Blinded by the Apocalypse: Carl Sagan and Nuclear Winter

Final Report:

I was at the Library of Congress running between my desk and the scanners to collect as much relevant material as I possibly could.  I came looking to gain insight into the nature of Carl Sagan’s environmentalism.  I wanted to answer the question of how Sagan’s environmentalism was related to environmental justice.  As I skimmed material while making snap decisions as to whether it could be useful and worth scanning, I caught glimpses of illumination.  If I could find a direct connection between Sagan and advocacy for environmental justice, then I would have struck gold.  I could still reach a firm conclusion if there was no connection.  Eventually I found a steady light that allowed me to look back at everything else I had collected and find the shape of Carl Sagan’s environmentalism hidden in the details.  That light came in the form of the Joint Appeal by Religion and Science for the Environment.

The Joint Appeal was co-chaired by Carl Sagan and Dean James Parks Morton at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine in New York City.  St. John is an institution famous for its ecumenical and environmental work.  There are several exchanges that highlight the deep esteem which had developed between them.  One example is when, in March of 1993, the communications department at St. John sent a message to Sagan requesting that he write an assessment of the Cathedral’s work to accompany the “reflections and visions” of Bishop Desmond Tutu, the Dalai Lama, Wendell Berry, and Vice President Al Gore in publications commemorating the Cathedral’s centennial.[i] Sagan responds with a statement of glowing praise that begins by praising the Cathedral for its ecumenicism and commitment to being a “friend of the victims of injustice.”  Sagan explains his connection to the Cathedral through his partnership with Morton on the Joint Appeal.  Sagan says of St. John that “I know of no other house of worship that has done more for the global environment.”  He says that St. John seems to be working toward a “planetary consciousness to supplant petty chauvinisms” to address the challenges of the next millennium.[ii]

This exchange demonstrates Sagan’s prominence as an advocate for global environmentalism and highlights the foundations of his environmental thought and actions.  Those foundations are a perspective that views the Earth as a whole, seeks to address global environmental problems, and is bound to the idea of justice in the face chauvinism of all kinds.  This essay argues that Sagan had a unique environmental perspective which led him to advocate for global environmentalism and which contained a theme of justice born from the same perspective.  One purpose behind this argument is the need to place Sagan within environmental history.

Finding Sagan’s place in environmental history is necessitated by how narrowly Sagan is characterized in environmental history and the minimal role of environmentalism in portrayals of Sagan’s life.  Sagan’s environmental role is almost completely confined to his research and publicizing of the nuclear winter hypothesis.  William Knoblauch’s dissertation “Selling the Cold War: Antinuclear Cultural Activism and Reagan Era Foreign Policy” has two chapters concerning Sagan and nuclear winter.  The first chapter places Sagan’s work in a Reagan-era anti-nuclear culture.  The second chapter argues that Sagan turned to popular media to disseminate his message after he received push back that attempted to discredit the idea of nuclear winter.[iii] Lawrence Badash’s A Nuclear Winter’s Tale: Science and Politics in the 1980s compliments Knoblauch’s cultural history with a scientific and political history.[iv]  Sagan’s contribution to environmentalism on the grounds of nuclear winter is well established in these two works and so I will only touch on it as it pertains to his overall environmental philosophy and his involvement in other environmental issues.  “When Carl Sagan Warned the World About Nuclear Winter”, by Matthew Francis, is emblematic of how current environmental discourse places Sagan in environmentalhistory.[v]  The argument is centered around how he warned us about a particular danger.  It is not about how science shaped his perspective regarding environmental dangers or how he advocated an environmental agenda.  Keay Davidson wrote the most extensive biography of Sagan’s life.  When Davidson writes about Sagan making common cause with religion the focus remains on nuclear winter, but by the time Sagan and Morton presented their first joint effort the Soviet Union was already visibly crumbling and greenhouse gas emissions had become a more pressing concern for him.[vi]  This evidence demonstrates that Sagan’s presence in environmental history is largely defined by a single aspect of his environmentalism, but other sources will allow me to locate Sagan’s more multifaceted environmentalism in the broader landscape of environmental history.

My background in environmental history is rooted in the perspective of environmental justice and so that is the lens I will apply to situating Sagan in the landscape of environmental history.  Environmental justices histories inform my understanding of the current of justice that runs through Sagan’s environmentalism.  Di Chiro’s essay in Uncommon Ground “Nature as Community” defines the core concepts of environmental inequity and environmental justice.[vii] Robert Gottlieb’s Forcing the Spring provides a broad view of the diversity of the environmental movement.  It also proposes a historiographical model that sees environmentalism as a continuous tradition that is a “complex of social movements” in response to urban and industrial changes.[viii] This model is useful here because Sagan often attributes environmental problems to the growing power of technology beginning in the industrial revolution.

The methodology of this history is primarily intellectual and political with a small element of cultural analysis.  The intellectual aspect is relevant to how Sagan’s perspective originates in his career as an astronomer and his understanding of the history of science.  It is also found in the active role he played in advancing environmental science.  Sagan’s advocacy was highly political in that it frequently involved attempts at influencing policymakers or involvement with environmental organizations.  The cultural element arises in considering the audiences Sagan attempted to reach a regarding his published works as texts that aimed not only to convey ideas but to influence culture.

