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The article presents a conference paper titled "Who Cares about the Weather? Climate Change and U.S. National Security" prepared for the annual conference of the International Studies Association in Honolulu, Hawaii. It seeks to link the issue of climate change with energy security, nuclear proliferation, disasters and reputational concerns. It also aims to introduce a line of new climate change political science research that speaks to the ambitions of the original proponents of environmental security.

Transformations in energy systems, as the historian John McNeill has argued, have often had a major effect on great power politics. The heavy use by the Dutch of fossil fuels helped them develop their economy and give them scope for geopolitical reach. In ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Is climate change a valid national security issue for the United States? Even taking a narrow definition of national security, there are clearly ways in which climate change already constitutes a national security concern for the United States. This article evaluates a number of these potential linkages including the directs effects of climate change on the territorial United States, the effects of climate change on the country's extraterritorial interests, and the security externalities of energy and climate change. I offer an account of Ònational securityÓ that is consistent with conventional understandings of security but that also leaves room for environmental harms. In so doing, I also identify criteria by which climate change could constitute a threat to national security. While some of these linkages--the risks from rising sea levels--may have been over-dramatized by enthusiastic advocates, other examples--such as the risks of extreme weather events both to the homeland and to America's strategic interests overseas--may be more likely to cause security problems for the United States in the short- to medium-run. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the response by rich industrialized countries to a subset of primarily moral and humanitarian issues that emanate from or disproportionately affect developing countries including debt relief, climate change, HIV/AIDS, and the International Criminal Court. Why were some of these issues—climate change, the ICC—so contentious while debt relief and HIV/AIDS were not? The basic argument of the paper is that where the U.S. fails to advance a constructive plan to address an issue and proves unwilling to bear the costs of leadership, this creates opportunities and incentives for European political grandstanding to placate domestic public opinion and buttress the institutional project of the European Union. Where the U.S. leads and does not abdicate in this class of issue areas, there are fewer opportunities and pressures for grandstanding, leading to less contention and politicization of the issue. The article also distinguishes grandstands from true moral stands, drawing on the literature on costly signaling, suggesting that the former involve cheap expressions of political outrage whereas the latter imply more substantial investments of political and physical capital. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]