Twenty seven years ago, on this day, July 25, 1996, then-new Prime Minister John Howard was correctly identified as a muppet. Sorry, puppet.
The Howard Government has refused to endorse Labor’s program to support research into renewable ethanol fuel, drawing sharp criticism from industry and the Australian Democrats.
At a meeting with ethanol industry representatives yesterday, the Minister for Resources and Energy, Senator Warwick Parer, refused to guarantee continuing commitment to a bounty scheme and a pilot plant which were funded by the former Labor Government to encourage cost-effective production of the alternative fuel.
Martin, C. 1996. Howard a ‘fossil fuel puppet’, Australian Financial Review, 26 July, p. 16.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 363.7ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that John Howard has not been Australian Prime Minister long (March of 1996). But it’s pretty obvious that whatever lingering hopes, environmentalists and producers of ”environmentally friendly fuel” ethanol were not going to get much love. And their low expectations were met.
What I think we can learn from this is that a new government whether it has a different ideology or a leader with different priorities can suddenly not be returning the calls of various actors, be they entrepreneurs or social movement organisations or whatever. And windows of opportunity, both for the social and technological innovations can close really rapidly. And of course, everyone knows that, which is why you get such desperation about any given election because opportunities for either necessary research and development or sucking on the public tit, (depending on your perspective) will be curtailed. And so it came to pass in this case.
What happened next
Howard ruled Australia for 11 years. He did everything he could to squash renewables with some success. Well, certainly delay.
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.
On July 24, 1980, President Carter addressed the public about his signature achievement.
“Never before had our government or any other government attempting to take such a comprehensive, long-range look at interrelated global issues . . . I believe America must provide special leadership in addressing global conditions,” he urged
(Source – Henderson thesis)
The context was that the concerns raised about “The Limits to Growth” hadn’t gone away entirely, but morphed. By the mid-1970s, they’d been able to gain a toe-hold in the US science policy-making bureaucracies, and in 1977 Carter had announced that a report would be produced…
What we can learn
Any attempt to get environmental limits onto the agenda will be met with fierce resistance.
What happened next
The Global2000 people tried to keep the momentum going, even after Reagan’s victory. The Heritage Foundation did everything it could to slow that momentum, with considerable success. 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.
Twenty five years ago, on this day, July 23, 1998, the Global Climate Coalition (industry front group set up to stop any real climate action) is busy quote mining and distorting what people have said, to give the impression of doubt, confusion etc. Age-old tactic, that keeps working, again and again.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 368ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that although the US Senate had passed the Byrd-Hagel resolution, there was still the lingering threat that a new US administration might if not actually agree to the Kyoto Protocol, then at least take international action that the Global Climate Coalition didn’t like.
What I think we can learn from this is that the Global Climate Coalition and similar outfits, just keep on keeping on grinding away. Whether they’re winning or losing, they keep grinding away in the kind of war of attrition against sanity. And they can do that because they’re well-funded.
What happened next
The Global Climate Coalition was able to shut up shop in 2002. There were two factors. One is they had lost some of their big public-facing companies, especially automakers, because denying the existence of climate change was becoming a reputational risk. And separately, they’d won: once Bush said the US was not going to go negotiate the Kyoto Protocol. The big big battle that had been their raison d’etre since their foundation in 1989 was won.
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.
Thirty six years ago, on this day, July 23, 1987, Calvin blames his mother, and her generation…
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 350.2ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that Bill Watterson is a stone cold genius. The cartoon says so much about youthful exuberance and the joys of pointing the finger.
By 1987, yeah, lots of people knew already. You didn’t need to be a particular genius to understand that climate change was coming.
What I think we can learn from this is that proper humour about climate change is really hard to do. Some have managed it.
What happened next
Calvin & Hobbes kept publishing for a few more years but then went out on a high very sensibly. Showbusiness adage about leave them wanting more etc…
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.
Thirty two years ago, on this day, July 22, 1991, the Australian radio program “The Science Show” (ABC Radio) had two climate denialists on. Oh joy.
(See Robyn Williams letter to The Australian, 1991, Dec 6, p.10).
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 356.3ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the Science Show had from its very beginnings been aware of the dangers of climate change. So Ritchie Caleer, who had been writing about the problem emphatically since the late 60s (and had been aware of it since the early 1950s), was a guest in 1975 on the first episode.