This essay is composed of three sections: thought, advocacy, and the theme of justice.  The first section on environmental thinking begins with Sagan’s perspective as an astronomer.  This perspective highlighted human insignificance, the frailty of the Earth, and the depth of our dependency on the Earth.  Sagan followed a chain of facts and what he considered obviously rational conclusions, once you had the right perspective, to develop his environmental convictions.  The second section examines how Sagan translated his environmental thinking into advocacy where he expressed his ideas, proposed solutions, and created environmental alliances.  His actions within the scientific community followed from the same source as his environmental perspective: his position as an astronomer.  When he became a celebrity scientist he gained a popular audience to which he could communicate his environmental message.  His fame also gave him access to and influence in environmental and political circles.  The third section uncovers the theme of justice in his environmental thought and advocacy beginning with how his astronomer’s perspective also informed his conviction of advocating for equity.  His philosophy of science linked justice and science together.  He saw justice as a means to solving environmental problems as well as an ends which can be furthered through environmental action.  All of this began with the Cosmic perspective that he advanced through his books and the series Cosmos.

Sagan’s environmental thinking was focused on global concerns and began with a line of reasoning that was founded in his perspective as an astronomer.  That perspective went beyond global in order to put the Earth and humanity into context.  “The Blue Mable”, also known as the “Whole Earth”, is an image of the Earth taken from Apollo 17.  Grassroots activists campaigned for the image and were credited with providing its meaning by making it an “environmental icon”.  It boosted participation in the environmental movement and was a powerful tool in advocating a new wave of environmental legislation.[ix]The image is supposed to show the smallness and frailty of the planet but I would argue that what it primarily does is show the Earth as an object of beauty.  A great amount of detail can be discerned from the image.  Anyone familiar with a globe should recognize Africa once the image is flipped.  Blue oceans are distinct from the land, the green of forested areas advertizes the presence of life, and the swirling clouds are mesmerizing.[x]  Sagan interpreted the “Whole Earth” photograph as a vantage point where humanity is united because its works cannot be discerned from this distance and the “obsession with nationalism is nowhere in evidence.”[xi] Sagan sought a perspective from much further away as a continuation of the process of “revealing to ourselves our true circumstance and condition.”[xii]

“Pale Blue Dot”, showing the Earth from a distance of 4 billion miles. Taken by Voyager 1[xiii]

This grainy image belies it’s significance.  The image looks like it could have been a mistake with streaks of glare and some artifact shown as a pale pixel.  It is an image of Earth taken from the Voyager 1 spacecraft at a distance greater that that between Earth and the furthest planet, more than 220 thousand times further than “Whole Earth” image.[xiv]  This fact is impossible to tell from the image itself and that is largely the point of it.  The “Pale Blue Dot” image conveys the isolation and fragility of the Earth as Sagan thought of it.

Sagan read this this image in a way that gave it great significance in how it highlights the insignificance of Earth and humanity.  The primary difference between the two photographs is that in the “Pale Blue Dot” the Earth, that pale pixel, appears in a way similar to how we view other planets with the naked eye or even with a moderate amount of magnification.  It is one of three blue worlds in our solar system.  Life and the oceans the support it cannot be discerned.  Sagan asserts that to an outside observer it holds no particular interest.  He then changes the tone of how he reads the image by saying “That’s home.  That’s us.”[xv]  We are being asked to see our home from the outside while not losing sight of the fact that it is home.  Sagan uses this to compress all of human history and experience into “a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.”  The intended effect is twofold: to make us question the insignificance of our motives for the injustices we visit upon each other and to reveal the extent of our dependency on the Earth.[xvi]  This is the first of several exercises Sagan presents in his book Pale Blue Dot that employ astronomy as a “humbling” experience.

Although Sagan employs astronomy to strip away human conceit he uses his broadest perspectives to give humanity significance and a motivation to care for the Earth in the interest of our own survival.  Sagan finds at the grandest scale a connection between humanity the rest of the Cosmos.  Looking across all of space and deep into time Sagan positions humanity as a product of Cosmic evolution interconnected with everything the rest of the Cosmos.  This is summed up by his claim that we are “star stuff” but it is the claim that we are “a way for the Cosmos to know itself” that restores to humanity a privileged position which astronomy has otherwise stripped away.[xvii]  Sagan’s primary motivation for environmentalism is that we protect our home, our species, and our technological civilization so that we can continue on that path of self-discovery through scientific exploration of the Cosmos.  Another aspect of that motivation is rooted in the same thinking that allowed him to ask the question of whether Earth would appear interesting to an outside: considerations on the possibility for intelligent alien life.  Sagan had a close partnership with the radio astronomer Frank Drake with whom he laid the groundwork for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, abbreviated as SETI.  Sagan was also a skeptic towards reports of UFO encounters.  The upshot is that although he hoped there was intelligent life besides ourselves the fact remained that we were the only known example.  The rarity of intelligent life increased the importance of preserving ourselves and our planet.  Drake also developed an equation that allowed for estimations of the frequency of intelligent life in a galaxy.  Sagan laid out what he believed reasonable estimates for the variables of the equation were and concluded that the most important factor in the equation was the “lifetime of a technological civilization”.[xviii] This led Sagan to think about what sort of global catastrophes could cut short the existence of such a civilization and whether they were tied to the defining characteristic of possessing powerful technologies.

The environmental threats which concerned Sagan were the global threats to our species and technological civilization.  Nuclear weapons were Sagan’s first concern but his background in the study of planetary atmospheres led him to expand this list of concerns to include ozone depletion and climate change.  The final episode of the Cosmos public television series which made Carl Sagan a household name across much of the globe features a nightmare sequence.  In that nightmare Sagan returns from an exploration of alien civilizations to hear the radio broadcasts of humanity cut silent as he approaches home.  As he approaches Earth in the “spaceship of the imagination” he asks “What had we done to Earth?”.  He states we had assaulted the air, water, and land then asks “perhaps we had changed the climate?” but in this nightmare a full nuclear exchange created a “paroxysm of global death”.  The title of this episodes is “Who Speaks for Earth” and in its conclusion Sagan answers that question by saying that we do and our loyalties should be “to the species and the planet” rather than national, ideological, or other divisions.  He says that we have an obligation not only to ourselves but also to the Cosmos.  These claims summarize how Sagan’s philosophy of the Cosmos dictates his environmental motivations and its focus on global issues.  This is our responsibility because of the value of our consciousness and because of the power of our technology.[xix]

