Thirty two years ago, on this day, October 9, 1991, an Australian politics and economics commentator Ross Gittins is, well, Ross Gittins…
MY suspicion was right: the column I wrote a few weeks back about the greenhouse effect drew a sheaf of letters from readers. I write on lots of controversial subjects, but none sends the readers scurrying to their word-processors like a mention of the environment.
I argued that, since the greenhouse problem is global and Australia’s contribution to greenhouse gas emissions is tiny, there isn’t much we can do about it in the absence of an international agreement.
The letters were almost universally disapproving; some weren’t too polite about it. So are my views quite out of step with the Herald’s readers’? I doubt it. People who violently disagree with something they read in the paper are more inclined to put pen to paper than those who don’t.
Gittins, R. 1991. Thou shalt not stuff up the environment. Sydney Morning Herald, 9 October, p. 15.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 355ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the green moment that hit the headlines in 1988 was fading, and fading fast – even though the problems were real and getting realer. Meanwhile, Gittins needing to fill a newspaper column and get a rise out of his readers, was on display here
What I think we can learn from this is that the conversation was never very sophisticated morally or intellectually and we’ve probably gone backwards thanks to dementia, reaction formations, organised denial, you name it.
What happened next
Gittins kept scribbling, people got to read him. The emissions kept climbing. 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.