The artifact of nature: ‘Spaceship Earth’ and the dawn of global environmentalism

The metaphor of ‘Spaceship Earth’ employed by a diverse array of scientists, economists and politicians during the 1960s and 1970s points to the Cold War origins of the first global environmentalist movement. With the advent of Spaceship Earth, nature itself became at once technological artifact and a vital object of Cold War gamesmanship. The evolution of this metaphor uncovers the connections between Cold War technologies such as nuclear weapons, space travel and cybernetics, and the birth of the first global environmentalist movement. Revisiting Spaceship Earth may help us to better understand the implicit assumptions that have both empowered and limited that movement.