This paper will examine the influence of such Cold War technologies as nuclear weapons, space travel, and cybernetics on the evolution of global environmentalism after 1945. The threat of nuclear war and radioactive fallout motivated a generation of scientists to alert the public to new and unprecedented environmental dangers on a global scale. The advances engendered by the space race provided the dominant metaphor for this global movement with the concept of ‘spaceship earth,’ and they also created the first space-based infrastructure for surveying threats to the earth’s ecosystems in real time. Finally, the emerging discipline of cybernetics, born during World War Two and greatly expanded during the Cold War, provided a new methodology for predicting the behavior of complex ecological and climatic systems in the face of human population growth and global industrialization. In the case of each technology, this paper will explore the careers of individuals who were connected with both technical research and environmental activism. My consideration of nuclear technology will explore the work of the physicist Leo Szilard, the physician David Bradley, and the physicist Leona Woods Marshall, all of whom were connected to the Manhattan project and embraced environmental causes to varying degrees later in their careers. My consideration of aerospace will explore the work of the Apollo astronaut Russell Schweikart, the NASA physicist James Hansen, and the shuttle astronaut and biologist Mary L. Cleave, all of whom combined long careers with NASA with a commitment to environmentalism. My consideration of cybernetics will explore the careers of Jay Forrester, Dennis Meadows, and Donella Meadows, who adapted mainframe computer modeling systems that had been developed at MIT for military applications as new tools for environmental prognostication in the early 1970s.
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