Thirty three years ago, on this day, September 21, 1990, various state ministers urged Bob Hawke’s Federal Government to do what it had declined to do in May 1989 – agree to decent emissions cuts …
CANBERRA: A meeting of all Australian and New Zealand environment ministers increased pressure on the Federal Cabinet yesterday to commit itself to a 20 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.
The meeting of the Australia and New Zealand Environment Council (ANZEC) in Alice Springs also urged the Government to push for the target at the Second World Climate Conference, to be held in about six weeks.
Seccombe, 1990. Gas Emission Cut Urged. Sydney Morning Herald, 22 September, p.6.
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 various state governments had made a commitment to the Toronto target but the Australian Federal Government had not. The second World climate conference was due to begin in Geneva shortly (it had been pushed back by four months in order to be a staging post for the incipient international climate negotiations). The Toronto target was one that had been suggested at a conference in June of 1988. Environmentals had wanted a 50% cut by 2015 ceiling. This had been watered down to 20% by 2005.
What I think we can learn from this – there was a time when when politicians were seriously ambitious though perhaps not entirely aware of the actual costs of what they were proposing. Or to be fair they read the reports by people like Demi Greene (see March 1990) and decided it wasn’t too ambitious or too difficult.
What happened next
In October 1990s the Australian Federal Government made a very hedged commitment to Toronto rendering the promise basically meaningless.
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..