On this day 22nd June, 1976, the Times (pre-Murdoch) ran a story with the headline “World’s temperature likely to rise”’, buried at the bottom of page 9.
“A warning that significant rises in global temperature are probable over the next century has been issued here [Geneva] by the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO).
This would be the consequence of a build-up of atmospheric carbon dioxide – which has already risen by 10 per cent in the past 50 years – because of increased use of oil and coal fuels.”
WMO were, it turns out, having a spat with the “Ice Age is coming” folks…
Why this matters.
We. Knew. Enough. To. Be. Worried. And taking action, by the late 1970s. This was not a deep dark state secret. This was in the fricking newspapers.
What happened next?
Sank without trace. In 1979 the WMO held the First World Climate Conference, also in Geneva. Momentum, but not enough to survive the arrival of the Thatchers and Reagans of this world…
I walked out the first time I saw it, because I was an eighteen year old moron with no idea of what he was seeing.
Anyway, spoilers – this is an homage to Chinatown, but with cartoons’s about a conspiracy to kill off public transport and force everyone into cars.
And there’s folks out there who will quibble (waves at Cameron) or, in fact present counter-arguments, but you know, National City Lines was a thing. This sort of stuff does, in essence, happen.
If you like your politics and economics in cartoon form.
Why this matters.
These are cognitive maps, if we choose to use them. Mostly we choose not to. So it goes.
On this day, June 21 2007, in the midst of one of the periodic waves of public agitation about climate change, the Australian Broadcast Corporation launched “Carbon Cops.” No I haven’t watched it. This website is enough of a wrist-slasher to manage, without subjecting myself to this sort of futile censorious neoliberal Calvinistic horror.
“Carbon cops Lish Fejer and Sean Fitzgerald are on a mission to change habits of Australian families by measuring their carbon emissions.”
TV shows on global warming leave most viewers cold. Carbon Cops may change that, writes Michael Dwyer.
WHAT if our planet was under siege by some omnipotent celestial foe, but television stations were unable to acquire footage compelling enough to galvanise the required response?
That appears to be the inconvenient truth confronting green TV shows. In a medium that thrives on explosive hits, the merely smouldering issue of global warming is proving about as gripping as watching trees grow.
This year we’ve already seen two well-intentioned environmental awareness shows come and go – or rather we haven’t, judging by the ratings for SBS’ Eco House Challenge and Channel Ten’s Cool Aid: The National Carbon Test.
Now the ABC braves the precarious balance between worthy and watchable with a six-part domestic challenge series titled – with an admirable lunge for some of that hot, sci-fi/CSI intrigue – Carbon Cops.
God, this sort of preachy atomised and atomising scolding shite, that makes people feel guilty about relative trivialities, and hails them as consumers but never as citizens, is part of the reason we are so doomed. We need people who cut their own carbon footprints but who spend most of their time and energy expanding their political footprints and those of other people who give a damn. That requires functioning social movement organisations that don’t fall over (implode) the first time something goes wrong.
On this day, June 20, 1979, US President Jimmy Carter had 32 solar panels put on the White House.
It was organised by Dennis Hayes, who had been one of the co-ordinators of Earth Day in 1970, and then headed of Carter’s Solar Energy Research Institute
There is a brilliant blog post by Oliver Carpenter of the UK Science Museum about this here. See also Scientific American.
On June 20 1977 the mockumentary (as we would now call it) “Alternative 3” was broadcast. It was supposed to go out on April 1st, but a strike scuppered that. So, the documentary, which – well, let’s go to Wikipedia –
Purporting to be an investigation into the UK’s contemporary “brain drain“, Alternative 3 uncovered a plan to make the Moon and Mars habitable in the event of climate change and a terminal environmental catastrophe on Earth…
It was claimed that scientists had determined that the Earth‘s surface would be unable to support life for much longer, due to pollution leading to catastrophic climate change. Physicist “Dr Carl Gerstein” (played by Richard Marner) claimed to have proposed in 1957 that there were three alternatives to this problem. The first alternative was the drastic reduction of the human population on Earth. The second alternative was the construction of vast underground shelters to house government officials and a cross section of the population until the climate had stabilised, a solution reminiscent of the finale of Dr Strangelove. The third alternative, the so-called “Alternative 3”, was to populate Mars via a way station on the Moon.[6]
Why this matters.
