ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Climate Change as a Hidden Hazard of Development Aid: The Discovery of Climate Change in U.S. Development Programmes from Richard Nixon to Jimmy Carter (1970-1985)

• In Event: New Perspectives on Climate Change in the Long 1970s

English Abstract

This paper examines how U.S. presidents from Richard Nixon to Jimmy Carter (1970–1985) first recognized climate change, not as an isolated environmental threat, but as a hidden hazard embedded in debates over development aid. Drawing on archival materials, it argues that climate change entered presidential thinking through concerns about ineffective modernization in the Global South.

During the 1970s, rising CO₂ levels and shifting weather patterns were interpreted primarily as accelerants of Malthusian fears—overpopulation, ecological degradation, and declining agricultural yields—rather than as global environmental dangers in their own right. Nixon and Ford viewed climate change through the prism of development failure, emphasizing global monitoring systems and technological tools to better manage environmental stress in newly independent states. Carter, despite later acclaim as an environmentalist, likewise framed climate change within a broader developmental crisis. His administration linked warming to food insecurity and population growth, promoting technological assistance, environmental assessments, and “basic human needs” programming as solutions for the least developed countries.

By situating climate concerns within longstanding anxieties about modernization, this paper challenges narratives portraying the discovery of climate change as a linear rise in environmental awareness or a story of presidential leadership. Instead, it shows that early U.S. climate diplomacy emerged from attempts to manage the pace and consequences of development in the Global South. Climate change became visible to policymakers when it appeared to threaten agricultural stability, geopolitical order, and the viability of U.S.-led development strategies—revealing it as a developmental problem before it was recognized as a planetary one.

Author

• Frank Gerits, Utrecht University