The Duck of Minerva

Thursday Morning Linkage

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by Josh Busby

9 May 2013, 0032 EDT

Here is your Thursday Morning Linkage, starting with some energy and environment links:

  • Illegal fish trade costs $10 billion to $23 billion in global losses each eyar
  • China’s coal mining companies and coal burning power plants accounted for 15% of the country’s total freshwater withdrawals
  • China leading the United States on climate change?
  • Charles Mann on the perils of petro-energy abundance (Drezner dissents)

In other news, Syria is heating up in the news with Israel’s strikes over the weekend putting pressure on the Obama administration to do more:

  • C.J. Chivers remarks on spending time with rebels in Syria
  • Marc Lynch makes the case that Syria ruined the Arab Spring, Drezner again dissents
  • Aaron David Miller suggests Obama has painted himself unnecessarily into a corner
  • Syria making Asia pivot harder argues Gideon Rachman
  • Steve Walt praises Obama for being a buck-passer and realizing that America is very, very secure
  • Syrian refugees try to hold on to some sense of normaly

Maps can tell an interesting story:

  • GDELT creator Kalev Leetaru maps the distribution of Tweets
  • The distribution of population in South Asia compared to the rest of the world
  • Afripop datasets mapping population on the African continent
  • Foreign Policy maps where U.S. bases and operations are on the African continent
130508_geolocation map

Twitter locations

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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