The Duck of Minerva

Thursday ISA edition

Bridging the Gap • Featured

by Josh Busby

27 March 2014, 0636 EDT

Greetings from Toronto. In advance of tonight’s OAIS blogging awards gathering at 7:15pm in Sheraton Ballroom C, the Duck non-collective collective got together for a pre-soiree soiree.  Folks were in good from. For many of us, it was the first chance for us to ever meet in person.

For me, this is a quick trip, as I’m headed back this am after a busy day of panels, the business meeting of the new ISA section on global health, and a lovely dinner sponsored by Bridging the Gap. With a toddler at home and a busy spring of travel, this Duck is needed to tag team on the toddler front before my wife heads to Midwest next week. Before I go, here are a few reads that caught my eye. Bob Gates on Ukraine, expats fleeing Beijing’s bad air, new WHO report on deaths from air pollution, debates about the climate coverage at the new 538, and more.

  • Bob Gates has a call to action on Putin’s Crimea grab, containment lives?
  • Expats fleeing China because of bad air, bye bye Beijing?
  • New WHO report on deaths from air pollution, 7 million a year?
  • Real Climate weighs in on the connection between climate change and extreme weather events, a rejoinder to 538’s Pielke, Jr?
  • Some great graphics of improvements in global health

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.

1 Comment

  1. LFC
    LFC on 30 March 2014 at 22.45 EDT

    Looking a bit behind that second graphic: there were ~6.6 million deaths of children under 5 in 2012, approx. three-quarters of those in the first year and ~45% in the first month. Undernutrition was a contributing factor in about half of those 6.6 million deaths, and the majority of the deaths were from preventable diseases. A significant improvement since 1990, to be sure, but still definitely a v. bad picture. (UN data, taken from childinfo.org)