In 1991, the politics of it national of climate, internationally and nationally were getting hot. The negotiations for a climate treaty to be signed in June of 92 were going nowhere thanks to the resolute intransigence and blocking of the United States administration.
Meanwhile, in Australia, the Ecologically Sustainable Development policy process was reaching its final stages, drafts were being written ahead of release within a couple of months. I don’t know if the Science Show had pro-climate action guests the week before the week after. But on this occasion, they had two idiots. One was Bill Nirenberg, one of the Jasons who you can read about in Merchants of Doubt. He had helped to write the 1983 NAS “changing climate” report, saying, “Oh, it’ll be long term and there’s nothing we can do anyway.” The other guest was Brian O’Brien, one of the more active climate deniers on the Australian scene. He was able to play on the fact that he had been the scientist for NASA, as if this somehow gave him expertise on climate science. O’Brian had written various screeds about climate policy, especially attacking the “Toronto Target”.
What I think we can learn from this is that even the best media has to allow dodgy people on because if you don’t, it is “censorship”. And especially 31 years ago, there was still need to “hear both sides of the argument.” And to be fair, I don’t know how Robyn Williams dealt with that at the time, maybe he did a very good job of sending a public health warning to listeners.
What happened next
The ecologically sustainable development process was killed off by new Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating and his henchmen within the Australian Federal bureaucracy. The Rio Earth Summit, rubberstamped a piss-weak climate treaty, i.e. the Americans won. And in long term, everybody lost.
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.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 371.7ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the misnamed “anti-globalisation” movement had been mobilising in London and Cologne, in Stockholm, and in Prague. And now everyone was gathered in Genoa for the G7. Italian police had already shot and killed a young Italian man who was – to be fair – attacking a police car with a fire extinguisher. But this attack was not on protesters, was not in the heat of the moment, these police were not then under threat. This was a planned and enjoyed assault with blood halfway out the walls, leaving lots of nonviolent protesters traumatised with medical bills and horror and it should be remembered. But it isn’t. Except by the people who endured it.
What I think we can learn from this
The state will use violence as it did with the Rainbow Warrior. And as it did here, to make people bleed and make people remember.
What happened next
The Italian police eventually went on trial. Nothing came of it. The global movement against corporate control of the planet was stopped in its tracks by the shock of 9-11. It then morphed into a movement against the impending attack on Iraq in 2003. But found it hard to sustain – as you do.
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.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 399.2ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that Cameron, perhaps bruised by his “get rid of the green crap” comments getting reported in late 2013, and needing a scapegoat, had sacked Owen Paterson (there’s only so many bullets that a flak jacket can take before you need a new one.)
What I think we can learn from this is that nothing is ever your fault if you’re an old white entitled man. His genius has simply been disrespected by a bunch of lunatics. And communists.
What happened next
Cameron’s government continued to “cut the green crap.” And, for example, got rid of the house buildings zero carbon targets, made life incredibly difficult for onshore wind, supported tracking and nuclear etc. And Owen Patterson? He was ultimately really the beginning of the end for his political ally Boris Johnson. He was suspended from Parliament for breaching lobbying rules (but of course this must have been the fault of the green blob). Johnson’s attempt to defend Patterson caused significant unease and undermined what the little residual political capital Johnson had so that when shit went south he had far fewer friends, and ended up having to resign.
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.
Fifty five years ago, on this day, July 19, 1968, a Swedish diplomat pointed to the problems ahead.
Demonstrating the cutting-edge nature of the science that underpinned Sweden’s diplomatic intervention, environmental issues that emerged more prominently in the 1970s were foreshadowed by Palmstierna and Åström, including acid rain, eutrophication and climate change. Regarding the latter, for example, Åström stated before ECOSOC on July 19, 1968, “that man has already rendered the temperature equilibrium of the globe more unstable”.
Paglia “Swedish Initiative”
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 324ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that global awareness of major environmental problems, including our favourite – population – and water and air pollution get as far as the United Nations because it’s Swedish initiatives. And this was apparently the first time that ECOSOC talks about what we would now call “anthropogenic global warming.
What I think we can learn from this
The UN has been talking about, well, people have been talking at the UN about the dangers of climate change for 55 years. Let me say that again. People have been talking at the UN about the dangers of climate change for 55 years.
