Thirty years ago, on this day, June 27th, 1994, a Democrat tries to get Labor to be less terrible.,
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 359ppm. As of 2024 it is 426ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that Senator John Faulkner was a relatively new Federal Environment Minister, and was going to be making various launches of policy documents. John Coulter had been around talking and thinking about environmental issues since the early 70s. And as a Senator for the Democrats, was well entitled to offer some free advice.
What we learn is that there have been decent parliamentarians and I should say that I think both Coulter and Faulkner were decent parliamentarians trying to grapple with these issues.
What happened next? I don’t know if Faulkner took on board anything that Coulter said, there was then the battle over carbon tax. On Friday, February 10 1995 Faulkner ran up the white flag and instead we got the frankly ridiculous Greenhouse Challenge. And here we are. The emissions kept rising.
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 27, 1998 – we’ll trade our way outa trouble (not)
June 27, 2000 – crazy but well-connected #climate denialists schmooze politicians