We are used to looking at climate change through the lens of the future. The primary endeavor of scientists in this field is forecast. What will our world look like in 2050 if we fail to curb greenhouse gas emissions? Will optimistic or catastrophic scenarios prevail? Anxiety about the future is driving the current search for solutions as we seek to avert negative consequences. However, as we focus on predictions and solutions, it is equally important to look back and draw lessons from the history of global efforts to mitigate climate change. The evolution of society is far more difficult to model than changes in the composition of the atmosphere and the rate at which glaciers melt, but historical research allows us to identify significant trends that might easily escape observation in the immediacy of the present.

The title of Ruth A. Morgan’s book emphasizes its place in the existing literature on the history of climate change research and mitigation. The latter general topic is not new: it has been explored by environmental scientist Tim OʼRiordan and climatologist Jill Jäger1, meteorologist and first IPCC chair Bert Bolin2, and oceanographer William Sweet3, among others. Historians and other social scientists have also actively engaged with the issue.4 Their primary focus has been the evolution of the interests of key state actors, the North–South expansion of climate diplomacy, and the balance between regional and global priorities. While not distancing herself from these issues, Morgan offers a fresh perspective: she moves away from the confines of formal diplomacy and focuses on the broader notion of “negotiations”, which she sees as “the international response to a longer history of scientific negotiations to understand the climate as a planetary system” (p. 9). Another important framework highlighted in the title is environmental justice. This can be distilled into a central question posed by the author in her introduction (p. 2): “Why engage the whole world to limit gas emissions?” The question becomes a pointed one when it is acknowledged that more than half of the world’s CO2 emissions are produced by just five countries (p. 1).

The journey outlined in the introduction promises to be extensive and rich in topics for discussion, including indigeneity, colonialism and anti-colonialism, and international and inter-class conflicts. Rather than a thematic structure, the author adopts a chronological approach, charting the rising concentration of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere. Morgan begins in the late 1950s, when CO2 levels were 317.64 parts per million (ppm), and concludes in the early 2020s, when the threshold of 400 ppm is crossed. This validates the conventional chronological approach: the increase in CO2 concentration in recent decades has been a linear process that the global community has tried to confront, and while stakeholders negotiate with varying degrees of success, the planet continues to warm.

In eight chapters, Morgan shows how international institutions (primarily the UN and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [IPCC], founded in 1988) have responded to the developing scientific understanding of the climate and atmosphere as planetary systems vulnerable to human influence. She traces the history of this global focus back to the post-war and early Cold War periods, while acknowledging earlier concepts, including Vladimir/Volodymyr Vernadsky’s “noosphere”. The first insights into the functioning of the atmosphere, its composition, and the role of CO2 concentration and its impact on climate were initially “side effects” of the study of the risks of nuclear testing. In turn, the successes of climate change programs in some nations led to the conception of the Earth as a spaceship, something belonging to all humanity, to be managed rationally and carefully.5 However, as the author goes on to demonstrate, the new data did not immediately and universally cause concern. The first international negotiations to mitigate climate risks were preceded by a period of technological optimism and climate skepticism, which slowly began to wane in the 1970s under the influence of escalating environmental crises and burgeoning conservation movements.

In chapter 4, Morgan shows how the United Nations (UN) and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) led the agenda in international climate negotiations. During this period, two key conflicts emerged: one between the Global South and the Global North, and the other between those emphasizing mitigating climate change and those pursuing economic progress. These issues were intricately intertwined because the different levels of economic development between the North and the South meant that they could not bear equal responsibility for climate change, as articulated in the principle of “common but differentiated responsibilities”. However, in addition to the “horizontal” dimension, the environmental justice highlighted in the title also had a “vertical” one: the global response to climate challenges depended not only on the contradictions between states (to be resolved primarily through dialogue between their privileged representatives), but also on conflicts within countries. Negotiations between scientists and state actors did not always take place directly; moreover, climate activism and public opinion shaped them significantly. A stronger focus on these aspects would make Morgan’s account more nuanced and allow the book to engage with a wider range of texts on environmental justice and global climate governance, including (but not limited to) works by Jason W. Moore and Andreas Malm.6

The new phase of negotiations, which began after the fall of the USSR and continues to the present day, is covered in chapters 5 to 8. During this period, the world became more multipolar, which was expectedly reflected in climate diplomacy. Morgan carefully examines the process by which countries with similar climate interests form coalitions, including the most vulnerable island states and oil-producing nations. The diversity of their interests forced international organizations and institutions to seek measures that did not infringe on the territorial and economic sovereignty of participating states. This facilitated the integration of market-based instruments, such as emissions trading, into the implementation of the Kyoto Protocol. The author provides a comprehensive picture of the evolving global system that both commercialized climate damage but also enabled real achievements to be made under existing conditions.

