Blinded by the Apocalypse: Carl Sagan and Nuclear Winter

by Kurt Weinstein

Site Description:

I am aspiring to an academic career because I have an insatiable curiosity. I have found science and history to be fundamental disciplines in answering my questions about the origins of the society and universe I find myself a part of. I hope that through the study of the history of science I would better understand it’s practice, revelations, and role in society. One way that science has impacted me personally is as an outlook upon the world. This outlook was conveyed to me by Carl Sagan in the 1980 series Cosmos. The words “we are star stuff” and “we are a way for the Cosmos to know itself” have always resonated strongly with me.[i] Sagan communicated another message that was in tune with beliefs I already held. The fragility of life on Earth was a prominent recurring theme throughout the series. My belief in the need for environmental responsibility was reaffirmed by the interwoven thoughts of our interconnectedness and the fragility of our world. Sagan gave every appearance of believing the message he communicated and several years after Cosmos first aired, at a time when Carl Sagan was a household name, he acted on his beliefs by participating in an anti-nuclear protest at the Nevada Test Site.[ii]

The Nevada Test Site was the scene of roughly one thousand atomic weapon detonations from 1951 to 1992.[iii] Carl Sagan was arrested in the Fall of 1986 for trespassing on the site along with 138 other protesters. These protests were notable for being organized by public health professionals not affiliated with established anti-war groups. The protests were intended to push the United States into accepting the nuclear test ban and joining the Soviet Union in placing a moratorium on nuclear testing. Sagan spoke to the American Public Health Association prior to the 1986 protest and expressed his belief that a ban on nuclear testing would slow the arms race.[iv] The APHA were the primary organizers of the protest and an organization which combines scientific investigation, education, and advocacy to improve the health of communities.[v] In February 1986 the APHA Peace Caucus conducted another protest in which Sagan participated and was again arrested. The number of arrested person more than doubled to 438.[vi]

These protests at the Nevada Test Site raise several questions about Sagan’s environmentalism which I wish to explore. What was the scope of Sagan’s environmental thinking? Did he consider a wide spectrum of environmental problems or was he solely focused on those which posed an existential threat? In concrete terms of the environment around the Nevada Test Site did he have any concern for the effect that the radiation released may have on nearby populations? If he was only concerned with the existential threats then how might this focus have blinded him to more localized concerns? Sagan’s conception of humanity as part of the Cosmos, and by extension nature, is distinct from the traditional mainstream environmentalism that separates the “environment” from the places in which people live and work. How did this distinction position him in the environmental discourse? Finally, who was Sagan’s audience? Who did he think he was communicating his message to and who was receiving that message?

Although the threat of nuclear apocalypse seems very distant at this point in the 21st century it remains true that there are still enough nuclear weapons in stockpiles around the world to inflict global catastrophe several times over. The US and Russia seem to be engaging in a new arms race and North Korea has become a confirmed nuclear power. A more frequently discussed existential threat is climate change, something which Sagan spoke about with increasing frequency through the 80s and into the 90s. I hope to learn whether there are applicable lessons from Carl Sagan’s environmental views, the actions he took, and the way he communicated those problems.

I am researching the environmentalism of Carl Sagan. I want to find what his environmental beliefs are, how he acted on them, and who he communicated them to. I want to locate Sagan’s environmentalism in the broader environmental discourse. Through this research I hope to better understand those who discuss existential environmental problems, the way they discuss those problems, and what audience they reach when attempting to mobilize support to combat those problems.

 

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

[ii] Applebome, Peter, “139 Arrested at Nevada Nuclear Test Site.” NewYork Times, October 1, 1986https://www.nytimes.com/1986/10/01/us/139-arested-in-protest-at-nevada-nuclear-test-site.html

 

[iii] DOE-NV–209, United States Nuclear Tests. U.S. Department of Energy: 2015. https://www.nnss.gov/docs/docs_LibraryPublications/DOE_NV-209_Rev16.pdf

 

[iv] Applebome, Peter, “139 Arrested at Nevada Nuclear Test Site.” New York Times, October 1, 1986 https://www.nytimes.com/1986/10/01/us/139-arested-in-protest-at-nevada-nuclear-test-site.html

 

[v] “What is Public Health,” American Association of Public Health, accessed September 30, 2019, https://www.apha.org/what-is-public-health

 

[vi] Lindsey, Robert, “438 Protesters Arrested at Nevada Nuclear Test Site.” New York Times, February 6, 1987 https://www.nytimes.com/1987/02/06/us/438-protesters-are-arrested-at-nevada-nuclear-test-site.html

Author Biography:

Kurt Weinstein is an graduate student in the Federated History Department at the New Jersey Institute of Technology and Rutgers University at Newark.​

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.