Atmospheric consequences were well enough known in the mid 70s to be the stuff of parody. I have a copy of the book – it’s WILD
What happened next?
There are still people out there who believe it.
It’s a bit like the (wonderful) Report from Iron Mountain, by Leonard Lewin.
On this day in 1997, the cuddly-sounding but actually simply evil “Global Climate Coalition” ran the following newspaper advert, as part of the huge, well-funded and well-coordinated campaign to … (checks notes)… render human civilisation quite unlikely in the second half of the 21st century.
Exactly 12 years later, on June 19, 2009 there was a “Mothers Day of Action” in the US, as part of a push for a climate and energy act.
“On Friday, June 19th, 1Sky and groups like MoveOn, Green for All, Oxfam and others are calling for a national day of action to make the climate bill stronger. It’s a day for you to “get visible” in your community. Please invite your family, friends and neighbors to rally at your representative’s district office and make your voice heard loud and clear.
Your voice lets your representative know that there are concerned citizens — like you — who want a stronger bill to create millions of clean energy jobs and begin to tackle climate change. So now it’s time to get louder!…..
Why June 19th? Right now, several committees are working on this bill, and we expect a House floor vote by the end of June. This is the critical moment we’ve been working for in the House, so it’s time to make ourselves visible!
Why this matters.
We need to remember that the language of motherhood has been used a lot (I think it is a two-edged sword, tbh) – that this did not suddenly emerge in about 2018. Corporations and threatened industries can cloak themselves with the mantle of the underdog, of innocence, and go all DARVO too…
What happened next?
GCC shut up shop in 2002, “mission accomplished”.
MAU shut up shop in 2011 – mission not really accomplished. So it goes.
On this day, June 18 1976 the UK Meteorological Office’s director, John S. Sawyer, replied to a request from the Cabinet Office. Two days earlier they’d asked for his take on Reid Bryson, a prominent US atmospheric scientist. Bryson was predicting imminent climate change (but NOT from the build up of carbon dioxide, which he considered a non-issue.
Sawyer was scathing – Bryson was “completely misleading and alarmist”.
The context is that by the mid-70s, with a series of “weird weather events” (including the 1976 drought, then underway), policymakers were beginning to wonder if something was up with the weather.
In 1976, the Cabinet Office wrote to the Meteorological Office’s director of research, John S. Sawyer, asking for his views on Bryson’s work. Bryson is ‘‘completely misleading and alarmist,’’ replied Sawyer only two days later, and, he continued, ‘‘the evidence that a permanent climatic change of significant magnitude is in train is at best exceedingly sketchy.’’42
J. S. Sawyer to D. C. Thomas, 18 Jun 1976, KEW, CAB 164/1379 Martin-Nielson, 2018 Computing the Climate
Why this matters.
We need to remember that it wasn’t a straight line, that carbon dioxide build-up was only one of the ways that scientists thought the weather could change. That uncertainty can be hard to recollect in the aftermath of 1985 onwards…
What happened next?
Bryson refused to accept that carbon dioxide was driving observed climatic changes. These things happen – people don’t like to admit they backed the wrong horse.
A report on climatic change finally got presented to Margaret Thatcher in 1980. Apparently her response was incredulity and “you want me to worry about the weather.” And this, from a chemist.
On this day, June 18, 2008, the Australian Federal Minister for Resources and Energy, Martin Ferguson, introduced a Carbon Capture and Storage bill into the Australian parliament. [The draft legislation had been unveiled in May 2008]. See here for a good account of the introduced legislation.
Because, you know, carbon capture and storage is definitely a real response to a real problem, not a fantasy of techno-salvationism that will keep us from doing what we actually need to do.
The context is that the previous government, of John Howard, had tolerated loose talk of carbon capture and storage as a way of deflecting concerns about climate change. With the arrival of Kevin Rudd, from Queensland (where they dig up and burn a lotta coal), the CCS thing kicked into higher gear, with an alliance of the producers, the coal union (the CFMEU) and even a couple of NGOs (looking at you, WWF and the now-defunct Climate Institute).
