Final Report Summary - TEUS (The Earth Under Surveillance. Climate Change, Geophysics and the Cold War Legacy.)
In the last five years the TEUS research team has reconstructed the history of earth and environmental studies in Europe during the Cold War period. The team has focussed especially on new patronage circumstances and charted the historical trajectory of the earth sciences leading up to current methods for monitoring of climatic and environmental changes. This historical reconstruction has benefitted from a transnational approach which has allowed linking national and international developments. The study has mapped the rise of geophysical research in light of agenda-setting surveillance practices (prospecting natural resources, monitoring the enemy's military and nuclear capability, and surveying of the globe's environments) which allowed some disciplines to gain more support from state organizations, find new patrons, and thrive. The study has thus revealed that the advancement of the geosciences during the Cold War was significantly informed by the quest to know more and control the environment as a way to gain a strategic and military advantage. This knowledge, the project has shown, was thus of importance both to scientific analysis and to the surveillance of enemy forces. The overlapping of scientific and surveillance agendas is what justifies the understanding of this advance in geoscientific research in light of a surveillance imperative. We have concluded that knowing the earth was part and parcel of the effort of gaining new knowledge on enemies and potential enemies in the fragile security circumstances that the Cold War contributed to define.