On the 12th of April 1992, the Australian Institute of Wnergy held a workshop seminar on the thorny topic of “How sustainable is Australian Energy?” And this came asthe momentum, the wave towards the 1992 Earth Summit was cresting. It was only two months away. So everyone was still up for getting together and schmoozing. And that’s what they did. There were proposals about switching to gas from coal because it was allegedly lower carbon. It only gives if you ignore the fugitive emissions.
And so it came to pass that the wave crested and broke
Why this matters.
For the same reason that this whole project matters, we need to know that we have been talking about doing something on climate for a very, very long time.
What happened next?
The new Keating government (Keating, formerly Treasurer, toppled Bob Hawke at the end of 1991) was profoundly uninterested-through-to-actively-hostile on environmental matters generally, including “greenhouse” issues. So the momentum just died. In December the pissweak “National Greenhouse Response Strategy” (only one of those four words is accurate) was released. In 1996 John Howard came along and made the whole thing at least more honest… And the carbon dioxide accumulates…