Thirty two years ago, on this day, June 5, 1990, the ACT government said yes to a 20 per cent cut in emissions by 2005…
“The target was part of the ACT Strategy to respond to the Greenhouse Effect launched by the ACT Chief Minister, Trevor Kaine, on June 5.
Mr Kaine said yesterday that the Commonwealth had been “dragging their feet a little” on the issue. “But it’s important that they’ve now done it and the issue, now that they’ve made the decision and set the targets, is: are they in fact going to put it into effect,” Mr Kaine said. The Federal Government would be watched closely to ensure that it did not attempt to withdraw from the decision, he said.”
Lamberton, 1990,13 October Canberra Times
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 356.4ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that in 1988, the “Toronto target” had been proposed at a conference called “The Changing Climate.” It was for a 20 per cent reduction in emissions by 2005. The ACT has no industry, just lots of hot air from federal politicians.
What I think we can learn from this
So a critic could say that it’s relatively straightforward to make cuts, if you don’t have coal-fired power plants with all factories within your borders, because you simply do efficiency gains, insulation, etc. And that’s true. But what else is a service economy supposed to do? Say “Oh, nothing to do with us.” And then you can call them hypocrites if they don’t do anything. So the ACT government pursued this. I think they were successful.
The fact that various state governments and territory governments said yes to the Toronto target, put additional pressure on the federal government, which is another reason why you would do one of these things. The problem was not the targets. The problem is whether you’re going to take action to make it happen.
What happened next
ACT is aiming for net zero by 2045
https://yoursayconversations.act.gov.au/zero-emissions
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.