policies and operations of government agencies can be seen in plans to protect borders from climate refugees
or use rail guns designed during Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (“Star Wars”) to fire tons of
material into space to deflect the sun’s rays. The implications for climate science and policy of the redeploying
the resources of U.S. national labs previously engaged in nuclear weapons production and war games (e.g., Los
Alamos and Lawrence Livermore) for climate change modeling and geoengineering projects are not innocuous,
even when these facilities bring valuable technology and expertise to the research table. Sociological studies of
organizational culture suggest that organizations bring their own agendas and worldviews to the problem at hand:
to a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Researchers need to ask: What perspectives and plans will
the U.S. and other national militaries and their organizational apparati bring to the policy table when planning
responses to global climate change? (Climate security?) What strategies for addressing the effects of climate
change should we expect from national weapons labs? (Geoengineering?) It is important to ask not only what is
the role of gender in shaping vulnerabilities to climate change, but also what is the role of gendered institutions
and ideologies in creating the world that will result from gendered responses to climate change?
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