Sagan believed that all global environmental threats were rooted in the rapidly increasing power of our technology.  He wondered if the inherent dangers in technological power via conflict or ecological devastation automatically limited the lifetime of technologically advance civilizations to only decades of existence.[xx]  Sagan sees the power to alter the climate in technologies as complex as the technologies of the industrial revolution and as simple as the use of slash-and-burn agriculture.[xxi] Sagan used the outsider perspective to illustrate why he thought that our technology was bringing us to a point of environmental crisis during an address on the “State of the Planet”.  He asked the audience to consider what an alien observer might see when observing the nighttime side of our planet over the course of its history.  Until maybe two hundred thousand years ago all nighttime illumination would have been from natural sources.  The artificial light of campfires would have remained relatively steady for many thousands of years, but in the last century their would have been a dramatic change as cities became brightly illuminated.  This change was the visible result of the rapid urbanization, population growth, and dependency on fossil fuels that accompanied the rise of industrial technology and signaled our capacity to alter the planet through the “misuse” of technology.[xxii]

Sagan thought science was innately good and a vital tool despite the fallibility of scientists and the problems caused by short-sighted use of technology.  This is not because he believed that we would develop technological solutions to our technologically created problems.  He believed there was no “wisely considered technology” capable of altering the globe for the good without unforeseen negative consequences.[xxiii]  The primary reason he thought science as good was for the perspective it gave and its ability to replace superstition with reason, but he also believed it had more tangible benefits directly applicable to environmental problems.  In the case of global warming he saw science and scientists involved in four ways.  The first was the technology responsible for the problem.  The second was the discovery and understanding of the problem.  The third way was in the search for solutions and the fourth was explaining the problem to policymakers and the public.[xxiv] In regard to the second item Sagan wrote frequently about how scientists doing fundamental research identified environmental problems unintentionally.  He argued this in Pale Blue Dot by providing the history of how the risk of CFCs to the ozone was discovered with support from NASA research and existing computer models designed to study the atmosphere of Venus.  He concluded that “a result of importance to everyone on Earth emerged from what might well have seemed the most blue-sky, abstract, impractical kind of work”.[xxv]  Sagan was particularly concerned with the fourth item on that list.  He believed that science literacy was vital to the long term success of technological civilization and believed this to be especially true of democracies where “there is no was of making the right decision if people don’t understand science”.[xxvi] Sagan’s convictions about the role of fundamental science in identifying problems, devising solutions, and informing the decisions of a society came from his participation in those activities as a scientist and popularizer of science.

Sagan played an important role in putting global threats on the environmental agenda throughout his scientific career, his efforts to popularize science, his access to political and business leaders, and his work with environmental organizations.  Sagan’s doctoral dissertation included research into planetary atmospheres.  The third chapter was dedicated to explaining the high temperatures of Venus and the role of the greenhouse effect.[xxvii] In 1972 he co-authored a comparative study of the link between atmosphere and surface temperature on Mars and Earth.[xxviii] This study underlines the lessons from the example of the discovery of how CFCs affect ozone by tying the study of another planet directly to how we understand our own. Sagan co-authored a 1976 study of climate cooling from the eruption of Mt. Agung which served as a foundation for his research into the effects of nuclear winter.[xxix] The nuclear winter study built on his previous work to present the case that humans could rapidly and drastically alter the climate.  Published in 1983 it was largely the product of scientists Sagan had trained.[xxx] Sagan’s work comprised a significant contribution to environmental science, highlighting how fundamental research supports the understanding of environmental dangers, and his contribution as an educator should not be overlooked.

One example of how Sagan fostered concern for environmental issues in his students is demonstrated by a student’s essay which he kept for his archives.  The essay was for Sagan’s Astronomy 201 course but its topic was Earthbound and somewhat political.  The essay presented a discussion of the subject of climate change through a critical reading of how it was covered in six periodicals of the petroleum industry from 1986 to 1991.  Sagan noted negatively that the student excluded a review of the science behind the greenhouse effect and evidence that quantifies the contribution of CO₂ emissions but praised the selection of journals.  Sagan’s comments at the end of the paper do not criticize the absence of quantified science but instead wish the student had written more about “what petroleum industry attitudes suggest about future policy initiatives”.[xxxi] This suggests to me that Sagan saw teaching astronomy as about more than hard science concerning the physical properties of objects beyond the Earth.  Sagan saw astronomy as something relevant to our lives and this included the politics around environmental issues.  Rather than being concerned only with fundamental research he wanted to encourage and support attempts to understand and resolve environmental problems.

Sagan supported other scientists in order to advance their efforts in addressing environmental problems.  Sagan considered NASA scientist James Hansen as one of the key voices to sound the alarm on climate change driven by the greenhouse effect.[xxxii] Sagan followed Hansen’s 1988 Congressional testimony regarding the greenhouse effect and reached out to request a transcript and Hansen’s papers.[xxxiii]  The Congressional testimony was not only about lecturing legislators.  It also stimulated conversation between scientists.  Sagan would continue to go to Hansen for reports about the consequences of the greenhouse effect while cheer leading Hansen’s efforts.  Hansen actively sought this support.  He wrote to Sagan about the difficulty in conveying the statistical nature of increasing average global temperatures and suggested that Sagan might be able to more clearly communicate this point.[xxxiv]  Hansen saw Sagan as someone he could complain to about having his message diluted or being mischaracterized.  Hansen provided feedback on the scientific facts in Sagan’s public lectures in turn.[xxxv] When Sagan began to build an environmental coalition he recruited Hansen as an important scientific voice.[xxxvi] Sagan’s relationship with Hansen is one example of Sagan being involved in promoting the work of other scientists study global environmental issues.  Referring to an earlier 1984 testimony before Congress on the subject of greenhouse warming Sagan wrote to W.S. Broecker at Columbia to say that he felt his role in the testimony was “supportive” and to lay the groundwork for the testimony of the other scientists.  Sagan mentions that he has been friends with Congressman Al Gore for several years and offers Broecker the opportunity to provide off-the-record remarks that he is sure Gore would be interested in.[xxxvii]  This shows Sagan operating as a conduit to power for his scientific peers concerned about the global environment.  Before going into more depth on how Sagan’s access to power helped his environmental advocacy I would like to touch on how he made his message accessible to a popular audience.

