Thirty one years ago, on this day, December 14, 1992, UK Department for Environment releases “Climate Change: our national programme on C02 emissions.”
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 356.5ppm. As of 2023 it is 420.4ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the US had succeeded in weakening the climate treaty which the UK was clearly going to ratify. Meanwhile the “Our Common Inheritance” White Paper, published in 1990, meant that there had to be a national programme.
What I think we can learn from this is that promises of action are followed by promises that implementation will happen. Implementation plans are drawn up but then often nothing gets done…
What happened next
Nothing got done. There was a cola white paper. There was talk of carbon taxes and carbon pricing but really would be the early 2000s before any substantive climate action happened in the UK because emissions went down thanks to the switch from coal to gas and ongoing deindustrialisation of the UK.
And so while the numbers are going down, there’s no pressure to actually try to do anything.
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..