Full Description
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.
Contents
Introduction: "To Put an End to the Contamination of Man's Environment"
1. A State of Emergency: The Origins of Radiation Protection in Nuclear Weapons Testing, 1945-1953
2. "Atomic-Bomb Tuna": The Trans-Pacific Politics of Radiation Protection Standards, 1954-1955
3. Epistemic Stalemate: Genetics and the Creation of Scientific Committees, 1954-1955
4. Epistemic Divide: The U.S. and British Scientific Committees, 1955-1956
5. Epistemic Negotiations: The United Nations Scientific Committee, 1956-1958
6. The Local Turn: Community-Based Fallout Surveys in the United States and Britain, 1958-1960
7. Fallout: The Making of the Partial Test Ban Treaty, 1961-1963
Conclusion: "We Can Live in Strength Without Adding to the Hazards of Life on This Planet"
