Thirty years ago, on this day, December 21, 1993,
“the European Union agreed to ratify the FCCC without any commitment to an energy/carbon tax. The debate continues, with all governments increasingly interested in raising revenue from energy consumption in the home and on roads.”
Boehmer‐Christiansen (1995; 185)
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 356.5ppm. As of 2023 it is 421ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the UNFCCC climate treaty had had far fewer teeth than the Europeans wanted, thanks to the successful resistance of US President George Bush, his Chief of Staff John Sununu and others. There were no targets and timetables for emissions reductions but at least they’d seen the back of George Bush having been defeated in the 1992 presidential election by Bill Clinton of the Democratic party, for what that was worth (not much when it came to climate.)
What I think we can learn from this
This is just one of those moments of history. Thirty years. And what has been achieved since then? Half of fuck all – though the Europeans will tell you that massively reduced their emissions so maybe that’s something I don’t know- if the cause of that has been the same as in in the UK – deindustrialisation and some uptake of different forms of energy besides coal – that’s a question I could look into.
What happened next
We have kept tipping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere like there’s no tomorrow…
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..