Natl Sec Climate Change

3 Credits · Level: Graduate, Juris Doctor

This course examines the possible intersections between climate change and US national security, from infrastructure and disaster relief costs at home to the risks of instability, conflict, and refugee movements around the world. We will investigate the arguments for and against linking national security with climate change (and environmental issues more generally). We will explore how changing environmental conditions may become threat multipliers, and examine the US military’s perspectives on climate risks. Drawing on diverse academic and practitioner perspectives, we will investigate the ways in which climate change could be opening new frontiers of strategic competition and driving new patterns of migration, whether from conflict, scarcity, or extreme weather. Students will think critically about possible responses that governments, the national security community, private sector, and other actors could engage in to deal with a challenge that some national security practitioners have called an “existential threat.”