Behind the Curve: Science and the Politics of Global Warming

4. Climate, the Environment, and Scientific Activism

93 4 Climate, the Environment, and Scientific Activism In 1982, the Sierra Club’s executive director, Michael McCloskey, sent around “Criteria for International Campaigns” as a guide for developinginternationalinitiativesundertheclub ’sgrowingInternationalProgram. McCloskeywastheheadofanorganizationthathad madeitsnamethrough grassroots organizing, and his criteria were not all that surprising. First and foremost, McCloskey argued, an international environmental goal must be achievable “within a reasonable time frame.” The goal must be “clear and discrete; not ill-defined.” Viable goals must not “cover impossibly large situations” and must deal “with conditions for which a legal or regulatory solution is possible.” McCloskey demanded that the issues the organization took up abroad fit neatly into an institutional forum—​ legal or regulatory—​ that the Sierra Club had the competence and capability to influence. Issues, he emphasized, should strike the club’s members as clear threats to their “deeply felt values.” The source of the threat must be something that could be pinpointed, with the larger problem put into a real-life context accessible to concerned members—​ that is, nothing “too exotic nor overly technical.”1 McCloskey wanted the Sierra Club’s International Program to be an extensionofthegroup ’seffortsathome—​ thatis,tacklingclearanddiscrete,easily accessibleproblemswithdefinitiveshort-andmidtermsolutionsachievable throughfamiliarpatternsofpublicadvocacy,legislation,andlitigation.The problem of climate change was none of these things. 94 | Chapter 4 Atmospheric scientists had cast rising CO2 and other forms of atmospheric change in terms meant to be recognizable to American environmentalists during the supersonic transport debate, and they had framed increasing CO2 as part of a global environmental crisis in the run-up to the U.N. Conference on the Human Environment. Both of these reinterpretations of CO2 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 community 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 incorporating rising CO2 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 The Environment and Scientific Activism | 95 issues; but like McCloskey, the leaders of America’s environmental organizations selected their campaigns carefully. They looked for clear problems with definitive solutions. What Charles David Keeling had noted about the problems of understanding CO2 as a pollutant in 1963 had not changed by 1980. Climate change was highly technical, global in scale, and rife with scientific uncertainties. It occurred over the course of decades and centuries . No obvious political or legal structures existed to implement solutions to the problems of climate—​ in fact, few if any solutions presented themselves at all. Until the mid-1980s, climate change—​ by then primarily a concern about global warming caused by rising CO2 —​ remained almost entirely within the purview of the scientific community. Initially this community found remarkable success in using science itself to gain influence within the top levels of government and resources for further research. But success was fleeting. The early 1980s would...