The Nuclear Threat and Environmental Doomsday. Nuclear Winter, Freeze, and the Second Cold War

The threat posed by atomic energy helped crystallize environmental consciousness in the 1960s by demonstrating the delicate ecological connections binding the earth. The invisible and all-encompassing nature of radioactive fallout revealed the planet as an organism incredibly vulnerable to human activity and one in need of protection.

In her seminal work, Silent Spring (1962), Rachel Carson drew on the analogy of a town hit by nuclear fallout to expose the dangers of widespread pesticide use, and Paul Ehrlich's The Population Bomb (1969) drew on the imagery of the atomic bomb to suggest ecological collapse from overpopulation. Scientific findings in the 1970s—such as those contained in the National Academy of Sciences report "On the Worldwide Effects of Multiple Nuclear Weapon Detonations" (1975)—suggested that nuclear weapons pose a threat not only to human life and civilization, but also to the long-term integrity of the global ecosystem.

Experts in Europe and North America argued that a conflict involving repeated use of nuclear warheads would disperse radioactive isotopes throughout the atmosphere and lead to the partial destruction of the ozone layer.

With radioactivity threatening to bring an environmental doomsday, citizens began to explore social justice concerns. Plagued by cancers and genetic defects, families affected by the atomic tests of the 1950s (most often military veterans and local communities) demanded compensation from national authorities for their treatment as atomic guinea pigs.

Meanwhile, a growing cadre of environmental activists protested the placement of nuclear waste on Native American lands, citing environmental racism. From uranium mining to weapons testing, the nuclear fuel cycle became increasingly criticized for its ecological costs. In 1971 direct action campaigners staged a protest off the Aleutian island of Amchitka, at once canceling the scheduled U.S. nuclear test and ushering in the birth of the Greenpeace environmental movement.

Nuclear Winter, Freeze, and the Second Cold War. During the late 1970s and early 1980s nuclear tensions heightened, and huge increases occurred in defense spending on atomic weaponry. The "second cold war" was characterized by U.S. President Ronald Reagan's hard-line stance toward communism, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the failure of detente, and the advent of new nuclear technology, namely SS20 and Cruise missiles, the B-l bomber, and the neutron bomb.

The growing likelihood of war spurred protests in Europe and the United States against nuclear armaments. In the United Kingdom, 141 local councils created nuclear free zones that banned the manufacture, use, or deployment of atomic weapons within their confines. In August 1981 a group of women established a peace camp outside Greenham Common Air Force Base in Berkshire to oppose the installation of Cruise missiles.

The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) experienced a rapid rise in membership (reaching ninety thousand by 1984). In the United States citizen protest galvanized around the idea of the nuclear weapons freeze, a project sponsored by groups including the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy (SANE), Friends of the Earth, and American Baptist churches. A 12 June 1982 rally organized by Mobilization for Survival in New York City attracted 1 million people.

Books and movies depicting nuclear holocaust heightened public fears. Edward Thompson's Protest ami Survive (1980) booklet criticized civil defense initiatives in Britain, and in the U.S., Jonathan Schell's The Fate of the Earth (1982) and Helen Caldicott’s Nuclear Madness: What You Can Do! (1980) highlighted nuclear war as a paramount ecological concern. Movies such as The Day After (1983) and Threads (1984) detailed communities struggling with the onset of nuclear war and its aftermath of social decay and environmental contamination.

The scientific community also explored postnuclear scenarios. Working with information gleaned from the Mariner 9 mission to Mars (1971) as well as the eruption of Mount St. Helens volcano (1980), scientists developed the idea of nuclear winter. Envisaging a 5-15° C drop in temperature and an 80 percent reduction in solar energy for several months after an atomic war (a product of the huge quantities of dust sucked up into the atmosphere), scientists postulated the possible extinction of life on Earth.

According to the "TTAPS Report" (named after the initials of its authors, beginning with scientist Richard Turco and ending with astronomer Carl Sagan), nuclear winter could be triggered by a 100-megaton exchange (1 percent of the global nuclear stockpile at that time). In October 1983 thirty-one citizen groups, including the Sierra Club, sponsored a conference in Washington, D.C., entitled "The World after Nuclear War" hosted by Paul Ehrlich and Carl Sagan.