Fifty two years ago, on this day, June 18th, 1972 Australian author Patrick White, who would next year win the Nobel Prize for Literature, got involved in politics, very very reluctantly.
“On 18 June 1972, Patrick White made his début as a public speaker from the back of a truck in Sydney’s Centennial Park. He was there to address a rally against the state government’s plan to turn the area into a sports centre, which would have ruined the ecology and amenity of the park.”
Peter Ferguson “Patrick White, green bans and the rise of the Australian new left”.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 327ppm. As of 2024 it is 426ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that Sydney was in the grip of the developers who could only see dollar signs. The unions were trying to stop them. Civil society was trying to stop them. And even Patrick White, the intensely private, Australian writer who was about to win the Nobel Prize for Literature was reluctantly willing to use his status to help the cause.
What we learn is that social resistance to the megamachine/the Juggernaut requires a full court press from not just workers but artists. A popular front you could almost say. And even then, its victories will be partial, because greed is astonishingly motivating. You could almost say that capitalism is a form of acid eating away at institutions to coin a phrase entirely. De novo.
What happened next, Patrick White won the Nobel. Sydney was not entirely paved over, but that’s no thanks to the politicians. What was saved was saved by popular pressure forcing them to be slightly less short-sighted, albeit briefly.
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.
We are, allegedly, in the midst of an “energy transition.” How very exciting! We are moving from dirty old fossil fuels, which are heating the planet, to lean clean green [fill in the blank – CCS, Nuclear, hydrogen, wind, solar, geothermal, grid-level batteries, perpetual motion machines] because we are a clever ingenious species interested in its own survival.
Apologies for the tone, but one of the things you see – if you’re a cynic who has read a history book, and/or lived through some history – is that we tell each other (and ourselves) stories we want to hear. Crucially, these stories then shape our perception, shape the way we select evidence to confirm these stories (1).
The ability to see this, to name it, and to try to compensate for it, is one of those “core skills” that many claim they have. But it requires not just competence, but also confidence and courage. Saying that the pretty story that people are lulling themselves with (and getting vibes, attention and cash from) is just a story, and that there are plot holes big enough to let a category six hurricane through, can be a risky business.
Michael Liebreich delights in punching holes in stories. Hydrogen was the subject of his latest effort. His lecture last Thursday was both brutal and hilarious.
Liebreich also co-hosts a podcast called Cleaning Up. The two obvious meanings are “making money” and “dealing with physical pollution,” but there’s a third (unintended?) meaning of de-mythifying, of clearing out the Augean stables of horseshit.
I got to thinking of horseshit. Not what the guest – Hans Eric Melin – had to say. He was crystal clear on what could and couldn’t be expected of battery recycling (from EVs, to grids etc etc). He also talked about the very persistent myth that only 5% of batteries are recycled/are recyclable. He explained where it came from, and how it keeps popping up. Listen to the podcast, and/or read him here on LinkedIn.
Tl:dr – the two sources of the myth are a Friends of the Earth press release and the abstract of a scientific paper (the claim not supported in the body of that paper!).
And what the 5% figure reminded me of was the Great Manure Crisis of 1894 (told you I was old).
“Late 18th century cities like London and New York seemed to be ‘drowning in horse manure’. In London, where the horse-carried Hansom Cab occupied the streets, 50.000 horses produced 570.000 kilograms of horse manure and 57.000 litres of urine daily. Together with the corpses of death horses, the urine and manure started to poison the city’s inhabitants. In 1894 the Times predicted that “in 50 years, every street in London will be buried under nine feet of manure.” The situation came to be known as the ‘Great Manure Crisis of 1894’ [source, and see here too].
Role of myths in transitions
Generally, we like to tell stories. They make us feel like we are in control, or – failing that – that we will be less surprised than other people when surprising/uncontrollable things happen.
This energy transition that we are going through (kinda sorta) is scary, disorientating, and discombobulating. Expect loadsa stories. especially from people who want your money.
Meanwhile, we like to hear stories – to scare ourselves with the bogey-man (mountains of horseshit will crush us!!). This is something you see especially in the 1970s disaster novels (ecology and/or technology running amok) that I read compulsively (2).
If you tell stories about how technological innovation X, which is necessary for the “transition” is impossible (“batteries aren’t being/can’t be recycled”) you look like (3) the grown-up in the room, the person who is not a gullible rube taken in by all the hype (4).
And so, the myths persist, with new factoids (67.4 percent of statistics are made up on the spot) and anecdotes (its plural is not data) sprinkled on top.
But also, and I cannot emphasize this enough, the Cocker Protocol.
Footnotes
And if anyone tries to tell you that academics are partially or entirely immune to this tendency, you have my permission to laugh in their faces.
The 1970s were the time when Whitey stopped being in charge in the way he had been for hundreds of years. The techno-eco-disasters are in part a way of working through that loss of primacy. But also, giant ants are fun.
In your own eyes. It turns out other people don’t always share our opinions of ourselves. Who knew.
There are also pleasures in being the reply guy, the concern troll, but that can be for another time.
