The Duck of Minerva

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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 2012: A Moment for Optimism?

by | 1 December, 2012 |

Today is World AIDS Day, an annual opportunity to take stock of the state of the epidemic. Despite a decade of incredible mobilization of finance for and visibility of the AIDS pandemic, UNAIDS estimated that the number of new infections last year 2.5 million still far outstripped the 1.4 million people who received treatment for the first time. There has been some good news. 8 million of the 15 million people thought sick enough to need treatment now have it, up from 200,000 in the early 2000s. New infections of HIV and deaths from AIDS have dropped significantly in a number of countries....

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Climate Policy After Sandy – What Should be Done? Part III

by | 27 November, 2012 |

Huzzah! Barack Obama in his re-election night valedictory speech finally acknowledged that climate change is a problem we may have to attend to: We want our children to live in an America that isn't burdened by debt, that isn't weakened by inequality, that isn't threatened by the destructive power of a warming planet. I seem to recall that candidate Obama said something audacious calling on the global community to prevent the oceans from rising and to save the planet. After four years of America's sausage grinders whittling away at hope and change, can the president finally deliver measures...

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Why Does John McCain Hate Susan Rice? Republicans and Benghazi

by | 22 November, 2012 |

I've been curious why John McCain is pursuing Susan Rice with such a vengeance for her inopportune remarks on Sunday talk shows in September about the not-so spontaneous attacks on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi. As I think about other prospective nominees to lead the State Department like John Kerry, John McCain actually has more in common with Ambassador Rice. Susan Rice has been one of the Obama Administration's more ardent interventionists on Libya, Syria, and Darfur. Like McCain, Rice is willing to use military force to prevent atrocities and defend American interests. Liberal...

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Sandy and Climate Change: Part II

Sandy and Climate Change: Part II

by | 1 November, 2012 |

In my last post, I noted that Hurricane Sandy has finally triggered a vigorous discussion about climate change, prompting much speculation about whether climate change had some role in causing the storm. I expressed some doubt whether this is the right question to ask, as it frequently has triggered feuds among climate analysts about the science of climate change and diverted limited attention from mobilizing people to act. But, let us suppose it would be politically useful to have some greater certainty that extreme weather events like Sandy are related in some fashion to climate change....

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Are Sandy and Climate Change Related? Part I

by | 31 October, 2012 |

In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, there is much discussion about whether climate change was responsible for the storm. I'm not sure this is the right question we need to be asking, unless we think that whether we respond to climate change hinges on an affirmative answer. Let's suspend disbelief for a moment and say that it does. We need to believe events like Sandy were caused or made more likely by climate change in some way for us to feel compelled to act. If so, is that connection real? I think we have to separate what we know about the science of climate change and extreme weather...

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How to Survive a Plague

by | 28 September, 2012 |

I am putting the finishing touches on a new book manuscript on social movements and market transformations with my co-author Ethan Kapstein. In the process of researching that book which focuses on the global AIDS treatment advocacy movement, we tried to get our hands on any relevant material. We became aware of two important documentaries that have just been released, one is David France’s How to Survive a Plague which captures ACT UP’s mobilization for AIDS treatment in the United States in the 1980s and 1990s. The other is Dylan Mohan Gray’s Fire in the Blood, which covers the global...

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Foreign Policy to the Fore: Is Romney Below the Bar?

by | 12 September, 2012 |

U.S. Consulate in Benghazi 9/12/2012I heard Dan Drezner in the car on NPR yesterday talking about whether foreign policy might matter in this election. And, last night and today, with the events in Egypt and Libya, he may be more right than even he anticipated.We may have an incident, in the wake of the 11th anniversary of the 9-11 attacks, that will shape the contours of the election and have wider repercussions for U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East and North Africa. Politically, does it constitute a disqualifying moment for Mitt Romney?Like Dan, I've been of the mind that foreign...

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An AIDS-Free Generation? HIV Is Not A Fad

by | 24 July, 2012 |

The International AIDS Society conference began Sunday in DC, the first time the conference has been held in the United States since 1990 because of the now-lifted travel ban on HIV+ people coming to the U.S. That means that 25,000 activists, researchers and clinicians have converged on DC and what seems like a fanciful goal - an AIDS-free generation. Given that donor foreign assistance budgets are increasingly constrained around the world, what gives advocates such hope that a renewed push against AIDS will be successful? For a disease that lacks a cure, does an AIDS-free generation means...

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Should Romney Talk More About Foreign Policy?

by | 14 July, 2012 |

In these summer months while we wait for the Olympics to start and for Romney to pick his VP candidate, the foreign policy cognoscenti has started in on Mitt Romney's campaign with conflicting advice about whether or not his announced foreign policy trip this later this summer is worthwhile and whether or not the Republican nominee should spend much time talking about the issue.While as a citizen and foreign policy wonk, I want our prospective commander in chief to fill in the details of what he might do, as an observer of politics, I'm not sure it makes nearly as much sense for a number of...

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Peter Piot’s Memoir on Infectious Disease

by | 10 July, 2012 |

I just finished reading Peter Piot's lively memoir No Time to Lose of his time as an epidemiologist helping identify the Ebola virus in the 1970s through to his service as the first director of UNAIDS. It is an engaging read not least because Piot conveys a profound empathy for those affected by disease. Piot also projects additional warmth and humanity, from his appreciation for Congolese music to good beer.More substantively, Piot has a proportionate sense of the outrageousness of bureaucratic politics in the UN system, while recognizing the need to navigate in those shark-filled...

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