Primary Sources:

Carl Sagan at “Caring for Creation” panel host by the North American Conference for Religion and Ecology

https://www.c-span.org/video/?12333-1/caring-creation

In trying to understand the environmental views of Carl Sagan and how he expressed them I am looking for his presentation of those views from a variety of platforms. Sagan was an outspoken atheist and so his presence at this conference speaks to his willingness to bridge the gulf that sometimes exists between scientific and religious communities. As Sagan is introduced the man providing the introduction describes an effort to unify scientific and religious opinion around the subject of global warming as a “new threshold” and proceeds to describe Sagan as being all about new thresholds, dubbing him “Mr. Threshold.” Sagan begins his presentation by linking nuclear war and global warming as ways in which humans have become a danger to themselves. In short this source does three things for me: provides an expression of Sagan’s views on global warming, links those views to the other existential threat of nuclear war, and expands my knowledge of who Sagan has worked with in his environmental advocacy. In keeping my eye open for what is absent in regards to issues of equity I note that the panel is entirely white and male.

Obituary for Carl Sagan in the journal Nature

https://www-nature-com.proxy.libraries.rutgers.edu/articles/385400a0.pdf

Obituaries encapsulate how a person is remembered and what they are remembered for. This obituary recognizes Sagan’s environmental work. It mentions his concerns over global warming and the ozone layer, but primarily focuses on his efforts in regards to nuclear winter. I believe I may be able to draw some conclusions about how Sagan was viewed at the time of his death if I find several obituaries. If I draw those obituaries from different sorts of publications I hope to get an idea of how groups with different interests could have viewed him differently. Obituaries also recount the work of someone’s life and can try to weigh that work. This obituary points to articles in Parade magazine as Sagan’s “greatest public influence.” I was not aware of the scale that he wrote in Parade and had no idea that his output here might be comparable to his over means of communicating his views.

Transcript of Carl Sagan global warming Christmas sketch on SNL

https://snltranscripts.jt.org/90/90hglobal.phtml

This sketch feels like it positions Sagan as the fun killing nerd archetype. I consider SNL an interesting venue for Sagan’s communication of his global warming concerns, I am conflicted over the presentation of this sketch. It also features Sagan tossing paint on another cast member’s fur and repeating the phrase “fur is murder.” This is a sideline to the main topic of global warming, and I believe it could be indicative of how other environmental concerns were secondary for Sagan.

Carl Sagan’s keynote speech at the 1990 Emerging Issues Forum

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Xz3ZjOSMRU

Sagan is introduced as a “compelling and influential spokesman” on environmental issues. This is an event organized by the state of North Carolina and is presented on NC public access television. Sagan opens by highlighting the challenge to addressing global warming because of the scale, complexity, and lack of immediacy between cause and effect. He discusses how interplanetary exploration informs science more broadly, and how the lack of evidence for life on other planets highlights the value of our own world. Combined with the evidence for extinctions in the Earth’s past the continued survival or humanity should not be taken for granted. Sagan presents solar power as a solution to reliance on fossil fuels.

Carl Sagan, Cosmos, book and TV series

Sagan, Carl. Cosmos. New York: Random House, 1980.

Sagan, Carl, Druyan, Ann, Soter, Steven., Andorfer, Gregory., McCain, Rob., Wells, Richard J., and Kennard, David. Cosmos, a Personal Voyage. Heaven and Hell, Blues for a Red Planet. Collector’s ed. Studio City, CA: Cosmos Studios, 2000.

Sagan, Carl, Druyan, Ann, Soter, Steven., Wells, Richard J., and Weidlinger, Tom. Cosmos, a Personal Voyage. Encyclopaedia Galactica, Who Speaks for Earth? Collector’s ed. Studio City, CA: Cosmos Studios, n.d.