Sixty seven years ago, on this day, June 17th, 1957, Guy Callendar submitted an article – “On the Amount of Carbon Dioxide in the Atmosphere” to Tellus, the Swedish scientific journal.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 314ppm. As of 2024 it is 426ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that Guy Callendar had now been writing about the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere and the warming planet for 20 years. He had presented this work in 1938 at the British Meteorological Society and received a polite but relatively dismissive hearing. Callendar must have been looking at the work around the IGY and hopefully, he was feeling at least a small sense of vindication. I don’t know, even though he’s been largely ignored by or tolerated by the British scientific establishment.
What we learn is that the old Hollywood trope of the lone genius, who’s right when the establishment is wrong or looking the other way, is not entirely without foundation.
What happened next Callendar had one more significant paper in him in 61/62. I think he must have been too sick to be invited to the Conservation Foundation meeting in 63. And he died in 1964 on the same day of the year, Svante Arrhenius had died, in 1927.
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.
NB Hutchinson was aware of C02 build-up at the latest in 1948
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 314ppm. As of 2024 it is 426ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the Conservation Foundation had been set up seven years previously. And they were hosting this big meeting of all sorts of prestigious environmental thinkers, scientists, etc. And there was just one glancing mention of carbon dioxide build up, despite the facts that
Gilbert Plass had flagged it two years earlier
One of the big names – G. Evelyn Hutchinson had been aware of C02 build-up, and writing/talking about it from 1948…
What we learn from this is that smart people think that they can spot future problems. But actually, the real problem might be something they’ve overlooked as trivial. And that although it’s important to listen to experts, expecting them to be able to gaze into the crystal ball with anything approaching usefulness is maybe unwise…
What happened next? Well, the Conservation Foundation did indeed get cracking with work on CO2 in 1963. But then, at the follow-up meeting of the Conservation Foundation in I think 1964, or 1965, also had only one fleeting mention. And that was when Frank Fraser Darling raised it in q&a, only for it to be dismissed, essentially.
It’d be interesting to see if there’s archives of that started it. And if there were people in the States that I could ask to do the research or where the files might be.
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.
Seventy seven years ago, on this day, June 15th, 1947 an experiment took place…,
The classic cold-war pronouncement on weather control belongs to General George C. Kenney, commander of the Strategic Air Command: “The nation that first learns to plot the paths of air masses accurately and learns to control the time and place of precipitation will dominate the globe.” New York Times 15 June 1947
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 310ppm. As of 2024 it is 426ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The first experiment with creating rain clouds was by tipping dry ice into them.
The context was that we just split the atom. Surely control of all of nature could not be far behind. And if you can make it rain, make the deserts bloom. You can feed the world, you can control the world.
What we learned is the ancient dreams of predicting or even controlling the weather. Got turbo boosted with the coming of turbo jets. See what I did there?
What happened next, lots of excitement about weather modification. And that also ended up kind of morphing into concern about inadvertent weather and climate modifications, including carbon dioxide build-up. And by the late 50s, this was being spoken of by all sorts of people.
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.
Forty six years ago, on this day, June 14th, 1978, scientists met. Looked at the data. Concluded there was trouble ahead.
Man’s impact on climate : proceedings of an international conference held in Berlin, June 14-16, 1978 / edited by Wilfrid Bach, Jürgen Pankrath, William Kellogg.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 335ppm. As of 2024 it is 426ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that through the 1970s, there had been a series of these sorts of meetings, especially from 1974-75 where climatologist sociologists, economists, etc. who were mostly men, mostly white, mostly American, or Western European would get together and scratch their heads about buildup of CO2 and what it might mean. Some of these meetings were being held under the auspices of the World Meteorological organisation in unit and ICSU, others IIASA. And the First World Climate Conference was due to happen soon.
What we learn is that by the late 1970s there really was enough to be going on with for politicians to get on top of an issue. But the signal I guess was still too weak. There wasn’t as yet a physical signal. Things took a hit when Reagan took office and the gravity, momentum whatever you want to call it shifted to the Europeans and it would be 1988 before things hit the headlines properly. But it’d be interesting to look at when organisations started to hold these meetings and what the nature of these meetings was primarily scientific or also social.
What happened next, these sorts of meetings kept happening. The OECD and the IEA joined the fray too. The First World Climate Conference had been relatively inconclusive, thanks to resistance from people like John Mason, but that issue was going away. Meanwhile, in the UK, the first government report on climate change got buried. Or there were discussions about burying it: in the end it was released, to no acclaim or impact.
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.
Thirty five years ago, on this day, June 13th, 1989, engineers want to get cracking…,
The international community must take immediate steps to revise its energy strategies to ameliorate the greenhouse effect, the Institution of Engineers, Australia, warned yesterday.
Presenting its position paper, The Impact of Energy Use on the Greenhouse Effect, the association recommended action based on the premise that fossil fuels would continue to supply most of the world’s energy needs.
