27. 55. Late in 2012, superstorm Sandy inundated large parts of New York and the east coast of America while, on the other side of the Atlantic, Britain once again faced severe flooding, unrelated to Sandy. 56. 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The impact of this strategy is evident in the reaction to the Ukrainian gas crisis in 2006. First, to what extent has climate change been conceptualized as a security concern in the past and do these recent initiatives indicate a discursive shift in the interna- This observation is particularly salient within the United States. Firstly, this debate has legitimized new actors and instruments to develop forms of security governance, which downplay the role of the state and of traditional reactive responses. The first emphasizes the importance of circulation—it suggests that disasters or conflict in one region have the ability, through population displacement to affect other regions and countries. Yet others argued that ‘environmental security … is all about solidarity’ (Thompson 1999, 137). Daniel H Deudney, Bounding Power: Republican Security Theory from the Polis to the Global Village (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007). However, the phrase encompasses much more than this.3. By adopting a perspective that is attentive to the social construction of security issues and its implications, the article assesses the potential of a discursive approach in transforming existing security practices. This was not only a European move. 17. Instead preventive measures appear to be more effective and new means are required. During the Clinton administration Homer-Dixon's research was used to promote a more proactive foreign policy (Harris 2001, 121–122). A high-profile World Bank-sponsored report published in late 2012 warns that, unless serious attention is paid to mitigation soon, the world is heading for a global increase in temperature of at least 4°C.25 Such a set of circumstances would be so disruptive to human civilisation, not to mention to the remnants of the natural planetary system upon which humanity depends, that allowing such a scenario to unfold simply should not be contemplated. This suggests that issues can be politicized through an appeal to security, a problematic development for the Copenhagen School, which argues that ‘transcending a security problem by politicising it cannot happen through thematization in security terms, only away from such terms’ (Waever 1995, 56). Climate security is a concept that summons the idea that climate-related change amplifies existing risks in society that endangers the security of humans, ecosystems, economy, infrastructure and societies. The first—the reliance on emergency measures—suggests that it is impossible to be prepared for all potential threats and it is preferable to deal with emergencies as they occur; the second—the development of preventive ones—warns of potential catastrophic impacts. This helped both to frame environmental threats in more familiar terms to national security experts and to consider the environment as a legitimate threat. The EU, for instance, has traditionally emphasized a preventive approach over a reactive one. To answer this question, it is necessary to consider how the climate security discourse has been framed. The plan committed member states to raising the European share of renewable energy to 20 per cent, increasing energy efficiency, completing the internal market for electricity and gas, and the development of a common external energy policy. The common energy policy set ambitious targets, mobilizing consensus through the double lever of climate security and energy security. Yet to maintain the existing way of life, it is necessary to change many present global structures. (Beck 2006, 334). Daniel Moran (ed. 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