What happened next
ECOSOC, to which Astrom was talking, agreed to put forward a resolution, the United Nations General Assembly about holding a big environment conference. That UN General Assembly rubber stamp took place in December 1968 (the UK had tried to stop this, but realised it would be futile, so decided to roll with the punches).. And the big conference (with very little high level participation from the Second and Third World) finally took place in June of 1972. It didn’t really give us very much about climate, but maybe I think you could argue that the science wasn’t yet mature. It gave a bit of a fillip to the World Meteorological Organisation and there was now a venue, the United Nations Environment Programme for further work, so all was not lost. And as I said, it’s really only the late 1970s that you could start to blame anyone for anything.
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.
It’s by a ‘big name’ – the diplomat Crispin Tickell. You know Tickell had been on a sabbatical year at Harvard in 1975-6 and had written a thesis about the impact of carbon dioxide build-up on the atmosphere, food production, politics etc. You know that that that document had been circulated in Whitehall and then published, as ‘Climatic Change and World Affairs‘ with a foreword by former Chief Scientific Advisor Solly Zuckerman.
You also know that in February 1980 – two months before the article hit people’s breakfast tables – the Thatcher government had finally, grudgingly, allowed a report on “Climatic Change” to be released (the report had said, in effect ‘meh, probably nothing to see here’).
So you put two and one and a half together and you get… the amount of heating the Earth will experience this century. No, you get a narrative that says Tickell got this published as a kind of – if not ‘rallying the troops’ (were there any?) but a way of reminding people that the issue is actually real and important, despite what the official document said.
And you write a blog post to that effect, and then that’s okay – it’s not wrong, per se.
And you’re dimly aware that Tickell had been involved too in European Community (later, after 1992 it was called the European Union) politics, and also that the G7 had mentioned climate change the year before. And that Margaret Thatcher’s Chief Scientific Advisor had, at some point in all this, tried to get Thatcher to take climate change seriously.
But you don’t really think much more about it, and there’s no need to think differently about the Times article…
But THEN you re-read a really good (albeit incomplete – because everything is incomplete) article about the British government’s response to climate change. And you see something that your eyes simply passed over last time you read it.
“The timing of this sighting of Margaret Thatcher’s scepticism towards climate change is highly significant. It comes a week after Crispin Tickell presented on the carbon dioxide problem at a preparatory meeting for the Venice G7 summit”
(Agar 2015: 623)
And then you do some more digging via GoogleBooks and find more interesting things (1)
And you realise that the Times article you had situated in one context is almost certainly (2) a condensation/popularisation of the briefing he was going to give, and perhaps a way of letting those who would attend his briefing (who presumably took the Times, not the Morning Star) to get familiar with the issue beforehand
And it changes the way you think about the Times article – you see it in a different context. You weren’t wrong before, but you didn’t know the ‘whole story’. And, tbh, you probably still don’t.
And this goes on and on. Presumably historians with real training (rather than self-taught) have a name for this kind of palimpsest thing, this re-layering, this re-examining as new surrounding facts come to light? Anyone want to tell me what that word is?
Footnotes
“By [the meeting] held in Venice in 1980 [Roy] Jenkins’ participation was complete. Likewise his personal representative was able to play a full part in the preparatory discussions, without needing to fear French walkouts or boycotts. The fact that climate change—an unfashionable topic in the late 1970s but a subject upon which Tickell had become a prominent expert—featured on the agenda for the Venice summit is for instance a fairly clear indication that the Commission sherpa was now sufficiently well established within the preparatory group to persuade his counterparts to direct their leaders’ attention towards an issue that was unlikely otherwise to have been discussed at so exalted a level.”
(Ludlow, p109-110, emphasis added)
Ludlow, N.P. (2016). Growing into the Role: The Battle to Secure G7 Representation. In: Roy Jenkins and the European Commission Presidency, 1976 –1980. Security, Conflict and Cooperation in the Contemporary World. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-51530-8_4
(2) You can’t say for sure, because Tickell is dead and didn’t leave a memoir (and even if he had, this kind of granular detail doesn’t usually make it into memoirs).
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 380.9ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that Blair government was in the middle of baffles, i.e. new turns about nuclear and new coal. And obviously, there is the aftermath of the illegal attack on Iraq.
What I think we can learn from this is that promises get made all the time. Then when they’re not kept there’s a period of waiting and they make new promises.
What happened next
More promises. More promises. And the decline in the UK is emissions. That gets vaunted, but it is a lot about switching from coal. And also a lot about shipping factories manufacturing overseas. If you look at consumption-based metrics, it’s not clear there has been any actual decrease in people’s in UK emissions. But I digress.
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.