Cosmos presents Sagan’s concerns for global warming and nuclear war alongside a history of science that is also founded on Sagan’s particular understanding of anthropology and the history of the human species. This combination forms the grounds for Sagan’s philosophy of meaningful cosmic connection that is based on science rather than religion or hazy spirituality. “Heaven and Hell” shows how the study of other worlds informs an understanding of the specialness and fragility of Earth’s environment. The threat of societal destruction recurs throughout the series and book. The collapse of ancient western civilization is set as a warning for the possibility that global civilization could also be destroyed. Sagan lays the blame for the earlier collapse at the feet of an “unjust society” that practiced slavery and did not freely disseminate knowledge. Sagan says that contemporary society is at risk from nationalistic “chauvinism.” Sagan tells his views on extraterrestrial intelligence in the episode “Encyclopedia Galactica”. In considering that intelligent life may be extremely rare he proposes the possibility that societies with the technology of the 20th century may be prone to eradicating themselves through the power of their technology. This possibility is realized in a dream sequence in which Sagan returns from an exploration for intelligent life across the galaxy to find that intelligent life on Earth destroyed itself in a nuclear exchange. The series concludes with Sagan presenting the image of Earth as a pale blue dot, seen by a Voyager spacecraft from beyond the orbit of Saturn. He presents the image as conveying how important and fragile our world is, while it also emphasizes how insignificant or conflicts are. This image is at the least a reinforcement of the whole Earth images of the Apollo era, and perhaps it brings that perspective to a different level by having the Earth exist as an indistinct speck only a few pixels across.

Secondary Sources:

Knoblauch, William M. “Selling the Second Cold War: Antinuclear Cultural Activism and Reagan Era Foreign Policy.” Order No. 3503950, Ohio University, 2012. https://search-proquest-com.proxy.libraries.rutgers.edu/docview/1010421632?accountid=13626.

This dissertation has a chapter discussing the interplay of Sagan’s idea of nuclear winter and Reagan-era anti-nuclear culture. The following chapter explores the push back that attempted to discredit Sagan’s work because of how he turned to popular media to disseminate his message. The first chapter argues that historians and even Sagan’s biographers have focused exclusively on the scientific element of his anti-nuclear activism, citing the extensive biography by Keay Davidson. That assertion places the chapter as a fairly definitive part of the historiography of Sagan’s nuclear activism and so I must be careful to avoid unnecessarily retreading the same ground. This work could instead focus my research towards a specific facet that it has not already covered. An earlier idea I had for this project was to attempt a cultural history reading of Sagan’s work. To take one of several of his works and read them as a cultural text. This dissertation does that to a limited extent, but it is more focused on placing Sagan’s work among the cultural texts which may have influenced him.

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

This book is a history of the concept of nuclear winter that charts its scientific and political history. For the purpose of my paper it precludes me from telling a direct history of the concept from the scientific and political angles. I would need to devise an original thesis to test in the context of such a history. What it does provide is context to Sagan’s research, his position among other scientists examining the fragility of the climate, and the community of scientists which raised the alarm over their concerns.

Michael Turgeon, “Carl Sagan,” Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, last modified December 26, 2017, https://www.scu.edu/environmental-ethics/environmental-activists-heroes-and-martyrs/carl-sagan.html

A small history of Sagan’s environmental advocacy list among their “Environmental Activists, Heroes, and Martyrs” biographies. The Markkula Center is affiliated with the Jesuit Santa Clara University in California. This short piece could act as a springboard for my thinking. It also begins the process of linking several important ideas to Sagan’s environmental work: ethics, a cosmic perspective, and the particularity of his focus on existential threats. It explicitly but very briefly makes the link between Sagan’s participation in the search for extraterrestrial life and his concern for life on Earth. That is a subject I have been interested in expanding upon in a general consideration of the foundations for Sagan’s environmental views, but in the context of this environmental justice course I think the ethical basis for environmentalism that the Markkula Center expounds may be more fruitful to mine.

LeVasseur, T. “”the Production of Post-Supernaturalistic Mythopoesis in Contemporary Nature Religion”.” Worldviews: Environment, Culture, Religion 16, no. 1 (2012): 50-72. doi:http://dx.doi.org.proxy.libraries.rutgers.edu/10.1163/156853511X617812https://search-proquest-com.proxy.libraries.rutgers.edu/docview/1011212529?accountid=13626.

One area that I had toyed with exploring previously was the use of spiritual sounding language in Sagan’s science communication. This paper explores the emergence of “religious-like sentiments and narratives” in post-supernaturalistic constructions of how to understand life and the universe, including the example of Carl Sagan. The perspective provided by this essay could provide concepts and language useful for discussing Sagan’s thoughts on the environment and how he communicated them. An area that may be fruitful to examine is the meeting of these religious-like sentiments with the concept of apocalypse in the case of climate catastrophes such as nuclear winter and global warming.