Sagan’s PBS series Cosmos was a landmark event, but he also used magazines, books, editorials, interviews, and public appearances to refine and disseminate his environmental message.  If the message contained in these media is Sagan’s environmental thought, then how he sought to convey that message is an example of turning thought into action.  Who a message is targeted to can tell you a lot about the message, the person sending it, their motivations, and what they hope to achieve.

Cosmos reached an audience of 500 million people in 60 countries by 1993.[xxxviii]  The significance of these figures is that they show how Cosmos reached an incredibly broad audience.  As a public television series communicated through broadcast television it was accessible because of how it was distributed.  Sagan’s homey delivery and translation of complex concepts into plain language made it intellectually accessible as well.  Although the history of science he presented in the show had a common European bias he attempted to disrupt this ethnocentrism with scenes about the astronomical knowledge of native American cultures, praising Hindu cosmology, and retelling Japanese legends.  Sagan wanted to make the story of Cosmos one that encompassed all of humanity.  This drive for accessibility came from the same astronomer’s perspective on Earth and humanity that he tried to communicate in the series.  Part of that was his environmental message, including an early warning about climate change that set out Venus as a dire warning of the dangers posed by an uncontrolled greenhouse effect.[xxxix]  Sagan wanted everyone to be aware of this danger because he saw it as a threat to every individual, global civilization, and our species as a whole.  He believed that the more people that were aware of the danger, the more people that would be willing to take action to correct the global environment.

Sagan had other methods of establishing the opportunity to regular update public audiences about his concerns.  Sagan made twenty-six appearances on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson but moving away from television allowed him to present his case to the audience in greater depth.[xl] His frequent essays in the Sunday newspaper supplement Parade were the primary platform he used for this purpose.  Sagan was definitively in favor of the claim that humans were warming the climate by 1985 and he wanted readers of Parade to know about why he believed this, how it could effect them, and what he wanted of them.  The first section of the article makes the argument about how powerful our technology has become and used nuclear winter to cement the claim that we can change our climate.  The second section takes his audience through the mechanism of the greenhouse effect.  The third section is headed as “the importance of thinking globally”.  Thirteen years after the “Whole Earth” image Sagan believes that people are not using global thinking.  He argues that the global character of the problem demands international solutions but that “nations tend to be concerned about themselves, not about the planet” and are focused on short-term objectives.  Sagan’s solution for this is to promote a “global consciousness” that sees beyond “generational and political groupings”.[xli] Sagan’s fame allowed him to catch the attention of people at large scales but he was also accessible to environmental concerned individuals.

I found two letters from individuals not associated with educational, environmental, governmental, business, or other institutions that Sagan kept for his archives.  I cannot say what came from these letters because I found no attached copies of a response, but the fact that they were kept shows that Sagan read them and took note of what they said.  It is my assumption that he probably received many letters of a similar nature but selected two as examples to be preserved.  Anne Galvin sent a letter from Ireland asking about greenhouse warming and its consequences.  She wondered if there was any connection to flooding in Sudan and hurricanes in Jamaica.  She expresses that she is very worried and has a sense that the “planet is in torment”.  The depth of her concern is striking and it echoes Sagan’s own concern.  These letters show it was possible for an average individual to reach Sagan’s ear with their environmental concerns. These letters, with the prior examples of television and print media, show that Sagan was not solely concerned with audiences in positions of power.  Nonetheless the majority of evidence available in the archives concerns Sagan’s involvement with institutions he wished to communicate his environmental vision to or through.

Sagan’s fame gave him influence that he wielded to advocate for his environmental agenda and access to powerful audiences.  The principle example for this is the Joint Appeal by Science and Religion and the events leading to its formation.  Sagan put his back into the Joint Appeal as a sustained effort that occupied much of the last seven years of his life.  Pursuing this alliance between religion and science meant embracing what he saw as the better side of religion in order to form what he believed was an urgently needed partnership to advance the agenda of global environmentalism.

Sagan denied modifying his position but given his position of skepticism and condemnation of religious resistance to scientific evidence it is understandable why he received questions asking if he had changed his attitude towards religion.  Sagan squared his alliance with religion with his own views by saying that he remained a skeptic but he was also “sure of the awe and reverence that the meticulously balanced nature of the global environment” elicited from him.  Sagan has been characterized as an atheist but he rejected that label saying that “an atheist is someone who is positive there is no God… my view is to go where the evidence is, and I believe the evidence is ambiguous on this issue.”[xlii]  Despite these examples of a neutrality towards religion Sagan’s claim of consistency is challenged by the way he saw very little distinction between religion and superstition.  He believed that between a pseudoscience and a world religion “the partitions are very thin” and rejected their subjective experience driven methods in favor of his conviction in the objectivity of science.[xliii] His negative opinion of religious thinking is highly evident evident in the book Demon-Haunted World. In it he argued that religion, superstition, and pseudoscience were paths towards self delusion, but it also contain the exemption to this attitude made his alliance with religion possible.  Sagan recognized that at least some religions were changing, liberalizing, and putting aside the antagonisms he saw as dangerous in the pursuit of ecumenical fellowship.[xliv]  He reasoned, in a way that could also be viewed as a backhanded insult to organized religion, that “Ecumenism is fundamentally subversive to the religious establishment.  It implies all religions have something to contribute, that none is complete unto itself, that all claims to ultimate truths are suspect.  That’s why agnostics and atheists can indeed make common cause with ecumenisists.”  Not all atheists agreed, but that was only one of the challenges Sagan had to face as Sagan formulated and advanced the Joint Appeal.

