Thirty two years ago, on this day, January 22nd 1992, the delayers and deniers deployed the dollar dilemma argument,
CANBERRA: Australia would be sent to the poorhouse by the Federal Government’s attitude towards reducing greenhouse gas emissions, it was claimed yesterday.
It would be “grossly wrong” for Australia to do this at the expense of living standards in a time of recession, said the chief executive of the Australian Institution of Engineers, Mr John Enfield.
He criticised the Minister for the Environment, Mrs Kelly, for acting “prematurely” on the issue, before further research confirmed or disproved predictions on the greenhouse effect.
Chamberlin, P. 1992. Green govt warned of poorhouse effect. Sydney Morning Herald, January, 23 p3.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 356.3ppm. As of 2024 it is 422ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context is that although the battle against the carbon tax had really already been won, not everyone had gotten the memo. And anyway, they want to lay down some suppressing fire and that’s what was happening here, in the immediate period before the Rio Earth Summit. Industry is determined to dampen down government ambition because – nightmare – scenario -rush of blood to the head might get the government promising things (unlikely under Keating!).
What we learn. Assholes gonna asshole.
What happened next World leaders all went to Rio (except Paul Keating, the only OECD nation leader not to attend) and they signed the empty treaty. And you know, the emissions kept climbing and you know the rest.
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:
January 22, 1995 – UK Prime Minister John Major told to implement green taxes on #climate