Julie Bessler - entry no. 3 (on Masco)

I thought that Masco’s “Bad Weather: On Planetary Crisis,” was an extremely interesting account on the relationship between the Cold War rhetoric and the use of our planet as a science experiment. It is well known that during the Cold War the United States and the former Soviet Union had been in a rapid arms race to build the strongest and most sophisticated arsenal of weapons. While this was at the forefront of policy in the two superpowers, the damage that it did to the atmosphere and the environment was certainly not. Masco’s essay examines the evolution and competition between two ideas of planetary crisis since 1945, namely, nuclear war and climate change. His paper gives an “alternative history of the nuclear age and considers the US national security implications of a shift in the definition of planetary crisis from warring states to a warming biosphere.”
It was fascinating that Masco started his essay with the image of the “traumatized forest,” where bent and broken trees are withstanding (and failing against) a nuclear explosion. He says that this common image shows the relationship between ‘national security’ and the environment/atmosphere as the “ultimate domain of security” itself. The image is mostly shown as a result of a nuclear attack, and shows the extent and destruction of such attack. The Cold War nuclear obsession allowed the planet to be an “integrated biosphere,” yet, according to Masco, the reliance on nuclear weapons to define the US’ superpower status was a barrier to non-militarized planetary threats, namely climate change.
Masco gives three moments in history (1953, 1983, 2003) to explain the relationship between the nuclear crisis and the ecological crisis. In 1953, a number of experiments were carried out to test new nuclear weapons and the extent of their power. In Operation Upshot-Knothole alone, the 11 atomic denotations produced one of the most dangerous test series in terms of public health. The “test forest” was built only to be destroyed. And while scientists labeled these experiments as “tests,” they failed to add that each denotation created very real and dangerous environmental consequences. Between 1945 and 1962, the US alone conducted 215 above-ground and underwater nuclear denotations.
Jumping to 2005, Hurricane Katrina, which ravaged the Gulf Coast, was compared to a nuclear attack. President George W. Bush had said it was as if the entire Gulf Coast were obliterated by “the worst kind of weapon you can imagine.” He “invited” the public to think of the ecological destruction as if it were a nuclear attack. Hurricane Katrina was only understood by the political leadership in terms of a nuclear catastrophe.
The topic of this violent environmental event, and its linkage to climate change, was not brought up by many media commentators at the time. Instead, the media focused on the state’s ability to respond to a nuclear attack. Commentators asked what the disaster revealed about the strength of the US’ civil defense, instead of the need to strengthen levy systems and understand environmental change for future environmental disasters. Yet, the nuclear rhetoric is so embedded in the minds of the public and leadership in the US, that Hurricane Katrina called on the government to respond as if it were a nuclear emergency. By responding to an environmental disaster as such, the initiative to understand the damage that WE do to our planet becomes an after-thought. If we continue to treat the planet as a laboratory, we will never blame ourselves for the causes of extreme climate change and continuous environmental disasters.