The Turning Points of Environmental History

7. The “1950s Syndrome” and the Transition from a Slow-Going to a Rapid Loss of Global Sustainability

7 7 The “1950s Syndrome” and the Transition from a Slow-Going to a Rapid Loss of Global Sustainability c h r i S t i a n P F i S t e r •During the international geophysical year of 1957– 1958, the geophysicist Hans Suess and the oceanographer Roger Revelle, who was the mentor of Al Gore, discovered that the CO2 content of the atmosphere had risen since it had first been measured in the mid-1890s by Svante Arrhenius . The two scientists framed their finding this way: “Thus, human beings are now carrying out a large scale geophysical experiment of a kind that could not have happened in the past, nor could it be reproduced in the future. Within a few centuries we are returning to the atmosphere and oceans the concentrated organic carbon stored in sedimentary rocks over hundreds of millions of years. This experiment, if adequately documented, may yield a far-reaching insight into the processes determining weather and climate.”1 Today this statement impresses, considering the turn of events that has since occurred. Revelle and Suess used the term “experiment” in its traditional sense of an opportunity to study (geo-)physical processes. Yet they felt that there might be some risk of climate change from the rise in CO2 , albeit in the distant future.2 CO2 concentration, as estimated from ice cores, had only slowly risen from 297 parts per million (ppm) in 1900 to about 316 ppm in 1957, while today’s concentration (as of 2010) is 395 ppm3 (figure 7.1). Based on an extrapolation of the figures from the first half of the twentieth century, this value should not have been reached until 2212!4 This illustrates how close to sustainability the global environment was in the wake of World War II, as compared with today’s situation. By the mid-1960s Revelle had already shared with his students the dramatic 0  results of the first eight years of CO2 measurements, as concentrations were rapidly increasing every year. He predicted that a continuation of this trend would force a profound and disruptive change in the entire global climate.5 In 1981 the renowned meteorologist Hermann Flohn issued the following warning: “In any 390 370 350 330 310 290 270 1000 1200 1400 1600 1800 2000 Year CO 2 (ppmv) 2009 = 395 CO2 concentration Mauna Loa Historical CO2 Figure 7.1. The rise of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere A.D. 1000 to 2010. Source: Data up to 1957 is from D. M. Etheridge, L. P. Steele, R. L. Langenfelds, R. J. Francey, J.-M. Barnola, and V. I. Morgan, “Historical CO2 Records from the Law Dome DE08, DE08-2, and DSS Ice Cores,” in Trends: A Compendium of Data on Global Change (Oak Ridge, Tenn.: Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S. Department of Energy, 1998), available online at http://cdiac.ornl.gov/ trends/co2/lawdome.html. Data from 1958 is available on ftp://ftp.cmdl.noaa.gov/ccg/ co2/trends/co2_annmean_mlo.txt (accessed on May 13, 2010). e “1950s Syndrome”  case, the problem must be taken seriously: it threatens humanity as a whole, and in the course of the coming century it will threaten the generation of our children and grandchildren. . . . It is not a matter of arguments in the short-term political arena; the fate of our children and grandchildren all over the whole world is at stake.”6 Most textbooks relate the origins of the greenhouse problem to the onset of industrialization. However, the comparison of the growth rates of CO2 emissions before and after 1950 suggests that the immediate roots of the greenhouse problem in its present and future urgency are rather to be found in the twentyfive years between the late 1950s and the early 1980s. A trio of renowned scientists —including Will Steffen, the current executive director of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP); Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen; and the historian John McNeill—looking at the global use of fossil fuels and raw materials over the past two centuries concluded in 2007 that the period since the onset of industrialization needs to be divided in two stages of unequal growth: namely, a first stage of slow growth before 1950 and a second stage of exponential growth since that time. Focusing on the exponential growth rates in the production of a multitude of raw materials since the 1950s, the...