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/

This reasonably long article details the history of Sagan’s involvement in the initial nuclear winter report, how he publicized its findings through popular media, his influence on the political discussion of the topic, and the push back he received. I find the claims that he helped write the nuclear arms control segment of Carter’s farewell address and was credited by Gorbachev as a major influence for ending nuclear proliferation interesting testaments of his ability to reach policy makers. Going to the primary sources could give me an opportunity to put my own reading on them and possibly find something new to say on the topic. The article also asserts that there is a link between the tactics and organizations which pushed back against Sagan and other environmental advocates in the past and those used today to attack climate science. Exploring these links and setting them in parallel to the Sagan’s history as a climate scientist and environmental communicator may provide footing for new claims about the relation between uncomfortable scientific claims and those who seek suppress them, something summed up in the idea of scientific “Cassandras”.

I had hoped to find more sources on Sagan and anthropogenic climate change, but in most cases the sources to that purpose are pretty sparse and shallow. They often amount to a claim that Sagan “told us so” and paragraphs from one of his books or a link to a video in which he discusses the idea of human activity causing climate change. Last semester it was the primary sources I found that ultimately cemented the subject of my paper and in the course of searching out these secondary sources I found a good quantity primary sources that hold some promise.

Image Analysis:

P36254

In the Pale Blue Dot photograph a spectrum of light rays shine at a slight angle across the black background. Near the middle of the most defined ray of light is a pale dot. This grainy image is not impressive on its own, but Carl Sagan believed that it was worth endangering the instruments of the Voyager 1 spacecraft to obtain it and he would title a book after it. In the first chapter of that book Sagan reads this image in sweeping and rich language that establishes the responsibilities that people have to each other and to their home planet. The photograph presents a cosmic viewpoint that informs the need for these responsibilities.

Sagan begins his reading with a description of how the image was taken by the Voyager 1 spacecraft from a distance beyond the orbits of the most distant planets. He describes the spacecraft receiving an “urgent” message from Earth and how it “obediently” obeyed the message by turning its cameras back towards the Solar System.[i] Although Sagan later bemoans the use of language that invests inanimate objects with agency he is very willing to use this language in regards to the semi-autonomous computer intelligence of the Voyager spacecraft. Sagan then relates the technical details of how the image is formed by pixels, something that was not a household technology at the time, and how the signal carrying the data obtained by Voyager traversed light-hours over a period of months to finally emerge as a series of images.[ii] The implied message is that this image is the product of science, even if it does not exist to fulfill a scientific goal.

There was opposition to the image being obtained because it was not in pursuit of a scientific goal. Although Sagan began to press for the image in 1981, after Voyager 1 had completed its close approach to Saturn, the image was not taken until 1990. Pointing Voyager‘s camera back towards Earth meant pointing in the direction of the Sun and a risk of destroying the instruments. Even after both Voyager spacecraft had completed all potential close encounters the opposition remained. Eventually the NASA administrator intervened in favor of taking the images that would include the Pale Blue Dot. Sagan believed this delay was ultimately beneficial to the end product.[iii] The image he hoped would show the small and insignificant Earth showed it from an even greater distance. The delay also allowed the image of Earth to be taken as part of a series of photographs attempting to image all the planets as they would appear from the edge of the Solar System.

Sagan initially presents the contents of the Pale Blue Dot in prosaic language. The planets seen from this distance are “like the planets seen with the naked eye from the surface of the Earth- luminous dots, brighter than most of the stars.” This establishes that an observer at this distance can only know very little about the planet Earth. Sagan dismisses the ray of light which encompasses the Earth as an “accident of geometry and optics.”[iv] The sun is not shining on Earth in any special way. The blue and white coloration of Earth is explained in terms of the interactions of light with air and water, but Sagan points out that we are only aware that air and water are the source of the coloration because we live here, to an outside observer Neptune is also blue despite having a very different composition. Sagan states that the Earth “might not seem of any particular interest” from this perspective.[v] This outsider perspective is used recurrently by Sagan throughout his works and is normally couched in terms of how an intelligent alien visitor may view our world, our species, and our societies.

