Inventing “Spaceship Earth”: Cold War Technologies and the Birth of Global Environmentalism

While the environmentalist movement that gained global prominence in the 1960s and ’70s is often described by its supporters and detractors alike as a pastoral reaction against the technocratic culture of the Cold War era, this paper will examine the ways in which that movement drew much of its inspiration and some of its ideological content directly from Cold War itself. Tracing the growth of the early environmentalist movement on both sides of the Atlantic, this paper will consider a diverse array of figures, but will focus especially on the thinking and activism of World Wildlife Fund founder Julian Huxley, Silent Spring author Rachel Carson, and Whole Earth Catalogue creator and publisher Stewart Brand. As it seeks to recontextualize the work of these seminal figures, this paper will investigate their respective responses to the plethora of new technologies, from nuclear weapons and controlled irradiation to artificial satellites, space exploration, and the creation of new computer networks, that emerged from the stunning expansion of technical research driven by the exigencies of the contemporary national security state. Beyond embracing many of the technologies to emerge from the strategic competition between the Eastern and Western Blocs, these early environmentalists were also influenced, to varying degrees, by the valorization of technical expertise and the widespread belief in the efficacy of social engineering that were ascendant across the ideological spectrum during the Cold War decades. The intense and sustained rivalry between the U.S. and Soviet Union between 1945 and 1989, although it is mainly remembered by environmental historians for the very destructive impact of its nuclear arms race, also created new technologies and a pervasive technocratic culture that would profoundly inform the ideas and activism of the first global environmentalist movement.