Thirty years ago, on this day, August 27, 1993, the post-Rio Earth Summit process was edging forward.
1993 End of INC negotiations at which – first tentative but informal discussions of the adequacy of the commitments contained in articles 4.2(a) and (b) of the convention (Paterson 1996, page 67)
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly xxxppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that in May 1992, following a prolonged fight, the Americans won an infamous victory by removing target and timetables from the text of the climate treaty. This victory was short-lived however because it was obvious that emissions reductions were going to be needed. And the international negotiating committee saw this by August of 1993 at which point various nations had already ratified the UNFCCC and it was well on the way to meeting the threshold for ratification, and therefore the first “Conference of the Parties” – an international meeting which in the end took place in Berlin in March-April 1995.
What I think we can learn from this is that blocking victories doesn’t necessarily last terribly long – you can take something off the agenda but it will crawl and slither its way back onto the agenda whether it’s good or bad. And therefore the work of containing and corralling and controlling is never-ending. The kind of people who wrote The Powell memorandum, they understand that. And they have to the deep pockets to fund a culture war. Progressive groups, because they tell themselves the myth of the neutral State and of the information deficit, are constantly surprised that they have to keep fighting. Also, they’re also, almost by definition, worse off for funding.
What happened next
At the Berlin meeting in 1995 the Berlin Mandate was agreed, meaning that rich countries were going to have to cut their emissions. Or rather, they were going to have to turn up to the third COP with a number in their heads for emissions reductions. They did this. It was inadequate, and then the USA and Australia walked away.
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.