Poisonous Skies explores how scientists and policymakers came to grasp the danger fossil fuels posed to the global environment by looking at the first air pollution problem identified as having damaging effects on areas far from the source of emissions: acid rain. This is the first history to investigate acid rain in an international context, spanning from its identification in the 1960s to the present day. The story Rachel Emma Rothschild unfurls reveals how a legacy of military sponsorship of physics, chemistry, and other fields during wartime influenced the direction of research on the environment; the importance of environmental diplomacy to the d tente process of the Cold War; the role of the British and American coal industries in environmental science; and finally, how acid rain shaped ideas about environmental risk and the precautionary principle. Grounded in archival research in eight different countries and five languages as well as interviews with leading scientists from both government and industry, Poisonous Skies should interest anyone seeking to learn from our past in order to better understand and approach the environmental crises of our present day.

About the Author
Rachel Emma Rothschild is currently a Furman Academic Scholar at New York University School of Law. She received her PhD in history from Yale University with distinction in 2015.

Reviews
"This is a very impressive book. The research base is remarkable, including the scores of interviews and hard to find documents, the writing is clear throughout, the narrative arc persuasive, with a number of great vignettes. There really is nothing like it. No one else has even approached the acid rain problem seriously."--Kurk Dorsey, University of New Hampshire



Book Information
ISBN 9780226634715
Author Rachel Emma Rothschild
Format Hardback
Page Count 336
Imprint University of Chicago Press
Publisher The University of Chicago Press