Twenty three years ago, on this day, July 25th, 2001, the truth is told about Australia’s climate change targets.,
2001 – Then-environment minister Robert Hill admitted on July 25, immediately after the Kyoto Protocol had been further weakened at the UN conference in Germany, that “it could well be possible to achieve our target with the measures we now have in place”.
https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/bush-threatens-worlds-climate
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 371ppm. As of 2024 it is 426ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the UNFCCC process was in deep shit. It has ended in acrimony without any closing statement or anything. In November/December, the previous year in The Hague(which is where the climate criminals belong, but, that’s another blog post).
Bush had pulled out of Kyoto. And so, here, in Bonn, they were stitching the pieces back together again. And the Australian environment minister, Robert Hill, said the quiet part out loud when he admitted that Australia had basically carved out such an insanely generous deal in December 1997, that it was going to hit its targets without doing much of anything.
What we learn – if you listen closely, you can figure out what’s going on. It’s not rocket science.
What happened next?
In June of 2002, finally, to nobody’s surprise, Australian Prime Minister John Howard said no to Kyoto, I think simply because he enjoyed “owning the libs.” There was no upside in it for him really. And it would mean that Australia was beholden to future stuff, and he could much more easily stay pals with George W. Bush. I guess ratifying Kyoto would have annoyed Bush since it would have isolated the US even further. So they didn’t do it. Kyoto was only finally ratified by Australia in December 2007 by Kevin Rudd.
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 25, 1977 – New York Times front page story “scientists foresee serious climate changes”
July 25, 1996 – Australian PM John Howard as fossil-fuel puppet
July 25, 1997 – US says, in effect, “screw our promises, screw the planet”