Political Fallout

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A01=Toshihiro Higuchi
Age Group_Uncategorized
Age Group_Uncategorized
Anthropocene
Author_Toshihiro Higuchi
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Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=HBW
Category=JPS
Category=JWMN
Category=NHW
Cold War
COP=United States
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
environment
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
Language_English
nuclear weapons
PA=Available
Price_€20 to €50
PS=Active
radiation protection
risk
science
softlaunch
Soviet Union
United Kingdom
United States

Product details

  • ISBN 9781503612891
  • Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
  • Publication Date: 05 May 2020
  • Publisher: Stanford University Press
  • Publication City/Country: US
  • Product Form: Paperback
  • Language: English
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Political Fallout is the story of one of the first human-driven, truly global environmental crises—radioactive fallout from nuclear weapons testing during the Cold War—and the international response. Beginning in 1945, the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union detonated hundreds of nuclear weapons in the atmosphere, scattering a massive amount of radioactivity across the globe. The scale of contamination was so vast, and radioactive decay so slow, that the cumulative effect on humans and the environment is still difficult to fully comprehend.

The international debate over nuclear fallout turned global radioactive contamination into an environmental issue, eventually leading the nuclear superpowers to sign the landmark Partial Test Ban Treaty (PTBT) in 1963. Bringing together environmental history and Cold War history, Toshihiro Higuchi argues that the PTBT, originally proposed as an arms control measure, transformed into a dual-purpose initiative to check the nuclear arms race and radioactive pollution simultaneously. Higuchi draws on sources in English, Russian, and Japanese, considering both the epistemic differences that emerged in different scientific communities in the 1950s and the way that public consciousness around the risks of radioactive fallout influenced policy in turn. Political Fallout addresses the implications of science and policymaking in the Anthropocene—an era in which humans are confronting environmental changes of their own making.

Toshihiro Higuchi is Assistant Professor of History at Georgetown University.