Book ID: CBB212919708

Political Fallout: Nuclear Weapons Testing and the Making of a Global Environmental Crisis (2020)

unapi

Higuchi, Toshihiro (Author)


Stanford University Press


Publication Date: 2020
Physical Details: 328
Language: English

Political Fallout is the story of one of the first human-driven, truly global environmental crises―radioactive fallout from nuclear weapons testing during the Cold War―and the international response. Beginning in 1945, the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union detonated hundreds of nuclear weapons in the atmosphere, scattering a massive amount of radioactivity across the globe. The scale of contamination was so vast, and radioactive decay so slow, that the cumulative effect on humans and the environment is still difficult to fully comprehend. The international debate over nuclear fallout turned global radioactive contamination into an environmental issue, eventually leading the nuclear superpowers to sign the landmark Partial Test Ban Treaty (PTBT) in 1963. Bringing together environmental history and Cold War history, Toshihiro Higuchi argues that the PTBT, originally proposed as an arms control measure, transformed into a dual-purpose initiative to check the nuclear arms race and radioactive pollution simultaneously. Higuchi draws on sources in English, Russian, and Japanese, considering both the epistemic differences that emerged in different scientific communities in the 1950s and the way that public consciousness around the risks of radioactive fallout influenced policy in turn. Political Fallout addresses the implications of science and policymaking in the Anthropocene―an era in which humans are confronting environmental changes of their own making.

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Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB212919708/

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Authors & Contributors
Bini, Elisabetta
Vezzosi, Elisabetta
Maar, Henry Richard, III
Wolfe, Audra Jayne
Weiner, Sharon K.
Volmar, Axel
Concepts
Cold War
Nuclear weapons; atomic weapons
Science and politics
Science and war; science and the military
Public understanding of science
Espionage
Time Periods
20th century, late
20th century
21st century
Places
United States
Soviet Union
Great Britain
Eastern Europe
Russia
Germany
Institutions
Nuclear Test Ban Treaty; Partial Test Ban Treaty; Limited Test Ban Treaty (1963)
Genetics Society of America
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)
Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
Federation of American Scientists
Atomic Energy Research Establishment (Harwell, England)
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