Lewis, S. 1989. Engineers want greenhouse plan. Australian Financial Review, 14 June.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 353ppm. As of 2024 it is 426ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that everyone was running around talking about climate change and something must be done. World Environment Day had just happened. And there’d been a big global pop conference, with all the celebrities imploring us to save the earth. Because that’s what celebrities do. And here come the engineers. And the thing you’ve got to love about engineers, is they’re not much fussed with moral claims. They’re very fussed with numbers, blueprints, plans, actions, assessing whether the actions have worked, coming up with another action intervention. Because that’s how engineers, bless them, are trained to think it’s incredibly important. And we don’t think about it. We don’t think about infrastructure until it goes wrong. So the engineers wanted a plan and they wanted it now.
What we learn is that there was a time when there were demands from civil society for urgent action. The politicians had their own agenda. And we did not push them hard enough.
What happened next? The whole awkward question of “what to do about climate change and environment” is shepherded into the Ecologically Sustainable Development policymaking process and then killed off by bureaucracy. And in the meantime, the issue of climate fell down the agenda. It always does because the media gets bored. And because a war or something comes along, in this case, Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait…
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.
It’s not easy, but if you say, “Well, we haven’t gotten where we wanted; I’m going to quit,” you just guarantee that the worst is going to happen. It’s a constant struggle. Take, say, Tony Mazzocchi — one of the heroes of modern labor, head of the Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers [International] Union, one of the first serious environmentalists in the country. His constituents at the front line were being murdered by pollution, destruction of the environment, and so on. This is in the early seventies, way before the environmental movement took off. His union was working toward dealing with the environmental crisis, and it moved on to try to establish a labor party in the nineties. It could have worked, but it didn’t make it.
Fifty-two years ago, on this day, June 12th, 1972, the idea of One True Path To Wealth got questions by Barbara Ward and Margaret Mead.
NGOs, too, soon challenged the U.S. delegation’s platform. In a statement to the plenary session on June 12, a collection of NGOs, led by Barbara Ward and American anthropologist Margaret Mead, strongly criticised existing notions of development. In the development process, there needed to be “a greater emphasis on non-material satisfactions . . . and, above all, altruism in the pursuit of the common good.” Ward and Mead argued that technical fixes – more production – would not solve developmental problems, because a balance between environment and development “can be achieved only if we face honestly the problem of social justice and redistribution.” More concretely, they called for a tiny percent of GNP to be allocated in grants and low-interest for long-term loans for concessionary assistance and for additional flows of capital assistance from the developed nations to offset costs in the developing world. 132 “NGO Plenary Declaration,” Reprinted in Special Issue: The Stockholm Conference, Not Man Apart,
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 327.5ppm. As of 2024 it is 426ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that developing nations had been deeply suspicious of the agenda – in every sense – of the Western nations in calling for this conference on the human environment. They saw it as another way of the West restricting the economic development of what was then called the Third World. There had been a conference in Founex (which is I think, in Switzerland) in 1971 to allay some of these concerns.
Fun fact, only one world leader was there besides Olof Palme, Indira Gandhi of India. And these fights about what development meant and who it was for and who would be in charge of it were turning up of course, both at the conference itself, and at the People’s Conference, and so forth.
What we learn is that how you see the world very much depends whether you are serving or eating. In the words of Leonard Cohen, homicidal bitchin’ goes down in every kitchen. And the main problem has been a lack of trust. And Western nations have done nothing to earn that trust.
What happened next? The Stockholm conference gave us some fine words but it also gave us the United Nations Environment Program, headquartered in Nairobi, a lot smaller than was hoped but powerful enough to co-sponsor with WMO a series of meetings about climate change.
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.
One hundred and four years ago, on this day, June 12th, 1920, a sci-fi novel with mention of carbon dioxide build-up was published.
But just when men were congratulating themselves on this new Golden Age, fissures opened slowly in the Earth’s crust, and carbon dioxide began pouring out into the atmosphere. That gas had long been known to be present in the air, and necessary to plant life. Plants absorbed its carbon, releasing the oxygen for use again in a process called the “carbon cycle”.
Scientists noted the Earth’s increased fertility, but discounted it as the effect of carbon dioxide released by man’s burning of fossil fuels. For years the continuous exhalation from the world’s interior went unnoticed.
Constantly, however, the volume increased. New fissures opened, pouring into the already laden atmosphere more carbon dioxide–beneficial in small amounts, but as the world learned, deadly in quantity.
The entire atmosphere grew heavy. It absorbed more moisture and became humid. Rainfall increased. Climates warmed. Vegetation became more luxuriant–but the air gradually became less exhilarating.
Soon mankind’s health was affected. Accustomed through long ages to breathing air rich in oxygen and poor in carbon dioxide, men suffered. Only those living on high plateaus or mountaintops remained unaffected. All the world’s plants, though nourished and growing to unprecedented size, could not dispose of the continually increasing flood of carbon dioxide.
By the middle of the 21st century it was generally recognized that a new carboniferous period was beginning, when Earth’s atmosphere would be thick and humid, unbreathable by man, when giant grasses and ferns would form the only vegetation.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 303ppm. As of 2024 it is 426ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that science fiction writers had been around since Lucretius, and then Jules Verne and then on to things like “The Poison Cloud” (a London suffocates story) and so on.
What we learn: What a stupid species we are, not listening to our story-tellers…
What happened next: The emissions kept rising, albeit slowly until the 1950s and the Great Acceleration.
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.
