Fifty years ago, on this day, February 8 1973, American ecological thinker Barry Commoner talks greenhouse effect and fossil fuels to US politicians.
“This is a very complicated phenomenon, and a good deal of study is underway. But it seems to me that in the long run it would be best to get away from using fossil fuel.” https://climatebrad.medium.com/climate-hearings-af27a3886a43
February 8 — Dr. Barry Commoner, hearing on the Council on Energy Policy
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 329ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was
Barry Commoner by this stage was “Mr. Environment.” He’d appeared on the cover of Time in February of 1970. His book “The Closing Circle”, and the other one were very well received and known. Commoner had been writing about, in passing, the buildup of CO2 for several years. And his statement here is a reasonable summation I guess of what was going on.
What I think we can learn from this
US politicians, especially House members and senators, were well informed or aware of the carbon dioxide buildup issue a lot earlier than you might think. The hilarious “Grant Swinger” parody that we will come to in the middle of the year makes more sense once you know this…
What happened next
Commoner ran for president in 1980, as did one of the Koch brothers. Neither of them troubled the scorebook particularly. In the short term, the first oil shock made all of this moot because coal was on the comeback (making Carl “Mr Coal” Bagge happy – we will come to this).
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Do comment on this post.