Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Atmospheric scientists had cast rising CO
2
and other forms of atmo-
spheric change in terms meant to be recognizable to American environ-
mentalists during the supersonic transport debate, and they had framed
increasing CO
2
as part of a global environmental crisis in the run-up to the
U.N. Conference on the Human Environment. Both of these reinterpreta-
tions of CO
2
brought scientists into conversation with environmentalists,
but in neither case did atmospheric scientists capture the attention or the
growing political power of the broader environmental movement.
In part, climate scientists remained aloof from mainstream American
environmental politics because climate scientists generally defined “the
environment” differently than environmentalists did; and as McCloskey's
criteria demonstrated, as late as 1982 there was still a big gap between the
two groups. Environmentalists continued to focus largely on Americans'
day-to-day quality of life. Proper waste management, clean air, ample local
parks and open spaces, and access to the nation's pristine wilderness areas
increasingly defined the “good life” in America, and environmentalists saw
degradation from industrial pollution and irresponsible development as a
threat to these “backyard” environmental amenities.
2
Climate scientists,
on the other hand, addressed the environmental crisis primarily in terms
of the food, water, and other natural resources essential to life itself. They
sympathized with the broad, humanitarian development goals articulated
by less developed countries at the 1972 Stockholm Conference. Just as they
did internationally, domestically scientists hoped to use their expertise to
help mitigate the detrimental effects of climatic variability on development
and agriculture and to better plan for the potential impacts of long-term
climatic change on human environments.
For their part, environmentalists initially responded tepidly to the issue
of climate change. They hesitated to rally behind a loosely defined commu-
nity of scientists whose definition of the environment differed from their
own and whose specific political goals remained vague. Climate scientists
often chose to work within the very agencies environmentalists sought to
challenge, and they usually did so with few recognizably “environmental”
objectives.
The nature of climate change itself exacerbated the problems of incor-
porating rising CO
2
into environmentalists' national and international
political strategies in the 1970s. Members of groups like the Sierra Club and
the Wilderness Society took an interest in international environmental
