what environmental history might help us deal with current environmental issues?

• overpopulation--how did countries whose population is shrinking get there?
• limited resources--go conquer someone else doesn't work so well any more, learn danger of using up our resources, different kinds of solutions--recycling, finding substitutes, don't hold resources in common, manage for sustained yield
• global warning--hole in ozone layer is improving as a result of an international agreement, voluntary recycling has worked pretty well by persuading individuals to change their behavior

Another kind of history:

• see politics as central
• politics is not just elections, it is also how the government works, process of passing new laws, government agencies, policies, social movements, public opinion, what's going on in the rest of the world
  
• framed around environmentalism as a social movement (similar to the civil rights movement)
  
• social movement--people who organize together to push for change
• social movements are often people demanding rights (political assumptions are usually phrased in terms of rights)
  

What is the role of government?

• democracy--government should represent the people;  republic--we elect representatives to study the questions more carefully and make good decisions
• vote according to your individual interest or on your idea of what is the greatest good for the whole society
• public interest or public good--government can do things more fairly or that private industry won't do to help people
• this used to be more strongly seen as the role of government as it is today particularly in this region
• politics is about issues that don't have a clear right answer, people will never agree
• what do you do when people don't agree
• don't do anything until we can reach agreement
• simple majority vote
• ugly horse-trading to come up with somewhat of a compromise that could pass
• people are then supposed to accept the compromise
• politicians are supposed to accept and work with the law that passed even if they don't like it
  

Rothman's ideas:

• what is the world-view we need (what are the questions to ask) to understand an issue
  
• Environmentalism is different than the conservation movement--How?
• conservation movement focused on protecting special places
• the environmental movement asks: What about the rest of the environment?
• it is also a change in what people expect about where they live
  
• a new American belief that we have a right to "quality of life"
• quality of life would be living in a pleasant environment, not getting sick from pollution...
  
• not a right given by law but rather something people came to believe
• by seeing this we can explain their behavior
  
• with prosperity, people's expectations rise

We have contradictory expectations--we want prosperity but we don't like some of the consequences

• Americans want cars and consumer goods but not pollution, smog, and hazardous waste
• they want a pleasant environment but not at a cost to them
• in order to help the environment are you willing:
  
  • to pay higher taxes
  • to donate time, volunteer
  • not use your car (ride the bus to school)
  • learn something about the environment
  • drive a small car
  • recycle
  • go to the farmers market to buy food
  • buy more expensive goods at a local store instead of going to Walmart
    
• with this book we will focus more on politics, but politics starts with public opinion

Where does the modern environmental movement start?

• Rothman argues with post-WWII prosperity (prosperity leads to belief that we have a right to quality of life)
  
• the war showed that technology could solve problems on a new level--a new faith in the power of technology
• we don't have to wait for some inventor to come up with the next new thing, by using science we can create whatever new technologies we want as fast as we want (lesson people thought from radar and the proximity fuse)
  
• people thought technology would allow so much prosperity that we could have it all--nuclear power was expected to lead to "electricity too cheap to meter"
  
• "That optimism was short-lived." (p. 2)
• people were scared of the power of technology (eg. the atomic bomb)
  
• people quickly became aware of the side-effects of the new powerful technologies
  

The new power of technology came both from individual new technologies (atom bomb) and also a new belief in the effectiveness of research

Example of the effectiveness of research: Radar and the proximity fuse:


 radar set on airplane Radar

• radar research had begun in the 1930s after some scientists had observed reflections of radio waves from objects
• by 1937 the British had a continuous chain of stations but these used long waves and required two large antennas
• N. L. Oliphant invented the resonant cavity magnetron, first tube capable of sufficient power for radar at wavelengths less than 50 cm (therefore allowing much smaller antennas and also more accurate results)
• this new idea was brought to the US in 1940 and a major research effort started to develop microwave radar
• the government brought together scientists and engineers at MIT to work on this
  
• the Radiation Lab at MIT designed 150 different radar systems--three generations of systems went into use before the war ended
• invented a junction box to transmit and receive from the same antenna
• invented Loran: a way to determine your location by triangulating from special radio signals
• developed the Microwave Early Warning system with a range of 200 miles
• the Radio Lab at Harvard worked on radar countermeasures--jamming, straw
• technology no longer takes a long time and a lot of luck, we now know how to manage research and development to solve a problem and develop a new technology quickly
  

 antiaircraft fire The Proximity Fuse

• in 1940 anti-aircraft fire using timed fused brought down one plane per 2500 rounds fired
• you need the shell to explode even without a direct hit
• many possible technological approaches for detecting when the shell is close to the airplane--radar, sonar, passive acoustic, photelectric...
• very hard to detect anything from a shell not just moving rapidly through the air but also spinning at 475 RPS.  During development it was jokingly called "the world's most complicated form of self-destroying ammunition"
• radar seemed like the best bet, but how to make a device with vacuum tubes that would fit in a space the size of an ice cream cone and survive a force of 20,000 g when fired?
• at one point scientists were dropping tubes from the roof of a 3 story building onto a concrete driveway to test their impact resistance
• development went amazingly fast: pilot production started in Nov. 1941, simulated combat tests in Aug. 1942, in use by Jan. 1943
• mass production of 2 million fuses reduced the cost to $16-23
• results: 6 times more effective than timed fuses

