Olivier Lallemant - Entry No (4) - Masco

The article “Bad Weather: On Planetary Crisis” has been written by anthropologist Joseph Masco, PhD, from University of Chicago, in 2010, for Social Studies on Science. I think that the fact that this article is written by an anthropologist is fundamental, since it describes an evolution of Western population thought towards nuclear weapons trough the Cold War. The author divides his article in three main chronological parts. The first one is about the beginning of the Cold War and the discover of nuclear weapon by the most powerful Western country and Russia; the second one, named “A Nuclear Winter” focuses on the 1980’s and the end of the arms race; the last one is about the new environmental issues raised by the ecological crisis the Earth is undergoing, namely “Global Warming as Nuclear War”. Thus, Masco’s article focuses on the links between environment and Nuclear as a weapon of mass destruction (WMD) and how Western populations consider it.

In the first part, the author interrogates the “notion of ecological risk mediated by national security concerns” related to the nuclear weapon. It means that there are two different things. On the one hand, the danger that constitutes the Bomb itself; on the other hand, how it is represented, which shows how really dangerous it is. Actually, the icons that show the hue power of destruction of the Bomb is as, and even less, important than its real danger. The author describes that during the first decades of the Cold War, the Earth was turned into “an experimental nuclear theater”. The danger of the Bomb was not only tested, but also recorded, and showed to population, to create a realistic vision of destruction and danger within populations. And those testing images of the Bomb effects on artificial grown forests led people to consider ecological disorders as caused by nuclear energy. Hence at these times, the border between military issues and ecological issues was blurred, and the issues of global environment caused by the industrial civilization were strongly linked with the militarization of nature “for the benefit of the US security state”.

The second part adds a whole new concept to this theory namely “the Nuclear Winter”. Based on Louis Alvarez’s research about the end of Dinosaurs reign on Earth, this theory explains how a nuclear apocalypse could lead to a new climatic era, and an exceptional ecological disaster, destroying most of living species in the world. The author defines Nuclear Winter as the “portrait of a ‘post-war’ environment almost as traumatic as the initial nuclear firestorm”. It shows that for the first time in mankind History, an artificial weapon could destroy all the “biological support systems of civilization”. Thus, it introduces a new vision of war: what comes after the war is more significant than the war itself. Its causes are the real disaster. This theory is very interesting, and very close to the reality of a hypothetic nuclear apocalypse, and it leads directly to the last part of Joseph Masco’s article.

The third part of this article is about the raising awareness towards the ecological danger of nuclear weapon, thanks to Hollywood’s blockbusters industry. Masco takes the example of The Day After Tomorrow, which led, in 2004, to an increasing recognition of climate change as a main social issue. Showing New-York under the ice, as well as the destroyed Statue of Liberty in The Planet of the Apes touched the American public opinion that became more interested about the several researches and studies that have been pursued to demonstrate the ecological impact of Nuclear energy. Yet, the disaster theories have never led to a significant decrease of pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. However, as Masco writes as a conclusion, the fact that President George W. Bush, as Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour compared Katrina hurricane disaster to a nuclear attack and to Hiroshima shows that the ecological danger of the nuclear weapon is deeply stuck in American population’s mind. It reveals that Americans have been conditioned to approach mass destruction on very specific terms. It shows also that the Cold War brought the apocalyptic vision of the world, which can end at any time. Thus, there is a strong link between nuclear weapon and ecological disaster in Western populations’ minds; this article well demonstrates that our representations of destruction are far more powerful than the potential destruction itself.