mitigating and responding to disasters.^50 That much of this research is outside academic circles or in publications
addressing women’s issues, reflects [gendered] academic scientific interest more in the systematic study of
the dynamics of climate change than in the systematic study of the details of its human consequences. How
can we bring human dimensions of climate change more to the forefront of the scientific research agenda and
funding priorities? What does social science need to do to make our work relevant and visible to climate change
researchers? How do we make the research agenda and findings of academic and scientific researchers more
cognizant of gender issues and more available and relevant to policymakers, public interest organizations, and
service providers?
Gender and the Militarization of Climate Change: Gender is not synonymous with “women.” Masculine
interests and masculinist organizations are front and center in climate change studies, preoccupations, and
remedies. Fleming (2007) catalogs historical efforts (stretching back two centuries and beyond) of the U.S.
and other governments to use and control climate for military purposes. These projects included timing war
campaigns to weather forecasts, cloud seeding to create storms, and other techniques designed to shift weather
patterns. He describes “a long paper trail of climate and weather modification studies by the Pentagon and
other [U.S.] government agencies” in the 20th century. For instance, “In the 1950s the Pentagon convened a
committee to study the development of a Cold War weather weapon,” and “During Operation Popeye in the
Vietnam war, the Air Force flew more than 2,600 cloud seeding sorties over the Ho Chi Minh Trail to...’Make
mud, not war’” (Fleming 2007:56). So-called “geoengineers,” who imagine and design massive projects to alter
the global climate, are the contemporary incarnations of climate warriors. These mainly male natural scientists
and engineers are described by Fleming as “The new titans who see themselves as heroic pioneers, capable of
alleviating or averting natural disasters” by large-scale projects to stop global warming (P. 50). For instance,
physicist Lowell Wood, a protégé of Edward Teller (father of the hydrogen bomb), who worked for 40 years at
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, has suggested building up the Arctic ice by using large artillery pieces
to shoot tons of sulfate aerosols or nanoparticles into the stratosphere to deflect the sun’s rays and cool the planet
or alternatively by hooking a 25-kilometer-long “sky hose” to a high-flying military superblimp to pump reflective
particles into the atmosphere; another is chemist Paul Crutzen whose idea is to create a “minor nuclear winter”
by shooting or ballooning millions of metric tons of sulphur each year over the tropics to simulate a Mount
Pinatubo-scale eruption (Fleming 2007:48). There are a variety of problems with these kinds of schemes: they
are likely to be expensive and ineffectual, they relegate any plans to mitigate or reduce greenhouse gases to the
back burner; they might actually be dangerous;^51 and they represent an imperialistic, militaristic bent—large-scale
projects undertaken by one country to dominate the global environmental system, or as Fleming (2007:48) aptly
summarizes, “basically declaring war on the stratosphere.” Imagine the response of these climate engineers or
their government if France or China or Brazil planned to darken the sun’s light to shade the planet.
The militarization of climate change studies is not only evidenced in geoengineering operations.
Militarized responses to global climate change can be heard in warnings about potential threats to “national
security”—as in the November 2007 Council on Foreign Relations symposium: “Climate Change and National
Security: An Agenda for Action” (CNA—Center for Naval Analyses 2007) and the June 2008 “National
Intelligence Assessment on the National Security Implications of Global Climate Change to 2030” (U.S. House
of Representatives 2008). The institutionalization of a militarized masculinist mentality into the climate-related
(^50) CIDA 2002; Climate Alliance 2005; Boyd 2002; Dankelman 2002; Denton 2002; Duddy 2008; GENANET 2005; Gurung et al. 2006;
Lambrou & Piana 2006; Laudazi 2003; Masika 2002; Mitchell et al. 2007; Nelson et al. 2002; Reyes 2002; Rohr 2004, 2006; Roy &
Venema 2002; Skutsch 2002, 2004; Villagrasa 2002.
(^51) Some of these schemes have been evaluated by natural scientists; for instance, Bala, Duffy, and Taylor (2007) predict decreased global
mean precipitation as a hydrological consequence of geoengineered reductions in solar radiation.