Title: Poisonous skies : acid rain and the globalization of pollution /
Authors: Rothschild, Rachel Emma
Year: 2019
Subjects: Acid rain Research History.; Acid rain Political aspects.; Acid rain Environmental aspects; Air Pollution Research History.; Acid rain Environmental aspects; Acid rain Political aspects; Acid rain Research; Air Pollution Research
Abstract: Poisonous Skies explores how scientists and policymakers came to grasp the danger fossil fuels posed to the global environment by looking at the first air pollution problem identified as having damaging effects on areas far from the source of emissions: acid rain. This is the first history to investigate acid rain in an international context, spanning from its identification in the 1960s to the present day. The story Rachel Emma Rothschild unfurls reveals how a legacy of military sponsorship of physics, chemistry, and other fields during wartime influenced the direction of research on the environment; the importance of environmental diplomacy to the d tente process of the Cold War; the role of the British and American coal industries in environmental science; and finally, how acid rain shaped ideas about environmental risk and the precautionary principle. Grounded in archival research in eight different countries and five languages as well as interviews with leading scientists from both government and industry, Poisonous Skies should interest anyone seeking to learn from our past in order to better understand and approach the environmental crises of our present day.
Contents: Introduction: a rain of ashes -- Creating a global pollution problem -- The science of acid rain -- Energy industry research and the politics of doubt -- Pollution across the Iron Curtain -- Environmental diplomacy in the Cold War -- An environmental crisis collides with a conservative revolution -- Acid rain and the precautionary principle -- A warning bell for a fossil fuel future -- Epilogue: the climate change reckoning.