Leah Aronowsky

Leah Aronowsky is a historian of science and an Assistant Professor at the Columbia Climate School. She holds a PhD in the history of science from Harvard University. Her current book project explores the history of climate and energy policy in the United States during the late 1970s—a critical moment when early scientific warnings about global warming intersected with policy debates surrounding the energy crisis and the future of fossil fuels. The project investigates why the United States ultimately failed to integrate climate risk into its long-term plans for energy independence.

In 2019, research for this project was awarded the Rachel Carson Prize for the best dissertation in environmental history by the American Society for Environmental History. Aronowsky’s academic work has been published in Critical Inquiry, Environmental History, and Environmental Humanities, among other scholarly venues. In addition to her academic writing, she contributes essays and reviews on contemporary climate politics to outlets such as The New York Review of Books, The Nation, Public Books, and Jacobin.

In Paris, Aronowsky will work on advancing her book project, The Pragmatic Pessimists: Fossil Fuel Dependence and the Politics of Climate Adaptation, which reexamines climate politics by centering oil and energy in the story since the 1970s. She will collaborate with CNRS researchers on a joint article exploring the historical conditions shaping climate denialism beyond overt obstructionism, emphasizing how 1970s oil shocks led scientists to favor adaptation over prevention.