Forty nine years ago, on this day, April 15, 1974, war criminal, sorry “Secretary of State” Henry Kissinger gave a speech at the United Nations General Assembly. It used a security frame around climate change (which at that stage was not ascribed just (or even at all) to carbon dioxide build-up – plain old dust was also seen as a culprit).
Kissinger Speech at 1974, the sixth special session of the General Assembly (which called on WMO to undertake a study of climate change). “The poorest nations, already beset by man-made disasters, have been threatened by a natural one: the possibility of climatic changes in the monsoon belt and perhaps throughout the world.”
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 332.6ppm. As of 2023 it is 420ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was
The US had been trying to use environmental concerns as a way of distracting from or re-dressing (but not redressing) concerns about its military activities (a euphemism for napalming babies). So, Nixon had tried to get NATO to look at environmental problems – see Hamblin’s book “Arming Mother Nature.”.
And here we still were, with Nixon mired in the Watergate scandal that would force his resignation within months, with Kissinger trying a different angle.
What I think we can learn from this
“Climate change” was, is and will be a political football. That does not mean it is not real and very deadly.
What happened next
One amusing outcome was that Kissinger’s speech was used as ammunition by Nugget Coombs, Australian civil servant (retired by this stage) to get the Whitlam Government to request the Australian Academy of Science to look into the issue. The AAS did this – holding a conference of experts, including Hermann Flohn.
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.