ABOUT THIS BOOK
The climate change reckoning looms. As scientists try to discern what the Earth’s changing weather patterns mean for our future, Rachel Rothschild seeks to understand the current scientific and political debates surrounding the environment through the history of another global environmental threat: acid rain.
The identification of acid rain in the 1960s changed scientific and popular understanding of fossil fuel pollution’s potential to cause regional—and even global—environmental harms. It showed scientists that the problem of fossil fuel pollution was one that crossed borders—it could travel across vast stretches of the earth’s atmosphere to impact ecosystems around the world. This unprecedented transnational reach prompted governments, for the first time, to confront the need to cooperate on pollution policies, transforming environmental science and diplomacy. Studies of acid rain and other pollutants brought about a reimagining of how to investigate the natural world as a complete entity, and the responses of policy makers, scientists, and the public set the stage for how societies have approached other prominent environmental dangers on a global scale, most notably climate change.
Grounded in archival research spanning eight countries and five languages, as well as interviews with leading scientists from both government and industry, Poisonous Skies is the first book to examine the history of acid rain in an international context. By delving deep into our environmental past, Rothschild hopes to inform its future, showing us how much is at stake for the natural world as well as what we risk—and have already risked—by not acting.
REVIEWS
"This is a very impressive book. The research base is remarkable, including the scores of interviews and hard to find documents, the writing is clear throughout, the narrative arc persuasive, with a number of great vignettes. There really is nothing like it. No one else has even approached the acid rain problem seriously."
— Kurk Dorsey, University of New Hampshire
"An ambitious, brilliantly realized account of the struggle to control acid rain. Rothschild deftly analyzes the disputes over the reality and threat of acid rain, revealing the attempts of the coal industries in the United States as well as in Britain to discredit the relevant science. The book advances its arguments with persuasive and authoritative clarity, drawing on extensive published and archival sources in multiple languages as well as interviews with key participants. It is a compelling contribution to scholarship and, as Rothschild outlines in an epilogue, an object lesson for our time, showing how the past encounter with a transnational environmental threat offers approaches for dealing with the current global crisis of atmospheric warming."
— Daniel J. Kevles, Stanley Woodward Professor Emeritus of History, Yale University
"Part environmental history, part history of science, and part Cold War diplomatic history, this study of the development of the science and politics of acid rain is a model of interdisciplinary international history. Rothschild writes clearly and concisely, anchoring her work in vast research conducted in archives in eight countries and supplemented by interviews with scientists and diplomats involved in her story."
— J.R. McNeill, Georgetown University
"A tour-de-force and a must read for anyone who wants to understand how the scientific community first came to articulate the global nature of the environmental threat posed by the burning of fossil fuels. This book will be of great interest to readers from a wide range of disciplines."
— Richard L. Revesz, Lawrence King Professor of Law and Dean Emeritus, New York University School of Law
"Sometimes you need to pay attention to history in order to better understand the present. Rothschild looks at the history of acid rain to explore what happened, how countries fought about it, how scientists led the charge against it, and how all of that offers lessons for the modern world of climate change. Essential reading."
— The Revelator
"A comprehensive description of the acid rain history."
— Ambio
"Brilliant. . . . Poisonous Skies exemplifies the best of the transnational turn, but this tree of knowledge has grafts from the histories of science, diplomacy, and the environment too. . . . A nearly impeccable book."
— Environment and History
"After World War II, the destructive power of nuclear weapons meant that science and policy became deeply intertwined in new ways. 'The scientist,' however, continued to be imagined as an apolitical figure, driven only by the search for objective truths about nature. Plenty of recent works have complicated and displaced this construction, but few do it with such dexterity, command of sources, and chilling lessons for our current times as Rachel Rothschild in Poisonous Skies. Not simply a history of the science,
technology, and domestic or international policy-making surrounding acid rain, Poisonous Skies is also the story of how European and American dependence on fossil fuels shaped environmental policy in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. . . . [It] is a remarkable book, built on archival research in eight countries and five languages, as well as interviews with American, Norwegian, and British scientists. Most impressive, though, is Rothschild's deliberate positioning of herself and her story within contemporary environmental concerns."
