Thirty nine years ago, on this day, June 7, 1984, Crispin Tickell kept plugging away…
In 1984, back at the UK Foreign Office as Deputy Under-Secretary of State for Economic Affairs, he was instrumental in attracting the attention of the UK DoE and developed countries to the subject. He traces official British interest in climate change to the 1984 G7 Summit in London. As British permanent representative to the United Nations, a position he still held when first advising Mrs Thatcher, and as policy adviser to research bodies in the USA, Sir Crispin was able to stress the politics of fear, as well as diplomatic opportunities arising from the climate change issue in many national and international fora.2
Boehmer‐Christiansen (1995; 176-7)
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 347.1ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was Tickell had been switched on to the climate problem, in 1975-76. He’d written a book, he’d tried to get it up the g7 agenda in the late 1970s. There had been a push back against this, I think. So in 1980-3, the G7 just didn’t really talk about environment, because there was a new Cold War to worry about etc. But Tickell kept going, as problem brokers are wont to do, and was able to apparently reframe the issue.
What I think we can learn from this
There are always individuals within the system, working with patience and skill to get leaders on board. It requires a certain kind of person. I am not that kind of person.
What happened next
Four years later, Tickell was finally able to convince Thatcher to take climate change seriously, at least rhetorically. She could have taken the initiative when John Ashworth had advised her in 1979/1980. And here we are
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.