The Joint Appeal owes its creation to the Global Forum of Spiritual and Parliamentary Leaders on Human Survival.  The Global Forum first met in Oxford, England during the Spring of 1988.  Dean Morton of St. John the Divine was one of the principal organizers.  Morton was accompanied by religious representatives of a great diversity of world and local religions including “the five major faiths – Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, as well as African and American Indian religions, Jainism, Sikhism, and Shinto”.  There were political and NGO representatives as well.  Dr. Wangari Maathai, the founder of the Kenyan Green Belt Movement, was a major representative of the environmental movement.  Carl Sagan and James Lovelock, advocate of the Gaia hypothesis, provided the scientific perspective on the global environment.  Sagan’s presentation focused on the “rareness and precariousness” of Earth as a life-bearing world and the interdependency of nations illustrated by the way that the effects of pollution transgress national boundaries.[xlv] I do not know if this event marks the beginning of Morton and Sagan working together to build the Joint Appeal, but the following year saw a flurry of exchanges between them as the laid the ground to initiate that Joint Appeal at the next Global Forum in Moscow at the beginning of 1990.

The Global Forum was primarily an ecumenical exercise, but Morton and Sagan wanted an equal partnership with science and to achieve this they needed to be able to present a message that spoke for the scientific community.  The task of crafting that message and getting it endorsed by scientists fell to Sagan.  As the Global Forum in Moscow approached he circulated his draft of an open letter from the scientific community to colleagues around the world.  Many signed on without reservation, a significant number required alterations to the draft, and some flatly refused.  Frederick Warner, chairman of the Scientific Committee on Problems of the Environment, and Hans Bethe required the removal of language concerning radioactive waste which they regarded as an exaggerated fear that obstructed the adoption of nuclear power as an alternative to fossil fuels.[xlvi][xlvii] Sagan made these changes and that may reflect that his concern of global climate change outweighed his concern regarding radioactive contamination of a local area.  After Sagan secured an initial set of signatures Morton began to circulate it within the religious community to gather a level of religious support that would give it momentum when it was publicly debuted at the Moscow Global Forum.

Sagan wrote many drafts to arrive at language that would mobilize both scientific and religious communities.  The final product was “Preserving and Cherishing the Earth: An Appeal for Joint Commitment in Science and Religion”.  Sagan’s belief in the dangers posed by technology was phrased as “a trap being set for the human species, a trap we are setting for ourselves” and the Appeal carried his conviction that “by their very nature these assaults on the environment were not caused by any one political group or any one generation.”  Sagan hammered at the global effort needed to address these global problems and invoked the “awe and reverence before the universe” that scientists feel.  What is extraordinarily different about this message is that the broad perspective needed to address these problems in not the perspective of science alone but one that “must be recognized from the outset as having a religious as well as scientific dimension.”  Sagan not only invokes religious language in words like “creation” and “sacred” but makes an explicit request that the power of religion to “influence personal conduct and commitment” be employed to advance the environmental agenda.  The terms of the partnership are established that scientists will promote a the understanding of science and technology that is necessary while religious institutions bring to bear the same influence to employ with “issues of peace, human rights and social justice”.  Over thirty scientists put their names to Sagan’s appeal.  The signatories from the USSR and Europe demonstrate its international character, but those from Japan and Egypt give it a chance at being considered global in character.[xlviii]  Impressive as that is nearly ten times the number of religious representatives signed onto the document at Moscow.[xlix] The next step was to develop a religious statement and joint declaration.

The Global Forum would continue to act as a platform for the world religious community to address environmental issue but in the United Sates Morton and Sagan began the process of translating environmental commitment into action.  In 1991 they were joined by then Senator Al Gore as both their liaison with the political establishment and an intermediary voice.  The product of their efforts was a meeting in NYC that June which produced the “Statement by Religious Leaders at the Summit on the Environment”.  The language of this statement echoed the need for religious and environmental perspectives.  It also focused on the global environment, but what it did differently was make explicit the connection between the environment and justice.  It stated that “we reaffirm here, in the strongest possible terms, the indivisibility of social justice and ecological integrity.”[l]  What Sagan had hinted at with his warnings against short-term motivations and chauvinisms became a central priority.  Environmental justice would be incorporated into the Joint Appeal and it might be true that this partnership raised the priority of justice in Sagan’s own environmental thinking.

Moving forward from 1991 the Joint Appeal wanted to continue to expand its influence at both the national level and in local communities.  The goal of preaching environmentalism led to the surprising occurrence of Carl Sagan being asked to approve a religious education courses by World Vision President Robert Seiple.  The course begins with providing avenues for grassroots involvement, justification for why environmentalism deserves the same time evangelical works does, and a rundown of the science supporting the need for environmental action.  It specifically links the issue of population growth to justice, one area where Sagan emphasized justice in his own environmental advocacy.[li]  This lesson plan is an example of Sagan’s global vision being disseminated to local religious groups that can act on it in their own communities.  Religion helped to translate Sagan’s global thinking into local action but he still believed in the need to get governments to act.