But the strongest example was the atomic bomb:

• by 1939 it was obvious and widely know that a nuclear chain reaction might be possible using certain radioactive elements because each atom that fissioned released neutrons that could hit other atoms and cause them to fission
• Refugee scientists in the U.S. feared a German bomb. Leo Szilard composed two letters for Einstein to sign warning President Roosevelt of the dangers of a German atomic bomb, one in August 1939 and the other in April 1940.  Fear was widespread enough that U.S. and British journals voluntarily censored related scientific papers.
• Germans were indeed working on a bomb, but got stuck in a dead end.  Supporters of Werner Heisenberg say he did this on purpose.

Difficulties setting up such a big, uncertain research and development project

• First organized under National Defense Research Committee (approval for project Oct. 1941) then turned over to the army in June 1942.  The army put General Leslie Groves in charge.
  The first thing to do was prove a chain reaction was possible.  That effort was led by Enrico Fermi , first at Columbia then at the University of Chicago.  The first successful chain reaction took place Dec. 2, 1942 in a small reactor built in a squash court at the Univ. of Chicago.
• Providing fuel for the bomb was a tremendous technical challenge--must separate uranium-235, which is less than 1% of the uranium mined and differs in weight by only .13%.  Two methods of separation: a cyclotron and gaseous diffusion of uranium hexaflouride (the only gaseous compound, but one that is both poisonous and corrosive) were set up at Oak Ridge , Tenn., using  TVA power.  The other alternative is to make plutonium by chain reactions--reactors to do this were built in Hanford, Washington.

 K-25 gaseous diffusion plant at Oak Ridg, photo from fas.org

• Robert Oppenheimer led the effort to design the bomb and said he needed to bring scientists together at a single laboratory.  Los Alamos opened in March 1943.  Developed two bomb designs, one using uranium and one using plutonium.  The plutonium design was tested in the Trinity test near Alamogordo NM on July 16, 1945.  Exploded with the force of 20,000 tons of TNT.

 Bombs used in Japan, photo from fas.org  The decision to drop the bomb

( good links on the decision )

• Germany was clearly defeated and the Japanese were retreating--was it necessary to use the bomb?
• Could there have been a demonstration and warning instead?  Would it have been used in Europe or was racism a factor?
• After spending $2 billion would the government have been accused of wasting money if it wasn't used?
• when Roosevelt died on April 12, 1945, the bomb project was so secret that Vice President Harry Truman didn't even know about it.  The bomb was used because having built it everyone assumed that having built it they would use it.
• three B-29 bombers set out for Hiroshima , Japan on Aug. 6, 1945.  The Japanese sounded the all-clear when they saw only 3 planes.  The Enola Gay dropped the 5 ton bomb and it exploded with the force of 15,000 tons of TNT.  130,000 people died within 3 months, 68% of the buildings of the city were destroyed.
• A plutonium bomb was dropped on Nagasaki on Aug. 9, 1945.  Exploded with the force of 22,000 tons of TNT.

 bomb damage in Hiroshima, photo from fas.org So the power of technology also raised questions, particularly in concerns about nuclear fallout

• in the early years improved atomic bombs were tested in New Mexico and on uninhabited islands in the Pacific
• this put radioactive material into the upper atmosphere, where it circled the earth and slowly fell to earth
• the example that particularly got people was that nursing women had measurable radioactivity in their milk
• more people began to ask questions about progress (as some had back to the 1920s)--is all progress good
• should we do everything that technology makes it possible for us to do?
• not everything the government and corporations do is good--someone needs to watch out for the public good
• private profit won't always lead to a better quality of life, sometimes you need to make decisions based on the public good
  
• those concerns were turned into laws

not just wise use:

• the conservation movement of the progressive era sought "the greatest good for the greatest number in the long run"
• now people saw wise use as not going far enough
• environmentalists wanted to protect the environment at all costs
• this caught the imagination of the public for a while, so long as the economy was good and people thought they could have it all
  
• then the economy declined and people began to worry more about the costs
• they came to see a tradeoff between protection of the economy and economic opportunity (which environmentalists argue isn't accurate)

the question for the future is how much risk to our health and safety are we willing to tolerate for the sake of wealth?

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