334 THE GEORGETOWN ENVTL. LAW REVIEW [Vol. 35:331 ameliorate climate-driven nation extinction? How can international law attempt to make nations whole? Where will the inevitable climate refugee influx reside, and how does the lack of physical territory inform traditional legal conceptions of statehood?12 And who, exactly, should be held responsible for past and future climate harm? This Article proceeds in four Parts. In Part I, I first describe and analyze how climate change is threatening to extinguish several island nations, creating what I label the specter of statelessness. In Part II, I analyze the Framework Convention’s capacity to both prevent and compensate nations for climate-driven habitability loss via a loss and damage facility. In Part III, I analyze the Security Council’s authorities and potential role in addressing climate change. I conclude in Part IV by proposing a new climate-security roadmap. This roadmap includes a funded loss and damage facility designed to compensate island nations and envisions an evolved role for the Council to address international threats to peace and security, broadly defined. I argue that wealthier, developed nations—responsible for the bulk of GHG emissions—must take transformational action today to avert climate catastrophe tomorrow.13 I. SMALL ISLAND DEVELOPING STATES: AT THE FRONTLINES OF THE CLIMATE CRISIS Scientists predict that over 500,000 people residing in four SIDS — Tuvalu, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, and Maldives — face extreme climate risk.14 These island nations are bound together by their physical remoteness, economic dependence on the natural environment, and their outsized exposure to climate impacts. They are poised to lose large swaths of territory due to climate change, threatening their physical integrity and habitability.15 And when disaster strikes these nations’ vulnerable populations, SIDS must rely on ad hoc requests for disaster aid—there is no formal, legal requirement for nations to assist.16 Indeed, large portions of these nations will be uninhabitable by mid-century. This is due to climate change-driven sea level rise and flooding.17 For some, it is already too late: several low-lying Pacific islands in the Solomon Islands and Micronesia have already been lost to the ocean, never to return.18 12. The Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States includes “physical territory” as one of the requirements for state recognition under international law. See discussion infra Part II.A. 13. United in Science 2022 (2022), WORLD METEOROLOGICAL ORG. (2022), https://perma.cc/NQZ5C5JW [hereinafter UNITED 2021] (describing the need for transformational action to avert climate catastrophe). 14. See Storlazzi et al., supra note 2. 15. See id. 16. Maxine Burkett, Loss and Damage, 4 CLIMATE LAW 119, 123 (2014). 17. Id. 18. See, e.g., Federated States of Micronesia, Views on the Possible Security Implications of Climate Change to be included in the report of the Secretary-General to the 64th Session of the United Nations General Assembly, at 6 https://perma.cc/9NY7-HM3E (last visited Jan. 29, 2023). Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4223806