Atomic Show #324 – Jay Hakes, Author of Presidents and the Planet

Jay Hakes, an accomplished author and historian, visited the Atomic Show to talk about his recently published book, Presidents and the Planet: Climate Change Science and Politics from Eisenhower to Bush. Sometimes referred to as “the untold story of climate change,” Hake’s book is an enlightening jaunt through a history discovered during long days in archives and Presidential libraries.

Though some of the most vocal proponents of climate change action tell a history story about a public and political understanding that begins sometime during the 1980s, with the actions of people like James Hansen, the truth that Hakes discovered was that presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson and Carter and their staffs knew there was a growing body of science indicating that increasing atmospheric concentration of CO2 was a significant problem.

Hakes and I talk about the period when scientists were actively trying to determine if the atmosphere was warming or cooling and the long term confusion, some of it purposeful, that has resulted from a debate that was generally resolved by the end of the 1970s.

We spoke about the odd period during the Carter Administration when there was both significant concern about the risks of atmospheric CO2 and an active program to increase coal consumption while slowing nuclear energy development to a crawl. Interestingly, Carter gave the power generation industry a chance to defend nuclear power before he produced his energy plan, but there is no evidence that the industry even mentioned nuclear’s lack of air pollution or greenhouse gas emissions.

Hakes’s research showed that much of the early science and political communications about climate change originated from the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC). His research also showed that the AEC involvement led to a lengthy period when groups that classified themselves as part of the Environmental Movement took little or no interest in effectively addressing climate change. They believed it was something that only nuclear cheerleaders cared about.

Sadly, we now face a bit of an opposite problem. Some vocal nuclear proponents have come to the conclusion that climate change can’t be much of a problem since so many of its activists remain adamantly opposed to using nuclear energy as a powerful tool in the effort to limit the impact of climate change.

Like many nuclear energy supporters, I believe we lost a lot of time and added a much larger quantity of CO2 to the atmosphere than we would have if we had continued deploying nuclear power systems. The solution to that lost time, however, is to press forward.