The Postwar Origins of the Global Environment: How the United Nations Built Spaceship Earth

396 Pages·2018·5.751 MB·English

by  Perrin Selcer

THE
POSTWAR
ORIGINS

OF THE
G LO B A L

ENVIRONMENT
How The
United
Nations Built
Spaceship
Earth
PERRIN
SELCER
THE POSTWAR ORIGINS OF
THE GLOBAL ENVIRONMENT
COLUMBIA STUDIES IN INTERNATIONAL AND GLOBAL HISTORY
COLUMBIA STUDIES IN INTERNATIONAL AND
GLOBAL HISTORY
Cemil Aydin, Timothy Nunan, and Dominic Sachsenmaier, Series Editors
This series presents some of the finest and most innovative work coming out of the
current landscapes of international and global historical scholarship. Grounded
in empirical research, these titles transcend the usual area boundaries and address
how history can help us understand contemporary problems, including poverty,
inequality, power, political violence, and accountability beyond the nation- state.
The series covers processes of flows, exchanges, and entanglements— and moments
of blockage, friction, and fracture— not only between “the West” and “the Rest”
but also among parts of what has variously been dubbed the “Third World” or the
“Global South.” Scholarship in international and global history remains indis-
pensable for a better sense of current complex regional and global economic
transformations. Such approaches are vital in understanding the making of our
present world.
Cemil Aydin, The Politics of Anti-W esternism in Asia: Visions of World Order in
Pan- Islamic and Pan- Asian Thought
Adam M. McKeown, Melancholy Order: Asian Migration and the Globalization of Borders
Patrick Manning, The African Diaspora: A History Through Culture
James Rodger Fleming, Fixing the Sky: The Checkered History of Weather
and Climate Control
Steven Bryan, The Gold Standard at the Turn of the Twentieth Century: Rising Powers,
Global Money, and the Age of Empire
Heonik Kwon, The Other Cold War
Samuel Moyn and Andrew Sartori, eds., Global Intellectual History
Alison Bashford, Global Population: History, Geopolitics, and Life on Earth
Adam Clulow, The Company and the Shogun: The Dutch Encounter with Tokugawa Japan
Richard W. Bulliet, The Wheel: Inventions and Reinventions
Simone M. Müller, Wiring the World: The Social and Cultural Creation of
Global Telegraph Networks
Will Hanley, Identifying with Nationality: Europeans, Ottomans, and
Egyptians in Alexandria
Perin E. Gürel, The Limits of Westernization: A Cultural History of America in Turkey
Dominic Sachsenmaier, Global Entanglements of a Man Who Never Traveled:
A Seventeenth- Century Chinese Christian and His Conflicted Worlds
THE POSTWAR ORIGINS
OF THE GLOBAL
ENVIRONMENT
HOW T H E U N I T E D NAT IO N S
BU I LT SPAC E SH I P E A RT H
PERRIN SELCER
Columbia University Press
New York
Columbia University Press
Publishers Since 1893
New York Chichester, West Sussex
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Copyright © 2018 Columbia University Press
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Names: Selcer, Perrin, author.
Title: The postwar origins of the global environment : how the United Nations
built Spaceship Earth / Perrin Selcer.
Description: New York : Columbia University Press, 2018. | Series: Columbia
studies in international and global history | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018009049 (print) | LCCN 2018027032 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780231548236 (e- book) | ISBN 9780231166485 (cloth : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Environmentalism— International cooperation— History—
20th century. | Environmental policy— International cooperation— History—
20th century. | Science— International cooperation— History— 20th century. |
Internationalism— History— 20th century. | World politics— 1945– 1989. |
United Nations— History.
Classification: LCC GE195 (ebook) | LCC GE195 .S385 2018 (print) |
DDC 363.7/0526— dc23
LC record available at https: //lccn .loc .gov /2018009049
Columbia University Press books are printed on permanent
and durable acid-f ree paper.
Printed in the United States of America
Cover design: Noah Arlow
TO ALEXANDRA KULKA-W ELLS (1973– 2012),
A NATURAL- BORN WORLD CITIZEN.
I MISS YOU EVERY DAY.
•

CONTENTS
Acknowledgments ix
List of Abbreviations xiii
INTRODUCTION: SCIENCE, GLOBAL GOVERNANCE,
AND THE ENVIRONMENT(cid:2)1
1. BEHIND THE BURLAP CURTAIN(cid:2)27
2. CONSERVING THE WORLD COMMUNITY(cid:2)62
3. MEN AGAINST THE DESERT(cid:2)97
4. THE SOIL MAP OF THE WORLD AND
THE POLITICS OF SCALE(cid:2)133
5. LOCATING THE GLOBAL ENVIRONMENT(cid:2)173
6. SPACESHIP EARTH IN THE AGE OF FRACTURE(cid:2)206
CONCLUSION: THE VIEW FROM
A UTOPIA’S RUINS(cid:2)245
Notes 253
Bibliography 323
Index 363

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
S
ince I began research on the project that turned into this book,
I have lived in five cities and seven houses; had two kids; gotten
married; won a few fellowships and been rejected by dozens of
search committees; celebrated two presidential elections and protested a
third; mourned the losses of a parent, a grandparent, and a dear friend;
made new friends; developed lower- back pain; taken up running; missed
a few deadlines; replaced my front teeth; and benefited from the intellec-
tual and emotional generosity of colleagues, archivists, friends, and fam-
ily. It is a pleasure to finally say thanks in print.
Susan Lindee has been a great mentor. She encouraged me to explore
unexpected paths but didn’t hesitate to tell me when I had lost my way.
Her scholarship remains inspiring. At a critical moment in the exis-
tential crisis known as the job market, her belief in this project kept me
going.
Many others at Penn also shaped my historical sensibility. Sarah Igo
introduced me to the history of the human sciences and told me that I was
writing about the construction of the global scale. Lynn Hollen Lees taught
me how to think strategically about doing world history. Rob Kohler dem-
onstrated the fun of scholarly combat and showed me and a generation
of students the rewards of integrating history of science and environ-
mental history. David Barnes helped me appreciate the “glacier of self-
loathing” as a necessary part of the writing process. And the late Michael