Month: May 2022

Categories
United Kingdom

May 16, 2006 – UK Prime Minister Tony Blair goes nuclear…

On 16 May 2006 UK Prime Minister Tony Blair speech gave a speech at a Confederation of British Industry event, basically saying that regardless of the outcome of the then-current “consultation” about nuclear energy, his government would forge ahead anyway.

The 2003 Energy White Paper had been very lukewarm on nuclear indeed, and this speech by Blair was the culmination of a determined lobbying fightback…

Why this matters

We need to remember that most “consultations” are window-dressing. They’ll be heavily publicised if they go the “right” way, and used as a stick to beat those opposed as “anti-democratic”. If the results aren’t what those in power wanted, they’ll be buried (released at 5pm on a Friday afternoon etc) and dismissed as “having been hi-jacked by well-organised special interests.”

What happened next

Greenpeace took the government to court over the shonkiness of the consultation, and in February 2007 they won, for what it is worth.

Despite all the plans and announcements, the nuclear power stations were not built – one in the last 12 years, massively over-budget.

Meanwhile, energy efficiency and onshore wind are ignored as ever., and the overarching question of energy demand reduction is deep in the hole.

Categories
Australia

May 16, 2005 – Anthony Albanese says critical action on #climate being delayed by 20 years… #auspol

On May 16th, 2005, the Australian Senate inquiry into the 2004 Energy White Paper came out.

The 2004 Energy White Paper had – even by the spectacularly low standards of the Howard Government – been a blank cheque for the fossil fuel industry (they’d basically been invited to write it) and a kick in the teeth for the then-nascent renewables lobby.

So, the Senate inquiry

has concluded the Energy White Paper will delay critical action on climate change for another twenty years.

The Senate Inquiry report shines a light on John Howard’s failure to act on climate change. The report says the Energy White Paper:

• Is a blueprint for delay in reducing Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions and will be directly responsible for the high cost to future generations of Australians – environmentally and economically.

• Fails to accept climate change has already begun and therefore action to reduce emissions must be taken immediately.

• Lacks an effective plan to cut greenhouse pollution, a long term target to boost renewable energy or a long term plan to control the spiralling pollution from the energy or transport sectors.

Where does all this come from? From the website of an obscure Australian politician called Anthony Albanese, who, by the time some of you read this will either

a) be Prime Minister of Australia

or

b) have lost the unlosable election and be hiding in a caravan park in rural New South Wales.


Why this matters?

States still sometimes have the capacity to tell the truth about what the government is (not) doing. If you keep your eyes open, you can get a pretty adequate picture of what is going on. In the UK, for example, the National Audit Office still tells you more or less how things are failing.

What happened next

Howard’s end came in late 2007. Labour under Kevin Rudd comprehensively bollocksed its climate response. Gillard tidied up the mess as best she could. Then the wrecking ball known as Tony Abbott swept that thin legislation away. Prime Minister Turnbull did feck all, Scott Morrison has continued the rot…

Categories
Australia

May 15, 2006 – Australian Prime Minister John Howard spouting “nuclear to fix climate” nonsense

On 13 May 2006, with the climate issue becoming harder to ignore, Prime Minister John Howard – after meeting President George Bush and Energy Secretary Sam Bodman and wittering on about the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership – started flying kites about the need for Australia to go nuclear. This escalated over the following days – see here about comments he made in Canada.

The context was this – Howard had spent the previous ten years, as Prime Minister, blocking renewables, favouring coal and fossil fuel exports, and trying (with great success) to slow international action on climate change. But the endless Millennium Drought, and international developments (Kyoto ratification, the EUETS) were beginning to make him nervous. So, along comes nuclear to wedge the opposition and make him look like he was doing enough…

Why this matters

We need to remember that when in a tight spot, elite politicians will always reach for a gleaming technofix.

What happened next

There was a report. It said nuclear would be too expensive. Kevin Rudd became opposition leader, started banging on about climate change as “the great moral challenge”, to be solved with… checks notes… an Emissions Trading Scheme and Carbon Capture and Storage…

. cartoon by Nicholson in Australian (as per National insecurity Australia book, available on scribd)

Categories
Denial United States of America

May 14, 2002 – well-connected denialists gather in Washington DC to spout #climate nonsense

On May 14, 2002 in Washington DC the “Frontiers of Freedom” [see DesmogBlog entry] held a meeting in Washington DC – the kind of thing you do if you’re trying – as they were – to make it easier for rightwing politicians to vote against things domestic and international agreements on environment and climate. At this point, the George W Bush had pulled the US out of the Kyoto Protocol. A month later, Australian Prime Minister John Howard would do the same.

This event had the usual suspects, including Malcolm Wallop, who had been a Senator for Wyoming, and had attended a pre-Kyoto conference in Canberra in 1997,

Sen. Malcolm Wallop (ret.), chairman — The Science and Environmental Policy Project and The Cooler Heads Coalition —

John Daly, climate scientist from Australia —

Dr. S. Fred Singer, climate scientist from United States —

Christopher C. Horner, counsel to the Cooler Heads Coalition and senior fellow at CEI.