— Technology and Culture
"[It is] a revelation to read this remarkable book on the history of acid rain, an environmental and political phenomenon that once prompted significant research, received wide publicity, and caused political rancor. Using new evidence from seventeen European archives, this exceptionally well-researched work is set to have a lasting impact not only on the history of acid rain but also, and especially, on any future research on the nature of modern environmental governance—climate change included—and on the relationship between science and policy, the role of the energy sector in research and politics, international relations, environmental advocacy, and the scientific activities of transnational institutions. . . . This review cannot do justice to the book’s exceptionally wide coverage of themes and issues. Chapters address matters of Cold War diplomacy, the Soviet-block cooperative initiatives, the impact of the conservative 1980s, the rise of the precautionary principle in governmental policy, and policy developments and the decline of research during the 1990s. Rothschild has dug deep into archives and literature—the book boasts a stunning ninety-four pages of footnotes that are often a treat to read on their own—and has created a compelling narrative on the rise of the scientific, political, and corporate cultures surrounding the public prominence and political salience of research into the ecological costs of acid rain."
— Isis: A Journal of the History of Science Society
"Poisonous Skies contributes to a growing body of literature on the history of environmental politics that demonstrates that better policies are rarely simply a matter of better science. . . . The book is impeccably researched, drawing on documents from archives in Britain, Germany, Brussels, Norway, France, Sweden, and Switzerland as well as oral histories that Rothschild conducted with many of the key players in this history. The payoff is immense. Rothschild documents how environmental problems become mired in politics but shows equally how politics can be wielded to effect change—an important lesson for our increasingly warming world."
— Environmental History
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction: A Rain of Ashes - Rachel Emma Rothschild
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226634852.003.0001
[acid rain;pollution;environmental science;environmental diplomacy;fossil fuels;energy;Cold War]
The introduction provides an overview of how acid rain changed ideas about the threat fossil fuels posed to the environment. It also outlines the historical methods employed in the book, including archival research in multiple countries and languages as well as interviews with scientists who studied acid rain. Finally, it discusses how fundamental differences in valuing the environment may have led to an impasse over acid rain among polluters and recipients, an issue which continues to plague environmental problems today. (pages 1 - 8)
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
1: Creating a Global Pollution Problem - Rachel Emma Rothschild
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226634852.003.0002
[London smog;OECD;United Nations;pollution disasters;Svante Odén;Cold War;Conference on the Human Environment;Donora]
Chapter one examines how attempts to address the visible problem of smog caused a significant increase in acidic rainfall. A number of pollution disasters sparked these efforts against smog, notably in Liège, Belgium in 1930, Donora, Pennsylvania in 1948 and London, England in 1952. These incidents occurred when air pollution became trapped around towns and cities and killed dozens to thousands of people. The disasters are crucial to understanding the increase in acidic precipitation during the 1960s and beyond, as governments attempted to avert smog episodes by requiring factories to release emissions higher into the atmosphere. High stacks policies resulted in the transport of larger amounts of pollutants over greater distances and at the same time rendered them invisible to the naked eye, requiring the use of new technologies and scientific analysis to identify their dispersion in the environment. This research shifted conceptions of pollution from foul smells and waste to chemicals, a key development in scientific thinking about pollution that led to the discovery of acid rain. It also drew international attention to the importance of cooperating on pollution problems before the first international meeting on environmental problems: the United Nations (UN) Conference on the Human Environment in 1972. (pages 9 - 35)
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
2: The Science of Acid Rain - Rachel Emma Rothschild
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226634852.003.0003
[OECD;Norwegian Institute for Air Research;Brynjulf Ottar;SNSF project;1973 oil crisis;Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development]
Chapter two discusses how the discovery of acid rain reshaped environmental science across Europe and North America, with particular attention to Scandinavian research that pioneered interdisciplinary, collaborative studies on chemical pollutants. Such “big science” projects were frequently overseen and managed by intergovernmental groups like the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which responded to public calls for environmental protection by incorporating scientific expertise into their policy-making process. While leading to significant increases in funding and support for environmental research on acid rain and other chemical pollutants, these partnerships with intergovernmental institutions resulted in various constraints on acid rain studies because of the need to generate policy-relevant information as well as Cold War tensions between the capitalist and communist nations. Debates about the best way to undertake and support environmental research coincided with the first oil shocks of the early 1970s, prompting many scientists and governmental officials to expand expertise in environmental law and economics in the hopes of achieving international consensus on how to regulate fossil fuel pollution. (pages 36 - 57)
