Description
Book SynopsisTrade Review"Howe’s strong insight into how individuals, institutions, and governments interact produces a fascinating yet distressing story, proving that despite its aspirations towards objectivity, applied science historically is a flawed, human tale approaching a classical tragedy."
* Publisher’s Weekly *
"Fastidiously researched….there are no clear heroes and villains…Howe relates a multi-layered conflict that is leading us to a catastrophe of biblical proportions."
-- Nick Walker * South China Morning Post *
"In Howe’s Behind the Curve we have a good story, and an instructive one. It is not the only story to tell about climate change and it won’t be the last. But it is one that should be listened to."
-- Mike Hulme * Climatic Change *
"As the debate rages on…read about it here."
-- Robert E. Hoopes * Wildlife Activist *
"[E]xcellent...the first study to explore the links between climate science and postwar politics in depth."
-- Fredrik Albritton Jonsson * Public Books *
"Howe's take on the role of scientists as advocates for political action will be of interest to anyone concerned with the politics of climate change."
-- Martin Mahoney * Topograph *
"An exhaustive look at scientific, political and social responses to climate change, starting with the discovery of the greenhouse effect in 1958."
-- James Helmsworth * Willamette Week *
"Page after page, Behind the Curve demonstrates the profound tension between science and politics—or more accurately, the anxiety among scientists that their credibility would be torpedoed if they allowed themselves to be lured from the safe harbor of factual inquiry into the treacherous shoals of politics."
-- Chris Lydgate * Reed Magazine *
Table of ContentsForeword by William Cronon
Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
1. The Cold War Roots of Global Warming
2. Scientists, Environmentalists, and the Global Atmosphere
3. Making the Global Environment
4. Climate, the Environment, and Scientific Activism
5. The Politics of Dissent
6. The IPCC and the Primacy of Science
7. The Gospel of the Market
Epilogue
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index
