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.

Website

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

Famine and Conflict Resolution in Somalia – part IV (on the 2011 East African drought)

by | 16 August, 2011 |

So, I mentioned in a previous post on the debt ceiling that my wife and I were expecting the birth of our first child. Our son, Guy William, was born this past week, and I couldn't resist sharing our news. His namesake is my friend Guy Hughes, who died tragically five years ago in a climbing accident.Guy was a tireless advocate for global justice, and I have no doubt that he would have fiercely been defending the needs of those suffering from the famine but with organizational panache, sensitivity to the inherent humanity of the people in the region, and appreciation of the wider currents in...

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Famine, Climate Change, and the Horn of Africa – part III

by | 8 August, 2011 |

In this third post about the Horn of Africa and the ongoing famine, I thought I'd address what should be done, which seems appropriate given the visit today to the region by a team of U.S. officials, including Jill Biden (wife of the vice president), USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah, among others. My first two posts assessed (part 1) whether or not climate change could be implicated in the current drought (uncertain) and (part 2) the relative causal weight of the drought itself compared to politics in the overall famine (drought itself more important than some seem to believe). In this post, I...

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Famine, Climate Change, and the Horn of Africa – part II

by | 4 August, 2011 |

Here is part II of my post on the famine in Somalia and East Africa. Since I blogged two days ago, FEWS NET has extended the geographic range at risk of famine (based on nutrition levels and rates of mortality) to more parts of Somalia including the agropastoral areas of Balcad and Cadale districts of Middle Shabelle, the Afgoye corridor IDP settlement, and the Mogadishu IDP community.FEWS NET AUGUST 2011In my last post, I discussed what role if any climate change may be playing in the current crisis. I ultimately concluded that the science isn't settled (for a similar view, see here). I...

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Famine, Climate Change, and the Horn of Africa – part I

by | 1 August, 2011 |

So, I will ultimately come back to climate change and public opinion in this country, but when I haven't been handwringing over the debt ceiling, I’ve been preoccupied by the humanitarian tragedy unfolding in Somalia and East Africa more broadly. I'm going to tackle this topic in a couple of parts since this post is already quite long. The United Nations estimates that as many as 11 million people are being affected by the current crisis, seen as the worst drought in the region in 60 years (see the FEWS NET map of the extent of the crisis below).Why is this crisis emerging now, and why are...

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Raising the Debt Ceiling and Avoiding Economic Catastrophe

by | 19 July, 2011 |

I keep meaning to write a follow up post on U.S. public opinion on climate change and how and why it matters for the world. But, the ongoing political posturing over raising the debt ceiling keeps commanding my attention. Everything I’ve read suggests that failure to resolve this by August 2nd would be what Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke called a "self-inflicted wound" on the part of the United States and potentially send the world in to an economic tailspin of perhaps unprecedented proportions. While we can’t know for sure what would happen, most sane observers of this unfolding...

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Climate Change: The Elephant in the Room

by | 1 July, 2011 |

This is my inaugural post on this site, and I thought I would start with a topic I’ve been puzzling over for a while. It may take me a couple of posts to get it all out, but here goes: What happened to Republican elites on climate change?Republicans have long been more reluctant than Democrats to address the problem. However, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and Al Gore’s slide show and mov(i)ement, moderate Republican governors – Arnold Schwarzenegger, Tim Pawlenty, Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee – lined up to support schemes to cap and trade emissions of greenhouse gases. In the Senate, John...

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