Reducing Greenhouse Gases Is a Security Issue

Jun 7, 2019 | Joshua Busby
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Fifteen years ago, luck would change the trajectory of my professional career. I was a predoctoral fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC, so I was already a little bit lucky. Geoff Dabelko, then of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars asked my colleague Nigel Purvis if he (and me by extension) would be willing to write a paper on the security implications of climate change for the United Nations. Kofi Annan, the Secretary-General of the United Nations at the time, was running an initiative on Threats, Challenges and Change to look ahead at the future of the international system, and he wanted, (or Brent Scowcroft, who was running the effort, wanted) a paper on climate change.