Thirty years ago, on this day, July 11th, 1994, it turns out promises are easier than delivery
Environment Minister John Faulkner says the Federal Government won’t be able to tell if it can meet its targets on the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions until August….
On Monday’s ABC Lateline program, Senator Faulkner said the government will have a better idea when statistics on levels of greenhouse gas emissions are released in August.
Anon. 1994. Greenhouse performance uncertain. Green Week, July 15, p.5. [Lateline show will have been Monday 11th July]
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 Faulkner hadn’t been in his post long. And Australian climate policy was a complete freaking mess. Anyway, there wasn’t one, except for the meaningless National Greenhouse Response Strategy, which was a watered down consolation prize for the Ecologically Sustainable Development process.
What we learn is that even on the most important issue of all time, there was an incredibly lackadaisical “yeah, whatever doesn’t matter” attitude. And this really is the fault of Paul Keating. As prime minister, that’s where the buck stops.
What happened next is when the first emissions report did come out, it showed that surprise, surprise, emissions had not gone down, but continued to go up. And this was a problem both for the Rio stabilisation target of returning emissions to 1990 levels by 2000. But also, there was still supposed to be the “minus 20% by 2005” of the Toronto target, agreed in October 1990. Faulkner, then, proposed a carbon tax which was defeated.
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:
July 11, 1989 – Australia says “sure, we’ll take #climate refugees.” Yeah, nah.