Twenty six years ago, on this day, December 31, 1997, the Federal environment minister Robert Hill took a pop at the peak green group in Australia.
“THE Australian Conservation Foundation claims that opinion polls show Australians “do not agree with the Government’s push for the right to increase our greenhouse gases while other countries reduce” (Kyoto Harmed Our Reputation, Letters, 22/12).
“Perhaps if the ACF and others had not embarked on a deliberate campaign of misinformation on the greenhouse issue the results may have been different.”
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 364ppm. As of 2023 it is 421ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the Australian government had extorted an eye-wateringly generous deal at Kyoto. Robert Hill had got a standing ovation from the Liberal party room – or possibly the cabinet I forget the details – but Australian environmentalists were understandably really horrified that the whole process had been treated just so shabbily and went public.
What I think we can learn from this is that when push comes to shove, well, states are going to defend existing powerful interests in most circumstances rather than think about the future. And individual functionaries will not take kindly to being reminded of their shabby behaviour.
What happened next
Hill signed the Kyoto protocol in April 1998. His boss John Howard clearly didn’t want it to be brought forward to the Australian Parliament for ratification and he made sure that it wasn’t, finally announcing this on Earth Day, in June of 2002.
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.
References
Hill, R. 1997. There was no `diplomatic tension’ at Kyoto. The Australian, December 31