Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
the tensions that existed between the two groups. These tensions helped
define the emerging politics of climate change.
To a large degree, philosophical differences between the two com-
munities revolved around the two groups' attitudes toward technology.
Environmentalists embraced scientific developments that might help them
forge a more responsible relationship with the world around them, but
they objected to the centralization, secrecy, and wastefulness of many
government-sponsored big-science projects and the technologies they
engendered. To groups like the Sierra Club, the Wilderness Society, and
Friends of the Earth, the SST symbolized the worst elements of the aero-
space boom of the 1960s.
Stewart Brand's
Whole Earth Catalog,
an oversize review of tools and
technologies designed to help readers manage their lives in environmen-
tally sustainable ways, embodied environmentalists' ambivalence about
technology.
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First published in 1968, the
Catalog
embraced the potential
benefits of transparently produced, widely disseminated knowledge and
technology. For Brand and many other environmentalists, the main prob-
lem was not technology itself but its administration by a central authority
that did not account for environmental values. Environmentalists were
fascinated by new technologies, but they often distrusted the institu-
tions that created them.
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The
Catalog
enabled individuals to capitalize
on technological gains while operating outside of institutional boundar-
ies. Embedded in the
Catalog
's populist do-it-yourself message was also a
critique of the inaccessible, bureaucratically controlled technologies that
supported the environmentally irresponsible status quo. Environmental-
ists were particularly skeptical of large-scale corporate and government
science and technology projects like the SST, which they believed ignored
citizen input and disproportionately valued technological or material gains
over conservation and environmental protection.
Atmospheric scientists were far less distrustful of government. In fact,
they relied on the high-tech tools of big-government science to do their
jobs. NOAA and NASA were government institutions, and atmospheric
scientists at NCAR and elsewhere frequently collaborated in government-
sponsored research. The scale of the atmospheric environment required
expensive, large-scale research projects. Atmospheric scientists were eager
to apply existing and developing aerospace technologies to their research
on the global environment, and they were especially excited about the
