Losing Earth summary

October 1980. A diverse team of politicians, energy experts, and environmentalists meet at the Pink Palace, a gaudy resort in southern Florida. They’ve been assembled by Congress as part of the National Commission on Air Quality. Their task is to deliver concrete policy proposals for dealing with climate change.

It’s not an easy job. For three days, they debate the urgency, scope, and merit of various approaches to climate change. Some argue for forceful, decisive emergency action. Others call for a measured, mild response. 

The Pink Palace conference was dispiriting, but what happened next was even worse. Four days after the inconclusive meeting, Ronald Reagan was elected president. The new Commander-in-Chief was aggressively right wing, and his administration’s priority was shrinking the federal government, not the world’s climate footprint.

Once in office, Reagan deregulated the mining industry, increased coal production, and opened up more public lands for oil drilling. On top of this, he gutted the Department of Energy and appointed Anne Gorsuch, an extreme anti-environmentalist, to oversee the Department of the Interior. 

Back in 1979, when Pomerance and MacDonald first raised the alarm about the greenhouse effect, they had one major success. They convinced the Carter Administration to fund a comprehensive study on climate change. Now, in October 1983, the National Academy of Sciences was prepared to deliver their findings.

Unsurprisingly, the projections were grim. The Academy’s 500-page dissertation contained the same basic facts and dire warnings as the earlier Charney Report. Yet, when presenting the findings to the press, the Academy followed the Reagan Administration’s line: climate change was no real threat, and if it was, we could easily adapt.

It’s 1985, and Pomerance is talking to Republican congressional staffer Curtis Moore about the need for urgent action on climate change. Moore listens and gives his honest advice. Carbon emissions may be a big problem, but without an attainable solution, no politician will take it on. Politicians don’t like failing. 

A year earlier, this assessment would have been discouraging. However, with the successful fight against CFCs still fresh in the cultural zeitgeist, tackling carbon output doesn’t seem like such a losing proposition. 

The 1980s ended with a flurry of activity. In June 1988, the hottest June in history, Hansen once again testified before Congress, forcefully stating that climate change was a real, present danger. The world needed to act immediately.

Four days later, his call was answered. Representatives from 46 countries gathered in Toronto for the World Conference on the Changing Atmosphere. After lengthy talks, the representatives adopted the first-ever international benchmarks for climate reduction. Taking a target suggested by Pomerance, the world’s industrialized powers tentatively agreed to reduce carbon emissions by 20 percent by the year 2005.

May 1989. Hansen is preparing to testify before Congress. Like so many times before, he sends his statements to the White House for approval. It’s usually a routine procedure, a formality that he must conduct as a representative of NASA. However, this time, it’s different.

His notes come back full of edits and mark-ups. The Office of Management and Budget wants major changes. They want him to call his findings mere “estimates,” to refer to his solid models as “unreliable,” and to suggest that the cause of climate change is “scientifically unknown.”