The next milestone in the Joint Appeal was the 1992 Declaration of the Mission to Washington”.  The Declaration represented both camps beginning with “we are the people of faith and science”.  Showing the rise of justice concerns and their endorsement by the scientific community the subjects of environmental refugees and inequitable environmental burdens are mentioned in the second paragraph.  Although the language continues to carry the message of shared responsibility alongside shared burdens the outsized contribution to the problem by the US as “the leading polluter on Earth” recognizes the unequal culpability for harm and the “inescapable moral duty” the US had to lead efforts to address the environmental crisis.  Sagan’s concern over short-term thinking and its relationship to the environment and justice are explained as “short-term material goals at the expense of the common good”.  The reaffirmation of the connection between justice and environment is copied into the Declaration.  They are not Sagan’s words, but Sagan is now putting his name and influence behind them.  Along with recognizing inequitable environmental burdens for workers, the poor, and communities of color the declaration also assert the debt owed by wealthy nations of the North “which have historically exploited the natural and human resources of southern nations.”  In Sagan’s words this legacy of colonialism would be the product of the chauvinisms he derided which allowed one group of humans to believe it was superior to another.  The Declaration concludes with a commitment to “work together for a United States that will lead the world” in adopting solutions to the environmental crisis.  The signatories reflected the diverse environmental coalition that would come to Washington in 1993, including a World Bank economist, the National Toxics Campaign, government employed scientists including James Hansen, the international Audubon program, the Green Belt Movement, religious representatives of many Christian denominations, leaders of the Jewish community, and representatives of Native American nations.[lii]

The mission to Washington was an incredibly diverse assembly of environmental advocates that unified three views of environmentalism with a push for global, national, and local action.  I do not have the remarks of all the speakers, but a rundown of the schedule may convey something of the priorities that were addressed.  Wangari Maathai, who Sagan probably first encountered back at the first Global Forum in Oxford, was the first to speak, providing the remarks for the welcome reception the night before.  The following morning began with “An Update on the Earth Summit”, held in Rio de Janeiro, provided by the Secretary-General of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development.  Sagan chaired four presentations by the scientific community on global environmental concerns.  This was followed by six religious presentations chaired by Dean Morton.  Sagan then delivered an address titled “A Vision of the Future”.  The full title of his upcoming book was Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space.  If his address followed the same theme then it would have espoused the possibilities for humanity should we learn to live with each other and care for our environment.  An hour long working session followed Sagan’s address and after that the podium was turned over to five speakers on the topic of environmental justice.  The environmental justice speakers included John Carr of the US Catholic Conference, Kaye Kiker of the National Toxics Campaign, Oren Lyons of the Onandaga Nation, Wangari Maathai of the Green Belt Movement, and Paz Artaza-Regan of the United Methodist Church.  Religion, science, and environmental justice were the three defining perspectives and they each received equal consideration.  These perspectives were followed by Al Gore and four other speakers relating what was discussed to the UN Conference on Environment and Development, an expression of how this environmental gathering was being interconnected with global efforts.  The discussion returned to dialogue between religion and science and concluded with speakers addressing how religions can incorporate this into their theological agenda.  This last part likely included lessons on how to bring this environmental message into local religious communities.  The next day there was a joint congressional hearing to that provided the opportunity for this diverse group to push together for legislative action.[liii]  This was the high point for the efforts of the Joint Appeal.

The Joint Appeal is now a historical landmark.  Sagan’s initial appeal, the statement by religious leaders that came out of the New York meeting, and the Declaration of the “Mission to Washington” are all easily locatable online.  Web of Creation, a Lutheran ecology group, hosts the Declaration on their site.[liv] It is still looked to as a model for mobilizing religious organizations to environmental action, but the equal partnership with the scientific community has eroded.  It may be possible to trace this to the moment when the Pew Charitable Trusts offered funding to the ecumenical National Religious Partnership for the Environment, and the Joint Appeal became dependent on indirect funding through this still extant organization.  Alternatively the science community did not maintain it’s end of the partnership, possibly because of Sagan’s passing at the end of 1996 at the age of 62.  His perspective of the fundamental equality that is due to all people and of our shared dependency on the Earth are still meaningful lessons that should not be overlooked.

Sagan’s did not put his advocacy for justice on the same level of his concern for human survival but attention to detail in his environmental thought and advocacy shows that they were intimately connected.  The same perspective that saw the smallness of humanity in space and time also affirmed its unity in a way that saw injustice as an ignorant cruelty born from conceits about the significance of an individual or group.  The primary lesson of the Pale Blue Dot is not that was are small people dependent on the small and fragile world.  Sagan’s lesson is that it “underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot”.[lv]  Though he did not always make it his focus, justice through respect and kindness and our global environment were always linked in his thinking.

Sagan also believed that the relationship between science and society demanded and facilitated justice.  I mentioned in the first section how he thought science literacy empowered citizens in democracies.  He also believed that science demanded a just society to thrive and blamed the decline of Ionian science in the ancient world on the injustice of the “slave economy” which meant that “all the brave talk about Athenian democracy applied only to a privileged few.”[lvi]  In the case of the burning of the Library of Alexander he argued that because science was not used “to free people” then when “at long last, the mob came to burn the library down, there was nobody to stop them.”[lvii]

