Perils of Progress: Environmental Disasters in the 20th Century, 1st edition

Albert M. Craig Harvard University

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Part of the Connections: Key Themes in World History series, Perils of Progress: Environmental Disasters in the 20th Century is essential reading for anyone interested in furthering a clean and safe environment while simultaneously encouraging responsible manufacturing.

Author Andrew Jenks examines past environmental disasters, such as the tragedies at Love Canal, Bhopal, and Chernobyl, to prepare students to anticipate and head off potential environmental disasters as well as to meet and deal rationally with the next toxic apocalypse should one occur.

Through analysis of past environmental disasters, this book informs students about what we, as responsible citizens, can and should do to reduce the inherent dangers of contemporary manufacture as well as to mitigate suffering if and when the next toxic disaster occurs.
Enables students to master important concepts in world history by focusing on a specific issue and using this issue to allow them to perceive and understand the overall patterns and meaning of our shared global past.
Helps students think critically about what they are studying through explanatory narrative, primary sources, throught-provoking questions about the primary sources, and a summary analysis that enables them make global connections and, in the process, to discover some of the most important driving forces in world history.
Places the latest research and most recent debates, as well as some of the evidence upon which historians base their insights, into a form and context that is comprehensible to students and general readers alike.

FOREWORD

SERIES EDITOR’S PREFACE

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

INTRODUCTION: The Perils of Progress

Modernity's Pollution Problems

Methodology

The Four Horsemen of the Toxic Apocalypse

Common Themes to Consider

The Blame Game

Conspiracy Theory and Historical Amnesia

The Moral Dimension

1 The Minamata Disaster and the True Costs of Japanese Modernization

Chisso Corporation

Disturbing Signs

Political and Cultural Obstacles

Lifting the Veil of Silence

The Battle Rejoined

Atomic Bombs, Godzilla, and the Culture of Victimization

Seeking Justice Outside the Courts

The Uniqueness of the Japanese Case

Minamata as a Global Event

The Appeal to Emotion

A New Way to Calculate Progress

A Lingering Toxicity

SOURCES

Struggling with the Disease

"Those who remain are like embers."

The Confrontation at Goi

“Let a feather drop onto their heads...."
The Chisso Corporations Defends Itself

2 Love Canal and the Law of Unintended Consequences

The Unspoken Bargain

The Bargain Re-evaluated

Reports of Mysterious Substances

Science in the Service of the State

Long Term Social and Political Effects

“Revitalizing” the Community

SOURCES

A Child's Death

A Curious Tax Audit

Passing the Buck

And Who Was Responsible?

3 The Bhopal Gas Tragedy: A Perfect Storm of Injustice

India, Union Carbide, and the Green Revolution

Complacency

Corporate and Popular Responses

Finger Pointing

The Legal Drama

A Silver Lining?

The Disaster Industry

SOURCES

Profit at All Costs?

Robert A. Peck, Deputy Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs, Department of State, responds to questions from the House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs

Ronald Wisehart, vice president for Government Relations, Union Carbide Corp., responds to questions from the committee.

Safety First?

4 The Techno-Politics of Disaster: Chernobyl and the Collapse of the Soviet Union

Anatomy of an Accident

Political Fallout and Historical Context

Evacuation

The Blame Game

Toward an Explanation

Casualties and Health Consequences

Chernobyl after Chernobyl

SOURCES

"Television Address by Mikhail Gorbachev, 14 May 1986, Moscow”
The Western Nuclear-Power Industry Reacts

The Myth of Chernobyl?

Victims and Heroes: Voices from Chernobyl

EPILOGUE: MAKING CONNECTIONS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

INDEX

Dr. Andrew Jenks, an associate professor of history at California State University Long Beach, is a specialist in Russian history, history of technology, and environmental history. In addition to publishing numerous articles in scholarly publications on a range of topics, he has authored a book on Russian national identity, Russia in a Box: Art and Identity in an Age of Revolution, Northern Illinois University Press, and is currently finishing a biography of the world's first man in space, Yuri Gagarin, The Cosmonaut Who Couldn't Stop Smiling: Yuri Gagarin and the Many Faces of Modern Russia, Northern Illinois University Press. Before receiving his Ph.D. in Russian history and history of technology from Stanford University in 2002, Jenks worked in the 1990s as a journalist and editor in Washington, D.C., where he covered NASA, EPA, secret military high-tech programs, and the emerging Internet business. He studied Russian language at the Pushkin Russian Language Institute in Moscow in the late 1980s, where he also worked as a translator in the Moscow CNN office. He also worked for six months on Soviet fishing boats in the Bering Sea.

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Perils of Progress: Environmental Disasters in the 20th Century, 1st edition

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