Fifty four years ago, on this day, January 26th 1970 Harold Wilson held out a green olive branch…. As per the Tory MP Christopher Chataway, speaking in the House of Commons on 3 Feb 1970.
In New York on Monday [26 January 1970] of last week, the Prime Minister said:
“The British people today offer you, the American people, a new special relationship.”
As the Prime Minister went on, a no doubt grateful American people learned that the new special relationship was to help them with, among other things, the problems of pollution; in his words, “the problems of pollution of the air we breathe”. I have no evidence whether or not the great majority of Americans were over-impressed by this offer of the Prime Minister, but they would surely have been less impressed had he mentioned that the highly successful clean air policy which his Government had inherited was even then being brought to a grinding halt.
https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/1970-02-03/debates/fd90bff8-118d-4988-b0a2-074afcdfdf88/SmokelessZonesAndPollution?highlight=%22alkali%20inspectorate%22#contribution-0e5f6776-1edd-4f82-b06f-c094e863e036
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 324ppm. As of 2024 it is 422ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that both major political parties, Conservative and Labour had discovered the environment issue. In 1969, Wilson had used the word environment in his speech to Labour Party Congress, in Blackpool in September of ‘69, and had set up a Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, and a white paper.
Chataway was a then rising star, he’d been an athlete and a television presenter, and he was landing blows against Wilson.
What we learn is that by 1970, there was a competitive consensus. The parties were competing to gain kudos for their green credentials.
What happened next, Wilson lost the June 1970 election. A Department of Environment was still set up as a super Department under Peter Walker. And onward the caravan went to the Stockholm Environment conference.
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 27, 1989 – UN General Assembly starts talking #climate
January 27, 1986 – Engineers try to stop NASA launching the (doomed) Challenger Space Shuttle