I have chosen to conclude these essays just as the well-known IGY was getting started. Of course, much has changed since then. There is little to gain, however, by attempting to recount the recent policy history of global change, at least from my perspective as a historian of science and technology. I have tried in this book to provide fresh perspectives on the more distant past, not to replicate the recent literature on global change. Although I am actively engaged in projects sponsored by the American Meteorological Society and the American Geophysical Union that document the recent past, I have little inclination to attempt to interpret it. Consequently I include in this chapter only the briefest sketch of the global cooling scare after 1958 and the return of a global warming discourse in the 1980s. I believe the metaphor of apprehension (awareness, understanding, fear, intervention) applies quite well to a number of current environmental issues, and I will point to some of them by way of conclusion. I was asked once after a seminar whether, as a historian, I could predict the eventual demise of today’s global change discourse, since there had been so many changes in the past. I responded that history has no predictive value, but does indeed provide valuable perspectives to its readers. History is first and foremost the study of change. For students of global change, history can serve as an inspirational story of how far we have come. It can also serve as a humbling reminder that change is indeed inevitable in our lives, in the Earth system, and in our ideas and institutions. Although I am professionally engaged with the past, I am still a citizen of my own age—an age of vastly enhanced environmental awareness. Like many of my contemporaries, I believe that humanity is a part of, not apart from, nature; that human activity is placing tremendous stress on global biophysical systems; and that we have an ethical responsibility to each other and to future generations to live sustainably, in harmony with the Earth. Your guesses about the future are probably as good as and perhaps better than mine.
A History of the Nonlinear Geophysics Section of the American Geophysical Union