia votes to repeal carbon tax, while lots of action afoot to deal with emissions from autos, HFCs, impacts, etc.  Climate Change - White House announces new initiatives to address climate change, mostly related to...

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Nearing the End of the World Cup Linkage

Nearing the End of the World Cup Linkage

by | 9 July, 2014 |

This might be might last football related post, what with the World Cup coming to a close and host country Brazil departing ignominiously from the competition by a margin of 7 to 1 in the semifinal against Germany. I've got a few football/Brazil related links for this week. I'm sitting on a goodly number of climate change and conservation related themes that I'll come back to in coming weeks. I'm also aiming to write about restive criticism of President Obama's foreign policy, both by the usual suspects as well as some more unlikely folks like Peter Beinart. I'll leave that to a later post....

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Attempt to Depose University of Texas President

Attempt to Depose University of Texas President

by | 7 July, 2014 |

Over the July 4th weekend, UT System Chancellor Cigarroa demanded that UT President Bill Powers resign or be fired by July 10th. Bill Powers refused but offered a timetable to step-down. Supporters of the embattled president have launched a petition drive that now has nearly 8500 signatures. At stake is the future of higher education in the state of Texas and whether or not Texas values tier 1 research institutions.  There has been a long-running battle in the state of Texas over higher education, with Governor Rick Perry and a number of his allies on the Board of Regents attempting to...

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Belabored Belated Thursday Football Linkage

Belabored Belated Thursday Football Linkage

by | 27 June, 2014 |

I'm back from Brazil and resurfacing with many story ideas from my recent adventures. In the meantime, if you are like me, you have soccer on the brain and are getting your head around yesterday's winning loss to Germany by the U.S. team. I'll make a tangential attempt to make a linkage to international politics, which is rather easy when you see the scope of money involved in building the stadiums in Brazil, the threats of player work stoppages, particularly by African teams, for failure to pay appearance fees, and the outlandish price of Neymar's new shoes for Nike. Here is what I've been...

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The Waste Pickers of Brasilia

The Waste Pickers of Brasilia

by | 18 June, 2014 |

Two weeks ago as part of our class, we visited Brasilia's landfill site, known as Lixão, which again underscored some of the incredible contradictions in the country.  It is a vast site, with six open dumping sites, this is one of the largest landfills in all of Latin America. Controversy surrounds this landfill, as it is slated to be closed and moved some 45km away.  The government is shutting down landfills like this one in favor of lined landfills with water protection systems.  They have already closed Rio's massive dump in 2012. Brasilia's landfill harkens back to an earlier age, when...

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Blogging from Brazil: Problems of Connectivity

Blogging from Brazil: Problems of Connectivity

by | 14 June, 2014 |

So, at this point, I've been all over Brazil, though that's like saying I've toured the United States in five weeks. That said, I've been in five or six cities all over the country (I'll load a better map soon), and the internet speed has invariably been crap, even in pretty expensive hotels. I'm not sure what that tells you about the country's fortunes in the 21st century, but it does mean access to information and commerce in Brazil is limited, let alone the ability for people to watch streaming video of Game of Thrones or Orange is the New Black or local soccer. It also makes it so much...

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Brazil Linkage

Brazil Linkage

by | 31 May, 2014 |

Here are some stories we've been reading about Brazil: Street artist captures iconic image of impending World Cup (see mural above) Rio residents ambivalent about the World Cup Datafolha poll of people in Sao Paulo: 76% of people say Brazil is not prepared to host the World Cup. 22% say ready or partially ready. — Gabriel Elizondo (@elizondogabriel) May 22, 2014 Sao Paulo experiencing incredible drought, reservoir down to 8% of capacity Speaking of water, sewage and dead dogs make the site for Olympic rowing in Rio a possible nightmare Andy Revkin's students explore the challenges Brazil...

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Notes from Brazil

Notes from Brazil

by | 30 May, 2014 |

A long overdue post from Brazil. I've been here about two weeks, first in Rio and have just concluded the second week in the Amazonian city of Belém.  I hope to come back with more substantive thoughts about the country's direction, but here are some preliminary thoughts. The Brazilians we met were somewhat ambivalent about the World Cup. Many of them expressed the concern that this was a lot of money that the country could have used to address its myriad social needs. When I think about whether Brazil can be a major player internationally, even more important than it is now, I've generally...

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Thursday Linkage – Heading to Brazil Edition

Thursday Linkage – Heading to Brazil Edition

by | 15 May, 2014 |

I'm so glad the semester is over so I can leave Friday to head to Brazil for a three week short course with my colleague Eugene Gholz. The topic is the World Cup "Rising Powers and Global Governance." We have reprised our 2010 edition of our South Africa short course (notice the pattern). I'm hopeful I'll be able to provide some flavor from our trip as we have an exciting series of meetings with government officials, scientists, academics, practitioners, diplomats, activists, and members of the business community. We're focused on three main themes, the environment, public health, and the...

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Thursday Heading into Summer Linkage – Climate Change Edition

Thursday Heading into Summer Linkage – Climate Change Edition

by | 7 May, 2014 |

Apologies for the missing linkage from last week. I took a team of students to DC to present to policymakers the key findings from my year-long course on climate change and the major economies (see the embedded video at the bottom). The timing was opportune because this was a big week for climate policy. Thousands of world leaders gathered in Abu Dhabi to prepare for the UN Secretary General's fall meeting on the topic. China appears poised to crack down on polluters. Though air pollution is the primary target, there may be potential co-benefits for the climate. Here at home, the U.S....

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