Toward considering how the environment can be a security issue, this paper suggests that the praxis of security should be understood as extreme efforts within a larger management of uncertainty about the future. By focusing on this motivation for action rather than some locus of specialized (and perhaps) bureaucratic activity, such an approach may open the possibility for a more nuanced discussion about the idea of security. Within this wider frame, it is possible to recognize relationships among sources of uncertainty and alternative responses. Further, there is the conceptual flexibility for issues to be escalated when great uncertainty is identified and de-escalated as the means to address an uncertainty are developed and incorporated into normal routines of public administration.