Forty-five years ago, on this day, October 4, 1978, senior UK civil servants and scientific advisors began a short bunch of meetings…
“The Interdepartmental Group on Climatology (IGC) first met on 4 October 1978. Its task was to specify a research programme that might answer long-term questions about climate change, while keeping national programmes co-ordinated with the rapidly expanding international projects, such as those of the European Economic Community (EEC) and World Meteorological Organization (WMO) as well as research in the USA.”
Agar, 2015
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 335.4ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the British state had been aware of potential climate change for a very long time. By 1967 the issue was cropping up on television. A junior minister, Lord Kennet, had written a crucial memo in July 1968, and the first Environment White Paper mentioned carbon dioxide as a potential problem. But Met Office Supremo John Mason had managed to slow things down despite the best efforts of various civil servants and scientists. Eventually though, an interdepartmental committee was formed.
What I think we can learn from this is that the British state response was this weak at this time. Though to be entirely fair, there was a lot going on in terms of industrial unrest, Northern Ireland the IMF crisis you name it. The 1976 drought could be dismissed as a one-off, of course
Interdepartmental committees are going to follow the usual lowest common denominator trajectory, with big departments able to act as a veto on anything they don’t like and small departments knowing that and seeing no point in rocking the boat…
What happened next
The interdepartmental committee report, which was pretty weak, was not released until after the change in government. Members of the Conservative cabinet of Margaret Thatcher almost just filed it away without it even being seen.
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.