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
3: Energy Industry Research and the Politics of Doubt - Rachel Emma Rothschild
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226634852.003.0004
[Edison Electric Institute;Electric Power Research Institute;Central Electricity Generating Board;Central Electricity Research Laboratories;Gene Likens;flue gas desulfurization]
In 1973, American scientist Gene Likens discovered that acid rain was also occurring in the United States, putting greater pressure on developed countries to reduce fossil fuel emissions. The possibility that acid rain could lead to pollution regulations caused widespread concern among the British and American coal industries, as these two countries were first implicated in causing the problem. Rather than invest in pollution control technology, scientists from American fossil fuel companies teamed up with their counterparts in Britain’s nationalized power industry to coordinate research efforts into the causes and effects of acid rain. Because of their enormous investments in building up a cadre of environmental experts, both the British and American industries earned prominent seats at the table for national and international negotiations over fossil fuel regulations in the coming decades. This chapter analyzes the formation of these industry studies on fossil fuel pollution and their intersection with the emergence of a “politics of doubt” in both of these nations. (pages 58 - 82)
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
4: Pollution across the Iron Curtain - Rachel Emma Rothschild
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226634852.003.0005
[Cold War;Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe;détente;Economic Commission for Europe;environmental monitoring;atmospheric modeling]
New scientific understandings about the regional – and potentially global – nature of pollution transport emerged at a time of stark division in the international community between capitalist and communist countries. Yet this obstacle to environmental cooperation also created an opportunity for scientists and government officials in affected areas to leverage support from communist countries against major emitters in Western Europe, who had been resistant to studying the problem and reducing their air pollution. Chapter four examines how a growing discord between major emitters and recipients of acid rain in Western Europe prompted Norwegian scientists and environmental officials to partner with the Soviet Union in creating a European-wide monitoring program on acid rain. While scientific cooperation with Eastern Europe posed a host of unexpected difficulties for Norwegian scientists and their counterparts throughout the West, working across the iron curtain on the network did produce unforeseen advantages in political cooperation on environmental pollution.Cold War politics arguably saved international cooperation in research and policy on acid rain, but it also revealed the limits of technology in solving the problem and called into question how scientists should function as experts in the diplomatic process. (pages 83 - 100)
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
5: Environmental Diplomacy in the Cold War - Rachel Emma Rothschild
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226634852.003.0006
[United Nations;sulfur dioxide;Soviet Union;Convention on long-range transboundary air pollution;European Communities;U.S. State Department;Norway;Britain]
Chapter five discusses the growing pressure for an international accord on acid rain in the late 1970s. The Scandinavian governments, with the support of the Soviet Union and its allies, proposed an international treaty under the auspices of the United Nations to reduce fossil fuel pollution causing acid rain. However, Britain, France, and West Germany successfully united other members of the European Communities against the proposal, claiming that not enough research had been done on the environmental effects of acid rain to justify the economic costs involved. The US State Department eventually interceded to broker an agreement because American diplomats feared that a poor outcome from the acid rain talks could reduce US leverage in discussions with the Soviets about nuclear security and human rights.As a result of their efforts, European nations alongside the US and Soviet Union signed the 1979 UN Convention on long-range transboundary air pollution, which was the first international accord to address fossil fuel emissions. Although a remarkable achievement, the negotiations were marred by coal industry efforts to discredit environmental research on acid rain, which resulted in a commitment only to further study the problem rather than reduce pollution levels. (pages 101 - 123)
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
6: An Environmental Crisis Collides with a Conservative Revolution - Rachel Emma Rothschild
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226634852.003.0007
