Forty-three years ago, on this day, January 15th 1981, as the Reagan gang were about to take over, there was a plaintive plea…
Shabecoff, Philip. “U.S. Calls for Efforts To Combat Global Environmental Problems.” New York Times, January 15, 1981.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 340ppm. As of 2024 it is 422ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context
This is the last throw of the dice for the Council on Environmental Quality under Jimmy Carter. It had done some good stuff. The CEQ staffer Gus Speth had spent the last four years trying to push climate up the agenda. There had also been the Global 2000 report, which was produced by a separate body. Carter had lost the November 1980 election to Reagan who literally does not give a damn about conserving anything but is keen for ever greater exploitation.
What we can learn from this is that we knew what needed to be done. And we kept electing people who didn’t want to do it because they appealed to our ego, or our greed or something.
What happened next? Reagan came in and shat all over climate action, environment action. See James Watt, etc, etc. And the emissions kept climbing and it was 1988 before presidential candidates were forced to speak about it. (There’s a more interesting story of Republican senators like John Chafee and so forth, actually understanding what was at stake in the mid-80s.) And the journo who wrote this story, Shabecoff? He also wrote the June 24th 1988 story on Hansen.
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.
Also on this day:
Jan 15, 1971 – greenwash before it was called greenwash #propaganda