Population was a controversial topic for Sagan to raise as an environmentalist from a wealthy nation, but it is also an area where he saw justice as the only means to resolving the environmental danger he and many others perceived in a rapidly growing world population.  Despite the potential for controversy Sagan bulled ahead because he believed in how he interpreted the evidence and that the implications of factual evidence should not be denied however uneasy they may make people feel.  He addressed this issue during an interview when he was in India to deliver the Jawaharlal Nehru memorial lecture.  The subject of his lecture will be about population but as he begins to discuss the topic with the interviewer he says that everyone has a right to a share of the planet’s resources.  During the interview Sagan rejected the divisions of first, second, and third world, to argue that there was only one world, but he also described the consumption of wealthy nations as “grotesquely out of proportion”.  Although he recognized existing inequities he maintained that curbing population growth was necessary for the environment.  He did not argue that this should be done through family planning, or the provision of contraceptives.  Sagan’s idea of volunteer reduction in the birth rate was based off of research he did with Steven Soter into the “demographic transition”.  Together they calculated what it would cost for wealthy nations to provide the poorest billion people with the wealth necessary to trigger the voluntary reduction of birth rates that parallel increases in income.  Sagan turned to his favorite point of comparison, military expenditures, to argue the affordability of such wealth transfers, but he did not believe that a direct wealth transfer was the best solution.  Sagan treated this as a problem of environmental justice on a global scale.  He argued that providing the “tools for self-sufficiency” was the best way to accomplish this goal.  In a chain of reasoning he laid out that the environment requires the population issue to be resolved, that requires promoting the well-being of the poorest people to the point of the demographic transition, and that dictated that the first issue which needed to be addressed was the responsibility of rich nations to poorer nations, even if they did it out of their own self-interest.[lviii] Global unity in the face of inequity, the rights of people to resources, the recognition of consumption inequity, and the responsibilities between nations are the center of Sagan’s advocacy for global environmental justice.

Sagan’s inspirational language, hopes for the future, and concerns about the present are still with us.  The evidence is there to argue that he made a major contribution to the environmental movement.  He reached hundreds of millions with his environmental message.  He took that message around the globe.  He partnered with Dean Morton to form a new coalition of religion and science that platformed environmental justice as an equal perspective.  Sagan’s advocacy on global issues was well within the mainstream of the environmental movement, but by stepping further away to consider our world and our species as part of the whole Cosmos he developed a unique environmental vision.  This vision recognized that in order to survive we must care for our planetary home and each other.  Believing that we had any option besides cherishing the Earth was just as much of a folly to Sagan as maintaining the belief that there is any reason assert chauvinisms of race, nationality, or religion.

 Endnotes:

[i]              Reagan to Karenn, March 8, 1993, Box 665, Folder 7, Seth McFarlane Collection of the Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan Archive, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

[ii]             Sagan to Logan, March 16, 1993, Box 665, Folder 7, Seth McFarlane Collection of the Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan Archive, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

[iii]           Knoblauch, William M. “Selling the Second Cold War: Antinuclear Cultural Activism and Reagan Era Foreign Policy.” Order No. 3503950, Ohio University, 2012.

[iv]            Badash, Lawrence. A Nuclear Winter’s Tale: Science and Politics in The 1980s. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2009. Accessed October 6, 2019. ProQuest Ebook Central.

[v]             Matthew R. Francis, “When Carl Sagan Warned the World About Nuclear Winter,” Smithsonian.com, posted November 15, 2017, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/when-carl-sagan-warned-world-about-nuclear-winter-180967198/

[vi]            Keay Davidson, Carl Sagan; a Life (New York, NY: Wiley, 1999), location 8802, Kindle.

[vii]          Giovanna Di Chiro, “Nature as Community: The Convergence of Environment and Social Justice”, Uncommon Ground (New York: W.W. Norton, 1996) 298-320

[viii]         Robert Gottlieb, Forcing the Spring (Washington: Island Press, 2005), location 451, Kindle

[ix]            Neil Maher, Apollo in the Age of Aquarius (Cambridge: Havard University, 2017) 94

[x]             “AS17-148-22727”, Apollo Image Atlas, Lunar and Planetary Institute, Accessed December 21, 2019, https://www.lpi.usra.edu/resources/apollo/frame/?AS17-148-22727

[xi]            Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot (New York: Random House, 1994) 3

[xii]          Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot (New York: Random House, 1994) 4

[xiii]         “Voyager 1’s Pale Blue Dot”, Solar System Exploration, NASA, Accessed December 21, 2019 https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/resources/536/voyager-1s-pale-blue-dot/

[xiv]         “Apollo 17 Mission Commentary”, Apollo Lunar Surface Journal, NASA, pp. 106, Last Modified June 5, 2018 https://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a17/AS17_PAO.PDF

[xv]           Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot (New York: Random House, 1994) 6

[xvi]         Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot (New York: Random House, 1994) 7

[xvii]         Cosmos; a Personal Voyage, episode 1, “The Shores of the Cosmic Ocean,” directed by Adrian Malone, aired 1980, on DVD (Cosmos Studios, 2000)

[xviii]       Cosmos; a Personal Voyage, episode 12, “Encyclopedia Galactica,” directed by Adrian Malone, aired 1980, on DVD (Cosmos Studios, 2000)

[xix]          Cosmos; a Personal Voyage, episode 13, “Who Speaks for Earth,” directed by Adrian Malone, aired 1980, on DVD (Cosmos Studios, 2000)

[xx]           Cosmos; a Personal Voyage, episode 12, “Encyclopedia Galactica,” directed by Adrian Malone, aired 1980, on DVD (Cosmos Studios, 2000)

[xxi]         Carl Sagan, “Planetary Ecotechnology”, pp. 1, Box 661, Folder 3, Seth McFarlane Collection of the Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan Archive, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

[xxii]        Jeanne Fogler, “Time Running Out for Environment”, Asahi Evening News, Box 665, Folder 1, Seth McFarlane Collection of the Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan Archive, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

[xxiii]       Carl Sagan, “Planetary Ecotechnology”, pp. 1, Box 661, Folder 3, Seth McFarlane Collection of the Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan Archive, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

[xxiv]       Carl Sagan, “Croesus and Cassandra: Policy Response to Global Warming”, Box 661, Folder 6, Seth McFarlane Collection of the Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan Archive, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

[xxv]        Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot (New York: Random House, 1994) 177

[xxvi]       Rita Manchanda, “To Take Right Decisions, People Must Understand Science”, New Dehli The Sunday Observer, Box 664, Folder 2, Seth McFarlane Collection of the Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan Archive, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