[Ronald Reagan;Margaret Thatcher;coal industry;SNSF project;National Academy of Sciences;Environment ’82;national laboratories;Electric Power Research Institute;Central Electricity Generating Board]
Chapter six examines how the rise of conservative administrations in Britain and America during the 1980s institutionalizedthe involvement of coal industry scientists in environmental politics in an unprecedented manner. The influence of coal industry science in both countries raised questions about whether government environmental agencies were receiving unbiased reports on the state of knowledge about acid rain and complicated international negotiations on pollution reductions.For a time, the deep influence of the coal industry in two of the world’s largest polluters had a chilling effect on environmental research and forestalled progress on an international agreement to lower fossil fuel emissions. As this chapter shows, government officials and industry scientists madedishonest representations of acid rain studies at home and abroad to cast doubt on whether fossil fuel pollution was responsible for damaging ecosystems. Their characterization of current research was in direct conflict with the emerging international scientific consensus about acid rain's harmful effects. (pages 124 - 148)
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
7: Acid Rain and the Precautionary Principle - Rachel Emma Rothschild
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226634852.003.0008
[precautionary principle;European Communities;House of Commons;Surface Water Acidification Program;Forest Death;West Germany;cost benefit analysis]
In the face of concerted opposition to reducing fossil fuel emissions from industry, ideas about the importance of obtaining scientific evidence of environmental harm underwent a significant shift in the mid-1980s. Coal industry representatives continued to claim that expensive pollution controls should not be installed while the science of acid rain was still "uncertain." Yet the potentially serious environmental risks of doing nothing continued to grow, as West German scientists found evidence that their country might also be experiencing the effects of acid rain. Rather than continue to debate whether scientists had obtained sufficient proof of the dangers from fossil fuels, European regulators instead began developing the idea of a precautionary approach to pollution policies.The precautionary principle, as they redefined it, gave them a way to act with “uncertain” knowledge and undercut the ability of industry to further delay the imposition of regulations. Under pressure from the European Communities, Britain's coal industry tried to buy themselves more time before needing to implement expensive control technology through a scientific "bribe" to Scandinavian scientists. But despite their efforts, the British government ultimately acceded to demands from the European Communities to reduce air pollution from their coal industry. (pages 149 - 173)
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
8: A Warning Bell for a Fossil Fuel Future - Rachel Emma Rothschild
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226634852.003.0009
[cap-and-trade;National Acid Precipitation Assessment Program;Clean Air Act;International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis;George H.W. Bush;climate change]
In contrast to the acquiescence of the British government, the United States continued to staunchly oppose reductions in fossil fuel emissions through President Reagan's second term. The administration's manipulation of acid rain science also continued, including alterations to reports from the National Acid Precipitation Assessment Program (NAPAP). However, a combination of two developments eventually led to a change in US policy during the Presidency of George H.W. Bush. First, the Reagan administration's environmental policies led to a significant public backlash, promptingBush to made a decisive break with President Reagan on acid rain. Second, the specter of an even more severe planetary threat from fossil fuels - climate change - made acid rain appear to be a warning signal of direr environmental consequences on the horizon. This chapter examines how the U.S. eventually sought to reduce the emissions causing acid rain, as well as the ultimate impact of the problem on scientific advising domestically and internationally. It concludes by evaluating the environmental legacy of acid rain, which is complicated by our continued dependence on fossil fuels and the effects of climate change. (pages 174 - 191)
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
Epilogue: The Climate Change Reckoning - Rachel Emma Rothschild
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226634852.003.0010
[climate change;Donald Trump;European Union;1979 UN Convention on transboundary air pollution;Paris agreement;acid rain;Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change]
The epilogue discusses how the history of acid rain can help inform our responses to climate change. There are many parallels between the two issues, notably that the worst polluters will suffer less damage than those who are least responsible for the problem. I point to three key moments that are informative for breaking the current impasse over reducing greenhouse gases. First,the successful negotiation of the 1979 UN Convention on transboundary air pollution; second, British acquiescence to European Communities' demands to reduce sulfur dioxide emissions; and third, the US implementation of a cap-and-trade program on acid rain. (pages 192 - 198)
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...