Examining recent initiatives from the Copenhagen Accord to the Paris Agreement, Morgan reveals the remarkable increase in the number of non-state actors involved in climate negotiations. These include Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), indigenous peoples’ organizations, individual scientists, and research groups. These actors have made significant contributions to new initiatives, such as phasing out coal-fired power generation and fossil fuel subsidies, and have instilled a sense of “slow hope”7 for positive change in the future. While Morgan is not very optimistic about the past and the perspectives of climate negotiations, she is hopeful that political action and climate activism have the potential to do what officials and scientists have failed to accomplish.

However, the conclusion inevitably remains open-ended. The world continues to change. As the book was being prepared for publication, a number of discouraging events in global politics occurred. These have fostered skepticism about the likelihood of effective dialogue between nations in the near future, especially between the Global North and the Global South, which is one of the book’s central narratives. Another pressing (and somewhat rhetorical) question remains: why, despite the many mitigating or ameliorating events and facts outlined in the book, does the Keeling Curve (the graph showing the accumulation of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere from 1958 on) continue its inexorable rise? To what extent do the contents of the chapters dealing with climate change negotiations correspond to their subtitles, which reflect atmospheric CO2 levels that continue to rise despite international agreements and mitigation efforts?

Morgan does not attempt to provide definitive answers to these questions, concluding the book with the words: “Only time will tell whether these negotiations will turn the tide of a warming world.” (p. 252) But if the essence of historical research is its ability to illuminate long-term trends, what can we learn from them? This is not the only instance in the book where readers may find themselves wishing for the author’s guidance and perspective: the text bristles with names, dates, events and abbreviations that can sometimes be overwhelming. Even the concluding remarks of some chapters are laden with additional quotes, examples and names.

However, therein lies the essence and purpose of Ruth Morgan’s book. It does not seek to simplify the course of events, but rather to portray the diverse nature of climate negotiations beyond diplomacy as conventionally understood. The book shows how these negotiations intertwine with a wide variety of interests and are influenced by a multitude of factors. The author’s main contribution to the field is her presentation of a multidimensional narrative that integrates and contextualizes such a vast and complex subject. This ensures that the book will occupy a prominent place in the historiography of climate change.

Notes:
1 Tim O’Riordan / Jill Jäger (eds.), Politics of Climate Change. A European Perspective, London 1996.
2 Bert Bolin, A History of the Science and Politics of Climate Change. The Role of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Cambridge 2007.
3 William Sweet, Climate Diplomacy from Rio to Paris. The Effort to Contain Global Warming, New Haven 2016.
4 See, for example: Joshua Howe (eds.), Making Climate Change History. Documents from Global Warmingʼs Past, Seattle 2017; Spencer R. Weart, The Discovery of Global Warming. Revised and expanded edition, Cambridge, MA 2008; Anya Zilberstein, A Temperate Empire. Making Climate Change in Early America, Oxford 2016.
5 Cf. Sabine Höhler, Spaceship Earth in the Environmental Age, 1960–1990, London 2015; reviewed by David Kuchenbuch, in: H-Soz-Kult, 24.04.2015, https://www.hsozkult.de/publicationreview/id/reb-22418 (07.07.2024).
6 Jason W. Moore, Capitalism in the Web of Life. Ecology and the Accumulation of Capital, London 2015; Andreas Malm, Fossil Capital. The Rise of Steam Power and the Roots of Global Warming, London 2016.
7 Christof Mauch, Slow Hope. Rethinking Ecologies of Crisis and Fear, RCC [Rachel Carson Center] Perspectives. Transformations in Environment and Society 2019, no. 1, https://doi.org/10.5282/rcc/8556 (07.07.2024).