Sagan then abandons the outsider perspective and asks the reader to look again at the image saying “That’s here. That’s home. That’s us”. Sagan precedes in an attempt to encapsulate the breadth of human experience, on both the personal and mass scale, in the span of three paragraphs. He establishes that he is speaking about the home of “every human being who ever was” and that the Earth contains the sum of all human experience, every belief, and every culture. It is “the aggregate of our joy and suffering.” A list of pairs, often opposites, follows. Beginning with “every creator and destroyer of civilization” the list establishes a semi-poetic rhythm. It returns to the ray of light that Sagan had previously dismissed as an accident. Now the Earth is “a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.” That image evokes the idea of something that is nearly weightless and insubstantial, but which can be mesmerizing when viewed in the right light. In the next paragraph Sagan bemoans the scale of human violence and makes a direct appeal to the reader to consider “the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner”. The insignificance of Earth from this distance conveys how petty attempts at conquest and domination are.[vi] The isolation of Earth against “the great enveloping cosmic dark” is presented as a reminder that we must save ourselves.

In the final two paragraphs of the chapter science returns as a tool for interpreting this new understanding of our position in the Cosmos. We know from experience that Earth is hospitable to life, and we know from science that there is no other world in which we can currently take refuge. While the later sections of the book Pale Blue Dot is about Sagan’s hopes for humanities future in space, he makes it clear at the beginning that “for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.” Sagan calls astronomy a “humbling and character building process” and positions the Pale Blue Dot image as part of that process. Sagan concludes that the lesson he takes from the image is to be more kind to each other and to protect our only home.[vii]

Sagan sought out this photograph because he hoped it would provide this humbling perspective. He saw it as a continuation of the process of changing perspective begun by the whole Earth photographs returned by Apollo. I believe there is a qualitative, rather than merely quantitative difference between whole Earth and the Pale Blue Dot. Sagan recognizes the absences important to the whole Earth image: the lack of borders, and the inability to discern any signs of human civilization. He describes humans on this scale as “inconsequential, part of a thin film of life.”[viii] The absences that make the Pale Blue Dot meaningful convey new ideas that communicate Sagan’s Cosmic perspective. The inability to discern landmasses, oceans, the hint of green grasslands and forests, or clouds make Earth one, but not the only, blue world in our Solar System. The “thin film of life”, let alone humanity, can no longer be discerned. In the collection of images that include the Pale Blue Dot other worlds can be seen as other dots, but the distances between the dots are so great that no two appear in the same frame. Each is isolated against the vastness of space. This presents the Earth as far less significant than the frame filling Apollo photos. The Earth fills the frame of those photos, and so it is possible to imagine that the distance to the next hospitable world may not be so far. The Pale Blue Dot makes the isolation of the Earth explicit. The whole Earth diminishes human pride with its absence of borders and landmarks, but the Pale Blue Dot goes beyond obliterating pride to make us contemplate our isolation and vulnerability.

[i] Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot (New York: Random House, 1994), 1, Kindle

[ii] Ibid. pp 2

[iii] Ibid. pp 4

[iv] Ibid. pp 5

[v] Ibid. pp 6

[vi] Ibid. pp 6

[vii] Ibid. pp 7

[viii] Ibid. pp 3

Image Analysis:

P36254

In the Pale Blue Dot photograph a spectrum of light rays shine at a slight angle across the black background. Near the middle of the most defined ray of light is a pale dot. This grainy image is not impressive on its own, but Carl Sagan believed that it was worth endangering the instruments of the Voyager 1 spacecraft to obtain it and he would title a book after it. In the first chapter of that book Sagan reads this image in sweeping and rich language that establishes the responsibilities that people have to each other and to their home planet. The photograph presents a cosmic viewpoint that informs the need for these responsibilities.

Sagan begins his reading with a description of how the image was taken by the Voyager 1 spacecraft from a distance beyond the orbits of the most distant planets. He describes the spacecraft receiving an “urgent” message from Earth and how it “obediently” obeyed the message by turning its cameras back towards the Solar System.[i] Although Sagan later bemoans the use of language that invests inanimate objects with agency he is very willing to use this language in regards to the semi-autonomous computer intelligence of the Voyager spacecraft. Sagan then relates the technical details of how the image is formed by pixels, something that was not a household technology at the time, and how the signal carrying the data obtained by Voyager traversed light-hours over a period of months to finally emerge as a series of images.[ii] The implied message is that this image is the product of science, even if it does not exist to fulfill a scientific goal.

There was opposition to the image being obtained because it was not in pursuit of a scientific goal. Although Sagan began to press for the image in 1981, after Voyager 1 had completed its close approach to Saturn, the image was not taken until 1990. Pointing Voyager‘s camera back towards Earth meant pointing in the direction of the Sun and a risk of destroying the instruments. Even after both Voyager spacecraft had completed all potential close encounters the opposition remained. Eventually the NASA administrator intervened in favor of taking the images that would include the Pale Blue Dot. Sagan believed this delay was ultimately beneficial to the end product.[iii] The image he hoped would show the small and insignificant Earth showed it from an even greater distance. The delay also allowed the image of Earth to be taken as part of a series of photographs attempting to image all the planets as they would appear from the edge of the Solar System.

