Month: April 2022

Categories
International processes United States of America

April 21, 1992 – President Bush again threatens to boycott Earth Summit

On this day, April 21 1992, George HW Bush, President of the United States, speaking at something called the “Young Presidents’ Organization” said “I’m not going to the Rio conference and make a bad deal or be party to a bad deal.”  (full speech here).

The context is that countries, especially France, had been trying to get a stronger deal agreed and then signed at Rio  Bush who was up for re-election that November didn’t want to be seen as going along with what the French and everyone else wanted and being too environmental, and didn’t want to upset his oil buddy mates. His recently deposed Chief of Staff, John Sununu, had successfully blocked/watered down various initiatives.

Why this matters. 

We need to understand that the actions of the Americans in this crucial period have shaped everything that’s happened since.

What happened next?

The French blinked. Michael Howard, as Environment Minister for the UK, was able to come up with the compromise. There was a final special meeting of the international negotiating committee in May in New York, and the deal was set for the big photo op…

There were no targets and timetables in the UNFCCC process, and what we have now, since Paris, is a warmed over version of a “pledge and review” model disregarded in 1991 as inadequate.

Did I mention I didn’t breed and that it’s looking like a smarter and smarter decision?

Categories
Greenwash United Kingdom

April 20, 2006 – David Cameron does “hug-a-husky” to detoxify the Conservative “brand”

On this day, April 20 2006, David Cameron, newly-minted opposition leader in the UK, the head of the Conservative and Unionist Party, had his photo op with a husky in the Arctic. The context was that Cameron needed to detoxify the Conservative brand. And he’s chosen environmentalism as the way to do that, in much the same way that Kevin Rudd would use climate and environment as a wedge issue against John Howard a year or so later in Australia.

Why this matters. 

We really, really really need to learn not to take anything a politician, any politician says at face value. And we need to help other people understand that – or rather, we need to get beyond information deficit and deference, to a sense of the power that (potentially) rests in social movements. Or did. Probably too late to do anything now.

What happened next?

Gordon Brown became Labour Prime Minister, and bottled calling an election in 2007. The global financial crisis hit and then there was an air of inevitability around Cameron becoming Prime Minister which he did, thanks to the Liberal Democrats in May of 2010. In 2012

In January 2012 the Guardian reported that

“The head of the charity that helped to arrange David Cameron’s memorable husky photoshoot in the Arctic, launching the Conservatives’ rebranding as the nice-not-nasty party, has warned that the PM’s lack of leadership on environment issues risks “retoxifying” their image.”

In 2013, Cameron infamously commanded “get rid of all the green crap”. Which is costing ordinary people money now.

History does not record what happened to the husky.

Categories
Denial International processes IPCC Predatory delay Science Scientists

April 19, 2002 – Exxon got a top #climate scientist sacked.

On the 19th of April 2002, the chair of the IPCC, Bob Watson failed to get a second term as chair, even though he wanted one, and (almost) everyone else wanted him to have it. 

As per the Guardian’s coverage

“At a plenary session of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in Geneva, Robert Watson, a British-born US atmospheric scientist who has been its chairman since 1996, was replaced by an Indian railway engineer and environmentalist, R K Pachauri.

Dr Pachauri received 76 votes to Dr Watson’s 49 after a behind-the-scenes diplomatic campaign by the US to persuade developing countries to vote against Dr Watson, according to diplomats. The British delegation argued for Dr Watson and Dr Pachauri to share the chairmanship.

The US campaign came to light after the disclosure of a confidential memorandum from the world’s biggest oil company, Exxon-Mobil, to the White House, proposing a strategy for his removal.”

[see also the Ecologist in 2018]

tt’s an example of how the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change works – the word to look for is governmental. 

Why this matters. 

We’re not getting the politics- free science, which the denialists say they want. We’re getting the science that has been deemed acceptable to the politicians who are often little more than Meat Puppets for vested interests.

And this is a very, very familiar story.

What happened next?

The IPCC has kept going. The message hasn’t changed. Except the time horizons keep shrinking (have shrunk to nowt).

Categories
International processes

April 18, 1989 – begging letter to world leaders sent

On this day 18th of April 1989. The bigwigs in the “Earth Day 20 Foundation “delivered letters to President Bush, USSR Premier Gorbachev, China Premier Li Peng, and UN Secretary General De Cuellar. “

The letter, signed by Gaylord Nelson, Barry Commoner, Elliot Richardson, John O’Connor (National Toxics Campaign), Gene Karpinski (U.S. Public Interest Research Group), Peter Bahouth (Greenpeace), Cordelia Biddle, and me called on the leaders of the superpowers to convene an environmental summit under the auspices of the UN  (source – Furia, 1990, EPA Journal).

And this is all part of the performative pressure effort, what we would now called virtue-signalling,  Cynically, it’s what you would expect to happen. And this is trying to fill the problem and policy streams and the politics stream and put pressure on people who might otherwise not do as much as they should. 

Why this matters. 

It doesn’t, really. “Nothing matters very much, and very much matters not at all” as someone (Arthur Balfour) once said.

What happened next?

We got Earth Day at 20. And lots of old hippies who have made their peace with the system, got jobs had gotten jobs, wishing they were 20 years younger. And here we are. Now. It’s unclear what impact the letterhead if any, the these people who write memoirs don’t admit that they were particularly influenced by this or that And it’s all wishes and begging of Our Lords and Masters.  Building effective movement organisations and movements that grow, learn, organise and win – that’s beyond our wit, it seems.

