Thirty years ago, on this day, March 26, 1993, there was a House of Commons debate In reply to a question on the subject, the Government confirmed that they would be ratifying the UNFCCC.-
“At this week’s [EC] Environment Council [22-23 March 1993] all member states agreed to take the measures necessary to enable them to ratify the convention not later than the end of 1993. This matches the UK’s earlier commitment, along with our Group Seven partners, to ratify the convention by the end of 1993.”
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 358.6ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that in 1992, nations had come together and held hands in Rio, and signed a massively watered down treaty. John Major had offered to host the follow up to Rio because at this point, it wasn’t clear that the treaty would receive enough ratifications quickly enough to start holding its official meetings. So the UK still wanted to be seen as a leader on international climate policy.
What I think we can learn from this
Sometimes things happen quicker than people think (like UNFCCC ratification)
What happened next
The Global Forum in Manchester, which was a serious egg-on-face for the Labour Council…
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs