More than 40 years ago, a secret group of elite scientists realized that an enormous threat was looming because of climate change. The group of biologists, chemists, mathematicians, oceanographers and others, known as the Jasons, had been hired by the federal government to solve issues of national security and defense, and their chief scientist decided to take action.
Nathaniel Rich, author of "Losing Earth: A Recent History," said that Gordon MacDonald, a physicist, helped publish a report that forecasted the devastating effects of carbon dioxide emissions. Apart from the ruinous environmental problems — a strained agricultural industry, increased droughts, floods, heat waves and rising sea levels — MacDonald also predicted that climate change would foment destabilizing geopolitical tensions across the world.
Enter Rafe Pomerance, an environmental activist, who was shocked by the science on climate change and teamed up with MacDonald to spread the word about the imminent danger. Politicians at the time did not dismiss the science, but they did not take concrete action either.
When Frank Press, President Jimmy Carter’s science advisor, stepped in, there were signs of hope. Press had briefed Carter about rising carbon dioxide levels, and the president took the matter seriously. But he also had other pressing problems to deal with, including an oil crisis that would eventually force his administration to push the production of synthetic fuels, which have high levels of CO2 output.
Rich narrates the story of how climate change was approached by the Carter, Reagan and Bush administrations — and how all of them failed to take the necessary steps that would have reversed the path we are currently on.
Today, the topic of climate change is deeply contentious, and some Americans reject the underlying science. Rich attributes this belief to John H. Sununu, who served as the White House chief of staff under former President George H. W. Bush. Sununu was trained as a mechanical engineer, and he was skeptical of climate change models. He even claimed that climate change was socialist propaganda, a figment of the imagination of leftist, anti-growth groups, according to Rich. It was the first time someone with such political clout had firmly denied climate science, and he managed to change the course of an administration, that — until that point — had stood strongly behind the issue.
Today, many Republican lawmakers still hold to the beliefs that Sununu propagated in the 1980s, turning climate change into a deeply partisan issue.
But Rich said he does see a light at the end of the tunnel.
“We are at a moment of tremendous hope and progress,” he said. A new wave of activists — including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who has championed a Green New Deal, the teenage Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, and the youth-led Sunrise Movement — are making an emotional argument for addressing climate change, appealing to moral claims of social justice and inequality. Rich said he believes their argument has the power to speak to both civilians and politicians, and undermine partisanship around the issue.
“Whenever we’ve had moments of profound social change in this country, it has been accompanied by a higher moral claim towards decency and justice,” explained Rich. “Not only does it have the possibility of being more politically effective, it’s also a more honest way to speak of the problem, rather than engaging in this shadow play of debating whether the science is real.”
Nadia Lewis is an intern at Innovation Hub.