Why this matters

It is at events like these that the hegemony of the fossil way of thinking is sustained. Soothing blandishments about impact science being “junk science”, about everything being just fine, if only the Leftards would shut up/be silenced, are repeated.

What happened next

These guys have kept winning, really, haven’t they? Daly died in 2004. I just stumbled across some very forensic work on who funded him. See here.

Categories
Australia

May 13, 1992 – Australian business predicts economic armageddon if any greenhouse gas cuts made

On this day, May 13, 1992, Australian business groups did what they have done in the intervening 30 years – predicted imminent economic apocalypse, via “independent” studies, if even one lump of coal remained unburned.

The context was the impending Rio Earth Summit (though the text below makes it clear that threat was already receding).

The Australian business lobby had already fought a successful campaign against a carbon tax, and got lucky when Paul Keating took over from Bob Hawke as Prime Minister of Australia – Keating loathed the “Ecologically Sustainable Development” process Hawke had been forced to initiate in 1990. Keating’s loathing of greenies would escalate in the coming years.

1992 Brown, B. 1992. Pressure builds on Aust over greenhouse emissions. Australian Financial Review, 14 May, p.11. Australia may come under pressure to sign a declaration to stabilise greenhouse gas emissions, although a convention adopted at a United Nations meeting in New York last weekend set no target. Developing and European nations that could achieve stabilisation of greenhouse gas emissions at 1990 levels by the year 2000 are expected to push for this target at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in June. A United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Control agreed last weekend on a text to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but without a specific target. The target will be considered by member governments before the Rio meeting.

But to reach the stabilisation target, Australia would need “excessively stringent government intervention”, according to one of two industry-commissioned studies released yesterday. The studies, prepared by the Canberra-based economic consultants ACIL Australia and Swan Consultants for the Business Council of Australia, said advice to the Government had seriously underestimated the economic costs of stabilising greenhouse emissions

Why this matters

Personally, I think it’s worth seeing the techniques used. Not because we can turn back time, not because the same exact tactics are still being used (though, well, basically they are). But because…? Dunno. Bearing witness?

What happened next

Australia signed and ratified the UNFCCC. It even introduced a worthless “National Greenhouse Response Strategy.” State and federal governments kept building coal-fired power plants, expanding and giving permission for more coal mines, as if there was no tomorrow.

And there isn’t much of one now, is there?

Categories
International processes United States of America

May 12, 1989 – USA says it will, after all, support the idea of a #climate treaty

On this day, May 12th 1989, the Bush Administration of the United States finally reversed its position of opposition to a climate treaty (“too soon, let’s do more research” that sort of thing).

Now it said it would that it would support negotiation of a framework convention on climate change.

Why the end to the foot-dragging? It may have had something to do with the embarrassment of being caught red-handed trying to silence climate scientist James Hansen (something they’d keep trying to do).

See Los Angeles Times article here.

WASHINGTON — 

The White House, in an apparent softening of its position on a major environmental problem, has dropped its opposition to a formal treaty-negotiating process on global warming, it was learned Thursday.

Until now, the United States had been alone among major Western economic powers in opposing such an initiative.

The change of position was outlined in a cable dispatched Thursday to U.S. delegates at an environmental conference in Geneva sponsored by the United Nations.

Saying it was essential for the United States to exercise a leadership role, the cable said, “We should seek to develop full international consensus on necessary steps to prepare for a formal treaty-negotiating process.”

Why this matters

They have to be dragged every millimetre. Stop dragging and they pull back. That’s how it has always been.

What happened next

The US administration – doing what its oil and auto-industry wanted – blocked and delayed, delayed and blocked the start of the negotiations, the negotiations themselves and ever since. And here we are.

Categories
United States of America

May 11, 1988 – “Greenhouse Glasnost” USA and USSR to co-operate on climate

On this day in 1988

“a new form of scientific communication between the United States and the Soviet Union was officially initiated in simultaneous opening ceremonies in Moscow and Washington DC. In a one-year bilateral project entitled “The Greenhouse/Glasnost Teleconference”, approximately 25 Soviet and American Scientists will be linked by computer to study the implications of global climatic change.”

The United States-Soviet “Greenhouse/Glasnost” Teleconference Peter H. Gleick: Ambio, Vol. 17, No. 4 (1988), pp. 297-298

By 1988 the Cold War was “over” – the coming of Gorbachev in 1985, the Chernobyl disaster of 1986 and so on had meant that the sabre-rattling and terror of the early 80s was slowly receding. The teleconference (for which initial discussions had begun in 1985) was I think supposed to mark new scientific co-operation (the Soviets had been on the ball with awareness of carbon dioxide build-up at pretty much the same time as the Americans, i.e. from the late 1950s).

Why this matters

Good to remember that before Thatcher’s Damascene conversion in September of that year, the climate issue was being pushed up the agenda by decent people

What happened next

The Soviet Union collapsed. The “West” went on a decade-long victory lap of idiotic triumphalism. And here we are, with the atmosphere getting properly full of co2, and the consequences closing in…

Categories
Australia Ignored Warnings

May 10, 1978 – Women told that by 2000 “we will be frantically searching for alternatives to coal.”