[xxvii]      Carl Sagan, Physical Studies of the Planets, (PhD diss., University of Chicago, 1960)

[xxviii]     Carl Sagan and George Mullen, “Earth and Mars: Evolution of Atmospheres and Surface Temperatures”, Science, 177, no. 4043 (July 7, 1972): 52-56 https://science.sciencemag.org/content/177/4043/52

[xxix]       James Pollack, Owen Toon, Carl Sagan, Audry Summers, Betty Baldwin, & Warren Van Camp, “Volcanic Explosions and Climate Change: A Theoretical Assessment”, Oceans and Atmospheres, 81, no. 6 (February 20, 1976): 1071-1083 https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/JC081i006p01071

[xxx]        Matthew Francis, “When Carl Sagan Warned the World About Nuclear Winter”, Smithsonian Magazine, November 15, 2017, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/when-carl-sagan-warned-world-about-nuclear-winter-180967198/

[xxxi]       Michael Doyle, The Coverage of the Global Warming Issue in Six Journals of the Petroleum Industry: 1986-1991, pp. 45, Box 661, Folder 4, Seth McFarlane Collection of the Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan Archive, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

[xxxii]      Morton and Sagan to Anderson, April 19, 1991, Box 665, Folder 5, Seth McFarlane Collection of the Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan Archive, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

[xxxiii]     Sagan to Hansen, July 22, 1988, Box 661, Folder 5, Seth McFarlane Collection of the Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan Archive, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

[xxxiv]     Hansen to Sagan, February 25, 1990, Box 661, Folder 5, Seth McFarlane Collection of the Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan Archive, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

[xxxv]      Hansen to Sagan, October 2, 1989, Box 661, Folder 5, Seth McFarlane Collection of the Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan Archive, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

[xxxvi]     Sagan to Hansen, December 5, 1989, Box 664, Folder 7, Seth McFarlane Collection of the Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan Archive, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

[xxxvii]    Sagan to Broecker, Marcher 23, 1984, Box 660, Folder 1, Seth McFarlane Collection of the Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan Archive, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

[xxxviii]  Audra Wolf, “Why Cosmos Can’t Save Public Support for Science”, The Atlantic, March 11, 2014, https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/03/why-em-cosmos-em-can-t-save-public-support-for-science/284355/

[xxxix]      Cosmos; a Personal Voyage, episode 4, “Heaven and Hell,” directed by Adrian Malone, aired 1980, on DVD (Cosmos Studios, 2000)

[xl]            William Dicke, “Astronomer Who Excelled at Popularizing Science, Is Dead at 62”, The New York Times, December 21, 1996 https://www.nytimes.com/1996/12/21/us/carl-sagan-an-astronomer-who-excelled-at-popularizing-science-is-dead-at-62.html

[xli]          Carl Sagan, “The Warming of the World”, Parade, February 3, 1985, Box 660, Folder 2, Seth McFarlane Collection of the Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan Archive, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

[xlii]         Michelle Bearden, “America’s Most Popular Scientist is Appealing to the World’s Religions for Help in “Cherishing God’s Creation”, His Mission: Save the Planet”, St. Petersburg Times, June 2, 1990, Box 664, Folder 6, Seth McFarlane Collection of the Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan Archive, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

[xliii]        Carl Sagan, Demon-Haunted World (New York: Random House, 1996), location 463, Kindle

[xliv]        Carl Sagan, Demon-Haunted World (New York: Random House, 1996), location 471, Kindle

[xlv]         “Global Forum in Oxford Faces Human Survival”, Hinduism Today, May 1988 https://www.hinduismtoday.com/modules/smartsection/item.php?itemid=520

[xlvi]        Warner to Sagan, December 20, 1989, Box 664, Folder 7, Seth McFarlane Collection of the Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan Archive, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

[xlvii]       Bethe to Sagan, November 22, 1989, Box 664, Folder 5, Seth McFarlane Collection of the Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan Archive, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

[xlviii]      Carl Sagan, “Preserving and Cherishing the Earth: An Appeal for Joint Commitment in Science and Religion, Box 664, Folder 3, Seth McFarlane Collection of the Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan Archive, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

[xlix]        James Morton & Ahmed Kuftaro, The Response of Spiritual Leaders to the Scientists’ Appeal on the Environment, Box 664, Folder 5, Seth McFarlane Collection of the Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan Archive, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

[l]              Statement by Religious Leaders at the Summit on Environment, Box 661, Folder 6, Seth McFarlane Collection of the Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan Archive, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

[li]             Seiple to Sagan, July 21, 1992, Box 665, Folder 1, Seth McFarlane Collection of the Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan Archive, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

[lii]           “Joint Appeal on the Environment”, Congressional Record, May 13, 1992, Box 665, Folder 1, Seth McFarlane Collection of the Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan Archive, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

[liii]          Mission to Washington: Religion and Science in Partnership for the Environment, Box 666, Folder 3, Seth McFarlane Collection of the Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan Archive, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

[liv]          “Joint Appeal by Religion and Science for the Environment: Declaration of the ‘Mission to Washington’”, Green Congregation Program: Education, Web of Creation, Accessed December 21, 2019 http://www.webofcreation.org/religious-education/554-joint-appeal-religion-and-science

[lv]            Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot (New York: Random House, 1994) 7

[lvi]           Cosmos; a Personal Voyage, episode 7, “The Backbone of Night,” directed by Adrian Malone, aired 1980, on DVD (Cosmos Studios, 2000)

[lvii]         Cosmos; a Personal Voyage, episode 13, “Who Speaks for Earth,” directed by Adrian Malone, aired 1980, on DVD (Cosmos Studios, 2000)

[lviii]        India Interview Transcript, December 3, 1991, Box 664, Folder 1, Seth McFarlane Collection of the Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan Archive, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.