Some of my earliest Conversation articles were about this stuff. This one, co-written with the wonderful Christopher Wright, is worth a look –
Time and money we spend on CCS is time and money we don’t spend on retooling an economy and a society to use a LOT less.
But, also, CCS was our only shot, given that the world is going to continue to burn absurd amounts of fossil fuels. Both these statements can be true at the same time. We’re toast.
What happened next?
CCS fell in a heap in Australia by the end of 2010. It gets reheated occasionally, for political reasons. Chevron’s Gorgon facility is not working. Did I mention we’re toast?
On this day, 17 June 2009, as Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd was playing parliamentary and political games with his “Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme,” Tasmanian Greens Senator Christine Milne gave a blistering and prescient speech at the National Press Club
“Would you put your son or daughter on an aeroplane if you knew that it had a 50-90% chance of crashing? If not, why would you take that risk with the whole planet?”
Fortunately, sections like this below are now completely irrelevant.
“In Australia, the dominant economic, social and therefore Labor and Coalition view, is that resource extraction underpins wealth, power and influence — always has and always will. Regardless of the physical capacity of the Earth to sustain it, regardless of the collapse of the Murray Darling or the climate impact of burning more coal or logging more forests, nothing will stand in the way of that extraction continuing. All policies to address climate change are seen through that cultural lens.
“It is why, when people hear the climate science telling us that, if we do not act swiftly and decisively, the world we hand on to our children will be a very different, much poorer world, so many jump through hoops to deny it, to explain it away, or to pretend that we can compromise with the laws of physics and chemistry to suit own imperatives. It is no wonder, as Ian Dunlop observed recently, “climate policy and climate science are like ships passing in the night.”
And this too.
The truth is the climate nightmare is real and happening now. We are destroying the Great Barrier Reef, Kakadu and the snow caps. We are eroding our beaches, and our coastal cities will face managed retreat due to sea level rise. We are drying our food bowl, the Murray Darling, beyond repair, jeopardising rural communities and our food security.
Many of our Asia Pacific neighbours are struggling with rising seas and extreme weather which threatens a refugee crisis beyond anything we’ve ever seen.
Read it. Read it and weep.
Why this matters.
People get written out of history. Oddly, this seems to happen more to women than men. It’s a puzzle why, and I am sure our best scientists (meaning, of course, the males) might eventually come up with some explanation.
We knew. We were warned, again and again and again. And the glib, slick careerists (more males than females, but females can do that too you know) just kept on keeping on.
What happened next?
Rudd’s CPRS never got through because the evil wicked awful Greens voted against it. (And the ALP then refused to countenance the Greens’ proposal for a temporary carbon tax, though the ALP goons never mention that). After the 2010 Federal election, the Greens and the independents forced the ALP government to do something about climate legislation. Milne then sat on the MPCCC (Multiparty committee on climate change). And we got an ETS, CEFC, ARENA. The ETS got killed off by Abbott, day one.
On 19 February 2013 Senator Christine Milne, as Leader of the Greens, returned to the Press Club and gave the following speech – “Australian Democracy at the Crossroads: the mining industry and the quarry past versus the people and the innovative future”,
On this day, June 16, in 1972 the UN Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm, concluded. Four years in the making it had acted as a magnet for lots of various concerns. It also acted as a punctuation point – the end of the first big wave of public concern about environmental matters (the next wave wouldn’t really get going until the mid-late 80s).
What did Stockholm give us? Well, the United Nations Environment Program, albeit at a much lower size and heft than some wanted. UNEP proved crucial as an institutional ally for the World Meteorological Organisation and various groups of scientists trying to get carbon dioxide build up properly on and then up the agenda.
But on the same day, and more interesting,, was the release of the song “Five Years” by David Bowie (it had been recorded in November 1971).
Pushing thru the market square So many mothers sighing News had just come over, We had five years left to cry in
News guy wept and told us Earth was really dying Cried so much his face was wet Then I knew he was not lying
Why this matters.
Stockholm, Bowie – yeah. Well, here we are. Fears of imminent (ecological) catastrophe have been with us before (that does not automatically mean that the latest rash of fears is unwarranted).
What happened next?
Stockholm became the major example of “how you do international environment conferences” I think, and the template has been replayed and replayed.