Sagan initially presents the contents of the Pale Blue Dot in prosaic language. The planets seen from this distance are “like the planets seen with the naked eye from the surface of the Earth- luminous dots, brighter than most of the stars.” This establishes that an observer at this distance can only know very little about the planet Earth. Sagan dismisses the ray of light which encompasses the Earth as an “accident of geometry and optics.”[iv] The sun is not shining on Earth in any special way. The blue and white coloration of Earth is explained in terms of the interactions of light with air and water, but Sagan points out that we are only aware that air and water are the source of the coloration because we live here, to an outside observer Neptune is also blue despite having a very different composition. Sagan states that the Earth “might not seem of any particular interest” from this perspective.[v] This outsider perspective is used recurrently by Sagan throughout his works and is normally couched in terms of how an intelligent alien visitor may view our world, our species, and our societies.

Sagan then abandons the outsider perspective and asks the reader to look again at the image saying “That’s here. That’s home. That’s us”. Sagan precedes in an attempt to encapsulate the breadth of human experience, on both the personal and mass scale, in the span of three paragraphs. He establishes that he is speaking about the home of “every human being who ever was” and that the Earth contains the sum of all human experience, every belief, and every culture. It is “the aggregate of our joy and suffering.” A list of pairs, often opposites, follows. Beginning with “every creator and destroyer of civilization” the list establishes a semi-poetic rhythm. It returns to the ray of light that Sagan had previously dismissed as an accident. Now the Earth is “a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.” That image evokes the idea of something that is nearly weightless and insubstantial, but which can be mesmerizing when viewed in the right light. In the next paragraph Sagan bemoans the scale of human violence and makes a direct appeal to the reader to consider “the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner”. The insignificance of Earth from this distance conveys how petty attempts at conquest and domination are.[vi] The isolation of Earth against “the great enveloping cosmic dark” is presented as a reminder that we must save ourselves.

In the final two paragraphs of the chapter science returns as a tool for interpreting this new understanding of our position in the Cosmos. We know from experience that Earth is hospitable to life, and we know from science that there is no other world in which we can currently take refuge. While the later sections of the book Pale Blue Dot is about Sagan’s hopes for humanities future in space, he makes it clear at the beginning that “for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.” Sagan calls astronomy a “humbling and character building process” and positions the Pale Blue Dot image as part of that process. Sagan concludes that the lesson he takes from the image is to be more kind to each other and to protect our only home.[vii]

Sagan sought out this photograph because he hoped it would provide this humbling perspective. He saw it as a continuation of the process of changing perspective begun by the whole Earth photographs returned by Apollo. I believe there is a qualitative, rather than merely quantitative difference between whole Earth and the Pale Blue Dot. Sagan recognizes the absences important to the whole Earth image: the lack of borders, and the inability to discern any signs of human civilization. He describes humans on this scale as “inconsequential, part of a thin film of life.”[viii] The absences that make the Pale Blue Dot meaningful convey new ideas that communicate Sagan’s Cosmic perspective. The inability to discern landmasses, oceans, the hint of green grasslands and forests, or clouds make Earth one, but not the only, blue world in our Solar System. The “thin film of life”, let alone humanity, can no longer be discerned. In the collection of images that include the Pale Blue Dot other worlds can be seen as other dots, but the distances between the dots are so great that no two appear in the same frame. Each is isolated against the vastness of space. This presents the Earth as far less significant than the frame filling Apollo photos. The Earth fills the frame of those photos, and so it is possible to imagine that the distance to the next hospitable world may not be so far. The Pale Blue Dot makes the isolation of the Earth explicit. The whole Earth diminishes human pride with its absence of borders and landmarks, but the Pale Blue Dot goes beyond obliterating pride to make us contemplate our isolation and vulnerability.

[i] Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot (New York: Random House, 1994), 1, Kindle

[ii] Ibid. pp 2

[iii] Ibid. pp 4

[iv] Ibid. pp 5

[v] Ibid. pp 6

[vi] Ibid. pp 6

[vii] Ibid. pp 7

[viii] Ibid. pp 3

Data Analysis:

Oral Interviews:

Video Story: