Thirty-eight years ago, on this day, June 11th, 1986, the Washington Post nailed it. with a front page story.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 347ppm. As of 2024 it is 426ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that nine months earlier, WMO, UNEP and ICSU had organised and held a scientific meeting in the Austrian city of Villach at which scientists had come together, done the maths, shed some illusions, and realised that the shit was about to hit the fan, and if that the human species wanted a nice 21st century it needed to get its shit together. And scientists had started to alert politicians, some of whom are already of course well sensitised. Looking at you, Al Gore. Carl Sagan had given testimony to a Senate committee in December 1985. Drums were continuing to be beat. Articles were written. And I don’t know if anyone specifically briefed the Washington Post journo, but that’s the context.
What we learn is that I think even Joe Biden was in on the act talking about carbon protection or climate protection. 1988 was the icing on the cake of this issue that had been building in the problem stream for quite some time. Until politics stream and policy stream came together thanks to a series of focusing events such as the drought testimony the changing atmosphere conference, which was in essence another fruit of the Villach meeting.
It’s interesting to look at that three years from Villach to Toronto, institutionally who was doing what why how? Okay.
What happened next? The issue kept building in ‘87 and ‘88 until even George Bush and Margaret Thatcher had to talk about it. And then we all magically solved the problem. Oh yes.
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:
June 11, 1997 – US ambassador says Australia should stop being so awful on #climate
June 11, 2003 – US and Australian think tanks conspire vs (pluralist) democracy