There was a publication in Australia called Women’s Weekly. It came out, well, weekly (when it became a monthly publication in the 80s they, er, kept the name unchanged).

In the May 10 1978 issue they had one of those “what will the world be like in 2000” articles [people much younger than me probably don’t remember they hype and sense of excitement about the turn of the millennium?]

This particular article was by one David Howell, billed as “founder of the US journal “Energy Digest,” editor of “Community Planning Report” and “Energy Planning Report””

It’s worth a read. The bit I would draw your attention to is this-

“Coal will have become the major fuel source, especially for industrial uses and for heating office buildings and very large apartment houses. But society will by then have begun to accept the harsh reality, already posited by several leading scientists, that the carbon dioxide released to the air by the burning of fossil fuels threatens to alter our atmosphere beyond the ability of the human species to survive. By the year 2000 we will be frantically searching for substitutes for the coal which we will have substituted for oil and natural gas.”

“Gasified or liquefied coal – even if by that time it might have proven economic-ally feasible for some purposes – will not be the answer, because it would release carbon dioxide to the atmosphere at the same rate….

10 May 1979


What happened next

Australia became the world’s leading coal exporter in 1984. Some people got very very rich and didn’t like the idea of Australia shifting from coal exporting, or from getting its own electricity from other sources. They were supremely effective in defending their interests…

Categories
Australia

May 9, 2009 – Another white flag goes up on the “Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme”

On this day, May 9 2009, the Australian newspaper carried a report that would surprise no close watcher of climate policymaking at the time.

Kevin Rudd had become Prime Minister of Australia in December 2007 with a promise and a mandate to take action on climate change. There followed a bewildering array of reports and documents (interestingly, economist Ross Garnaut was quickly sidelined because he lacked sufficient enthusiasm for “compensating” industries who were supposed to be changing their ways.

By the end of 2008 it was clear to activists (especially those who interrupted Rudd’s speech at the National Press Club) that Rudd’s basic idea was to give the rich and powerful whatever they wanted. That was the plan. And it got even worse in 2009, when he sent his climate minister on a “charm offensive.”

Steketee, M. 2009. Cool compromise. The Australian, 9 May, p.18.

WHEN Penny Wong did the rounds of environmental and business groups last week, they suddenly found her more receptive to their arguments. What were the key things they needed to be able to support the Government’s climate change package, she asked. The Climate Change Minister had a fair idea because she had heard their demands often enough, but this time she wasn’t fending them off. Kevin Rudd, Wayne Swan and Wong already had decided on a new strategy to try to get the Government out of the political bunker.

Business demanded – and got – a delay to the start date of the proposed Emissions Trading Scheme. More was to follow…

Why this matters

In the absence of an enraged and engaged civil society, capable of more than spasms of emotion and outrage, then of COURSE “governance” is going to mean little more than doing whatever powerful industries allow. It’s easy to beat up on Rudd (and, actually, hits that sweet spot of being not only easy, but accurate and deserved), but where is the bold climate movement able to force better? Watch this space – the 2022 Federal elections in Australia may leave a bunch of climate-action-minded independents in a position of strength. Party like its early 2011 all over again!!

What happened next

Rudd couldn’t get his legislation over the line in June. When he came to try again in November he also couldn’t. Surprisingly the Greens weren’t going to vote for something they viewed as worse than useless. And then it all fell apart, with Julia Gillard left to pick up the pieces. And then… oh, it’s so exhausting and outlandish I can’t bring myself to type it up

Categories
United Kingdom

May 8, 1972 – “Teach-in for Survival” in London

Guest post by Roger of superb Green History website.

On this day, May 8, 50 years ago, students at Queen Elizabeth College, London University held a one day “Teach-in for Survival” inspired by the Ecologist publication of the “Blueprint for Survival” special issue in January 1972. They managed to get some quite high profile people to give talks and with minimal publicity the numbers booking to attend snowballed and the venue had to be switched to the Great Hall at Imperial College – over 500 people came on the day. Read the full story below.

Why This Matters

The Ecologist Blueprint had caused quite a stir in the chattering classes and even in the popular press. The students wanted to explore whether technology could reverse the negative trends (pollution, population, resource depletion, and ecological stress leading to human societal collapse) that Blueprint identified, and also to look for opportunities for practical action. In the event it became clear that only bottom up system change driven by grass roots action to transform the social political and economic system could avert the coming disaster.

What Happened Next

After an inspiring day the students returned to take their exams and get on with life. A few spent the next 50 years going on protest marches about this and that, or telling people how the ecological problems were getting much worse, or trying to get elected to get environmental action up the political agenda – completely forgetting the main lesson from the Teach-in and from Blueprint: that the changes needed require a completely different social system, not engagement with the old system.

And here we are, still making the same mistakes and time has so nearly run out.

You can read the full article on which this blog post is based here.