Rupert Darwall Presentation on His New Book, The Age of Global Warming: A History

by William Yeatman on March 26, 2013

in Blog

On Wednesday, March 13, the Cooler Heads Coalition sponsored a Congressional briefing by Rupert Darwall on his new book, The Age of Global Warming: A History, in which he places the rise of the global warming movement in the context of the history of ideas.

My colleague Myron Ebell summarized Darwall’s new book thusly,

The book begins by discussing why 19th century predictions of eco-doom turned out to be wrong, but are still believed; and how the first environmental wave in the 1960s and early 1970s came crashing down during the economic crisis of the 1970s.  This set the stage for the second environmental wave, when global warming burst onto the world stage in the late 1980s and with an unlikely champion in the UK—Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

Darwall then shows in detail how science became the spear carrier of the global warming movement and how politics settled the scientific debate in 1992 when governments of the world agreed to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change at the Rio Earth Summit.  His book concludes by examining how the developing world’s opposition to energy-rationing policies resulted in an unprecedented humiliation for the West at the Copenhagen climate summit in 2009.

Below is video of Darwall’s briefing.

CEI Hill Briefing: The Age of Global Warming from CEI Video on Vimeo.

 

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