ABSTRACT
The debate on ‘environmental security’ has been going on ever since (Dalby 2002). Looking carefully at the discussion allows us to see the assumptions built into contemporary security thinking, raises many concerns about the appropriateness of extending the remit of security, and poses the big questions about who decides what matters are serious enough to require attention from either the security apparatuses of states or students studying security. Indeed, as the rest of this chapter suggests, how environment is portrayed and how it is presented as a potential future danger in need of security policies tells us a considerable amount about both the geopolitical imagination in Washington and how security studies works in universities.
