Thirty years ago, on this day, September 4, 1990, Industry went all snowflake because a minister was a Mean Girl.
Anon, 1990. Industry upset about Minister’s Attack on Miners, Foresters. Green Week, September 4, p.8.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 354ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the Hawke government was having to keep promises it had made to environmental groups in order to win the 1990 federal election. One promise was to set up an ecologically sustainable development process. The very existence of this offended industry, which was used to getting its own way via the usual means and did not feel it should ever have to justify its policies and proposals to anyone, least of all a bunch of smelly hippies. Relations with the then environment minister Ros Kelly were complicated, especially after she had made robust statements about what the miners meant with their definition of sustainability.
What I think we can learn from this is that industry was used to getting its own way and as per that old line “when privilege is removed it feels like oppression” industry always feels oppressed.
What happened next is that the ecologically sustainable development process continued but was then thrown in the circular file when new prime minister Paul Keating shat all over it and the federal bureaucracy buried it as this blog post about the events of August 6, 1992.
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..