The lost history of what Americans knew about climate change in the 1960s It wasn’t just scientists who were worried, but Congress, the White House, and even Sports Illustrated.

2 comments

1. As to “Why wasn’t anything done?” the analysis states:
   “Why has so much of this history been overlooked? Oreskes pointed to the “general historical amnesia of Americans.” As the politician Adlai Stevenson once put it, “The trouble with Americans is that they haven’t read the minutes of the previous meeting.” Even people working in environmental protection seem to have lost track of what happened, Oreskes said, perhaps because the EPA of the 1970s focused its limited attention on the acute pollutants that posed an immediate threat to public health — leaving the previous concern over CO2 tucked away in archives.”

2. Yes, let’s talk about what everyone knew:

   The Limits to Growth: “If man’s energy needs are someday supplied by nuclear power instead of fossil fuels, this increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide will eventually cease, one hopes before it has had any measurable ecological or climatological effect.”

   [meanwhile](https://www.nytimes.com/1970/01/11/archives/coal-power-gets-assist-from-youth.html).

   What might have [been](https://i.imgur.com/sSTpTud.png)