Categories
United Nations

April 17, 2007 – UN Security Council finally discusses the most important security issue of all…

On April 17 2007, the United Kingdom Government managed to get climate change onto the agenda of the United Nations Security Council. I haven’t bothered to check, but this probably didn’t particularly please the George W. Bush administration. Bush by then, thought  was a lame duck, and had been really, ever since the utterly ineffectual response to Hurricane Katrina had crashed his credibility. 

Stepping back, it’s hilarious (if you are mordant enough) that the global body designated as being  about concerned about security, should not talk about climate change until 2007, 20 years after the issue broke through into the world stage.  But then, really the United Nations Security Council is nothing more than a Polaroid of the world in 1945 And would need a serious overhaul, but that’s not gonna happen.

Why this matters. 

The question of climate change, forever in the too-hard basket, is routinely kept away from the agenda, if it possibly can be. The (shit)show must go on, eh?  Anyone who has any faith in our Lords and Masters has either not been paying any attention, is as thick as mince, or is doing some motivated reasoning. These are not mutually exclusive categories…

What happened next?

Nothing, except more carbon dioxide.

Categories
Ignored Warnings United Kingdom

April 16, 1980 – “a risk averse society might prefer nuclear power generation to fossil fuel burning”

On April 16 1980, John Ashworth, then the Chief Scientific Adviser of the UK,, wrote to another senior figure, Robert Armstrong (Thatcher’s Cabinet Secretary) on the question of preparing people to accept nuclear in order to drive down fossil fuel emissions. A few days later, Robert Armstrong wrote back saying this needed some further thinking. 

Where do I get this info? From a wonderful article by Jon Agar, from 2015 ‘Future Forecast—Changeable and Probably Getting Worse’: The UK Government’s Early Response to Anthropogenic Climate Change

As John Ashworth wrote, his personal view was” that the nuclear waste problem is manageable whilst the CO2 problem is not and therefore that a risk averse society might prefer nuclear power generation to fossil fuel burning if it were offered the choice. A rational risk averse society, of course, might prefer energy conservation to either….”

86  86 TNA CAB 184/567. Ashworth to Robert Armstrong, 16 April 1980. Armstrong replied that the idea of inducing the public to go along with nuclear energy by frightening it with global warming ‘would need much thought’. Armstrong to Ashworth, 21 April 1980 

Why this matters

We need to know that the UK Government was, well, portions of the bureaucracy of the UK Government, were well aware of the issue. It became impossible, however, for this policy discussion to proceed, because Thatcher wasn’t interested (when Ashworth briefed Thatcher on the issue in 1980, she replied incredulously “you want me to worry about the weather?”

What happened next?

Well, the nuclear lobby in 1988/89, would try to use climate change as a spur to more nukes. And failed. And tried again from 2006. And failed. And, as we have seen in the recent “Energy Security Strategy”, it continues to do so down unto this day.

Categories
United States of America

April 15, 1974 – Kissinger cites climate concerns…

On April 15 1974, US Secretary of State and all-round mass-murdering prick, Henry Kissinger gave a speech at a special session of the UN General Assembly. In the speech he suggested that further research into climate change(by which was meant weather patterns) was necessary because of its implications for food security, which was and of course remains the hot issue. 

This was at the same time the CIA were researching a report on food security. And it’s a good example of how issues come together. Stephen Schneider had been talking about food security as had a lot of other people at the same time. The consequences of Kissinger’s speech were multifold. In the language of Multiple Streams, the speech was added to the policy stream and the politics stream and the problem stream because Kissinger was a heavyweight. 

What happened next

Kissinger’s speech was used by legendary Australian civil servant Nugget Coombs to get the Minister of Science to commission a report on climate change from the Australian Academy of Science (it wasn’t released until 1976, and sank without trace).

Kissinger committed more war crimes, including permission to the Indonesian military to invade East Timor. About a third of the population of 600,000 died between 75 and 78. It was proportionately a bigger massacre than the much more famous Khmer Rouge atrocities in Cambodia. 

Interest in climate and its implications for food production continued to be very high. So you have Reid Bryson’s Climate and Hunger book published in I think 1977. And of course, you’ve got Stephen Schneider’s the Genesis strategy, also published in 1976. And by the late 70s our lords and masters knew enough to start taking action. They did not. And here we are.

Categories
International processes United States of America

April 14th, 1989 – 24 US senators call for immediate unilateral climate action

On April 14 1989 24 US senators declared that the US should cut its carbon emissions in advance of any international agreement.

The context was that the new Bush administration was still delaying and trying to resist any move towards negotiating a global treaty. They weren’t alone in this. So were the Australian and UK governments.

Why this matters

We have to see declarations and statements as part of a Forever War between action and inaction. 

What happened next?

A couple of weeks later, having been caught trying to muzzle James Hansen, the Bush administration was forced to say “okay” to an international treaty process. It then, of course, proceeded to stomp on this process as hard as it could…

Categories
Denial

April 13, 1992 – Denialist tosh – “The origins of the alleged scientific consensus”

On the 13th of April 1992. Richard Lindzen MIT scientist – still alive so one has to be careful what adjectives one uses – was at an OPEC Seminar on thee Environment ini Vienna, talking about “The Origin of Alleged Scientific Consensus.” You can read more on this in Jeremy Leggett’s, the Carbon War. 

Lindzen’s schtick for a long time was – and may still be – that the climate models can’t cope with water vapour and therefore, we shouldn’t do anything. And this flimflam was useful for a long time as a talking point for those who wanted to protect the power and investments of the fossil fuels gang. 

Why this matters. 

The lost decades. This sort of thing helped prevent/delay action when we still might have done something about the whole unravelling.

What happened next?

The denial machine rumbled on…

Categories
Australia

April 12, 1992 – seminar asks “How sustainable is Australian Energy?” (proposes switch to gas)

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…