Introduction

Since at least the 1980s, climate change has been understood as an environmental issue, serious enough to warrant policy action. While there are many discourses and controversies around the science and politics of climate change, the central understanding of the nature of climate change as a global environmental problem is fairly universal. However much of the Anglophone research into the cultural understanding we have of climate change and the history of how it acquired this meaning for us is focussed on the Western experience. Due to the central role of the Cold War in understanding the development of both the science and politics of climate change in the United States, many questions are raised about the corresponding Soviet and post-Soviet experiences of climate science and environmental politics. This chapter will explain why this Soviet and post-Soviet perspective on environmental politics and climate change policy matters, both in itself and to a fuller understanding of the cultural studies being done in the Anglophone literature. It outlines some of the questions to which the chapters in this book offer answers.