Wolfram Kaiser

Jan-Henrik Meyer

Pollution, resource depletion, habitat management, and climate change are all issues that necessarily transcend national boundaries. Accordingly, they and other environmental concerns have been a particular focus for international organizations from before the First World War to the present day. This volume is the first to comprehensively explore the environmental activities of professional communities, NGOs, regional bodies, the United Nations, and other international organizations during the twentieth century. It follows their efforts to shape debates about environmental degradation, develop binding intergovernmental commitments, and—following the seminal 1972 Conference on the Human Environment—implement and enforce actual international policies.

Conservation and Globalization in the Twentieth Century

International Organizations and Environmental Protection

Arne Kaijser

Markku Lehtonen

Mar Rubio-Varas

Transnational perspectives on the relationship between nuclear energy and society. With the aim of overcoming the disciplinary and national fragmentation that characterizes much research on nuclear energy, Engaging the Atom brings together specialists from a variety of fields to analyze comparative case studies across Europe and the United States. It explores evolving relationships between society and the nuclear sector from the origins of civilian nuclear power until the present, asking why nuclear energy has been more contentious in some countries than in others and why some countries have never gone nuclear, or have decided to phase out nuclear, while their neighbors have committed to the so-called nuclear renaissance. Contributors examine the challenges facing the nuclear sector in the context of aging reactor fleets, pressing climate urgency, and increasing competition from renewable energy sources. Written by leading academics in their respective disciplines, the nine chapters of Engaging the Atom place the evolution of nuclear energy within a broader set of national and international configurations, including its role within policies and markets.

The History of Nuclear Energy and Society in Europe from the 1950s to the Present

Engaging the Atom

The traumatic failure of the European constitution seems to confirm doubts about a European public sphere that effectively interacts with the European Union and holds it to account. Is a European public sphere truly impossible? While many social scientists have claimed as much, their observations are often based on only a short period of recent history. This book provides the first long-term historical analysis of a political European public sphere and its development over time. Focusing on how British, French and German newspapers covered major European Council summits from The Hague in 1969 to Maastricht in 1991, it suggests that major milestones in European integration have long been accompanied by an increasingly controversial debate in the media. Moreover, the European public sphere has undergone a notable structural transformation. The growth of a more developed European political system since the 1970s has led to a more politicised, more differentiated, more inclusive European public sphere, an increase of transnational communication and changes in European identification.

Jan-Henrik Meyer

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