In the years following the Second World War, radioactivity, pesticides, and other manmade pollutants prompted a considerable shift in the role of scientists in alerting the public and government officials to environmental dangers. In contrast to the visibility of black soot in urban cities or the destruction of forests and wild areas, these pollutants were not immediately or clearly detectable without scientific documentation and analysis. As a result, scientists became involved in a number of policymaking decisions that necessitated their expertise, such as evaluating radioactive contamination in the Pacific testing grounds or advising governments on whether they should ban DDT. The growing body of evidence for the environmental risks of radioactive contamination and pesticides also led many policymakers and scientists to become increasingly apprehensive about the possibility that fossil fuels could similarly damage the environment. These concerns deepened during the late 1960s after the reported occurrence of "acid rain" in Scandinavia, which raised new questions about the extent to which fossil fuel pollutants were damaging areas remote from sources of emissions. The notion that air pollution from one nation could measurably affect the air quality of other countries presented particular challenges to an international community divided by the Cold War, and posed difficult questions about the obligation of major emitters to preserve the environment of their neighbors. This dissertation examines the history of scientific research on acid rain in the context of these emerging diplomatic efforts to address environmental issues and the ongoing Cold War. I show how the problem of acid rain shifted concerns about environmental risk from visible, local threats to invisible, chemical dangers on a worldwide scale, the ways in which it raised new debates about measuring long term, future damage against the more easily calculated economic costs of reducing fossil fuel pollution, and how it prompted scientists and politicians to grapple with the limits of environmental science to serve as a guide for policy making. I argue that the quest to convince the governments of polluting nations to reduce their emissions led to novel scientific and diplomatic collaborations across the iron curtain between Norway and the Soviet Union characterized by large amounts of government funding, new technologies, and interdisciplinary research, paving the way for a European-wide monitoring program on acid rain. Yet despite seeking to strengthen the surety of their research, Scandinavian scientists and environmental officials were continually told that not enough was known to take political action. This tactic, developed by British scientists and government officials in concert with other major emitters, including the U.S., successfully delayed action to reduce acid rain and prompted policymakers and scientists to introduce the use of the precautionary principle instead of relying on scientific expertise to guide international environmental politics.
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