Imagining the Climate: Climate Scientists, Gender, and Environmental Thought in the Early Cold War

• In Event: Gender and Queer Analytics in Environmental History

Abstract

The early Cold War was a pivotal moment for shifting understandings of human relationships with the natural world. As the environmental movement grew in the years following Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, scientific developments in the field of geophysics such as Charles David Keeling’s measurement of atmospheric carbon pointed to the phenomenon of climate being more complex than previously thought. Looking at popular environmental literature, scientific and governmental reports, and archival material from scientific institutions, I examine how gendered discourses informed imaginations of climate during the late 1950s and 1960s. For some, this increased complexity led to a shift from viewing climate as something feminine, passive, and controllable to more masculine and active. Alternately, others continued to view climate through a masculine lens as they imagined possible control-oriented technological solutions like geoengineering to the potential problems associated with global warming. Indeed, the climate of masculinity and masculine approach to science and nature present in the field of geophysics limited the effectiveness of communicating scientific findings and enacting meaningful change in public discourses and policy.

Author

• Frank Amico, Florida State University