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Exploring how climate change has configured the international arena since the 1950s, this book reveals the ways that climate change emerged and evolved as an international problem, and how states, scientists and non-governmental organizations have engaged in diplomatic efforts to address it. Developing amidst the Cold War, decolonization and a growing transnational environmental consciousness, it asks how this wider historical context has shaped international responses to the greatest threat to humankind to date.
Thinking beyond the science of climate change to the way it is received and responded to, Ruth Morgan shows how climate science has been mobilised in the political sphere, paying particular attention to the North-South dynamics of climate diplomacy. The privileging of climate science and the mobilisation of climate scepticism are explored to consider how they have undermined efforts to remedy this planetary problem. Studying climate change and international history in tandem, this book explains the origins of the debates around this environmental emergency, the response of political leaders attempting to address the threat, and the barriers to creating an international regime to resolve the climate crisis.
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
1. Peaceful Climate
2. Anxious Air
3. Endangered Atmosphere
4. Global Greenhouse
5. Climate Negotiations
6. Allocated Atmosphere
7. Global Security
8. Climate Crisis
Epilogue
Index
Ruth A. Morgan is Director of the Centre for Environmental History at the Australian National University, Australia. She has published widely on the climate and water histories of Australia and the British Empire.
"The importance of this work is not easily overstated. With its timeliness, scholarly rigour, and readability, this excellent study contributes substantially to our knowledge of climate science and diplomacy."
– Australian Book Review
"Amid the proliferation of climate change literature, Ruth Morgan's Climate Change and International History stands out [...] Up-to-date and richly sourced, this will be required reading for this reviewer's climate politics and governance students, and will appeal to those in political science, environmental studies, and science and technology studies programs [...] Highly recommended."
– Choice
"The author's main contribution to the field is her presentation of a multidimensional narrative that integrates and contextualizes such a vast and complex subject. This ensures that the book will occupy a prominent place in the historiography of climate change."
– H-Soz-Kult
"Ruth A. Morgan's Climate Change and International History: Negotiating Science, Global Change, and Environmental Justice appears with urgent relevance amid intensifying, intertwined crises of climate and international politics [...] Morgan reveals that these crises have deeper roots and involve a wider range of actors than often appreciated in scholarship. In doing so, she accomplishes something rare among histories of climate (in)justice: cause for hope."
– H-Net Reviews
"With its timeliness, scholarly rigour, and readability, this excellent study contributes substantially to our knowledge of climate science and diplomacy."
– Australian Book Review
"This book provides a useful starting-point in situating the international climate regime within the broader historical context of science diplomacy efforts since 1945."
– International Affairs
