Thirty years ago, on this day, September 12th, 1994, a nice article by a Greenpeace policy guy explains what is at stake. Is ignored, of course.
The Federal Government this week conceded that its current policies will not meet our international commitments to cut greenhouse gases by 20 per cent by 2005. The practical solutions needed to meet these targets are available, in the form of energy efficiency, solar power and public transport. What is missing is the political will to implement them.
Tarlo, K. 1994. Time to grasp greenhouse nettle. Sydney Morning Herald, 12 September, p15.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 359ppm. As of 2024 it is 422ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that Greenpeace had been banging on about climate change for a while. They had had a severe bust in their finance because people didn’t renew their membership in 1991-92 because the whole green issue seemed to have gone away after the Gulf War. They’d done a nice advert about Bush senior during his 1992 Australia visit and had also been doing legal challenges to new coal fired power stations without much success.
And here was Keating shitting on climate policy, calling greenhouse an “amorphous issue”.
Anyway, the specific context was that Keating’s Environment Minister John Faulkner was proposing a carbon tax with the money to be spent on things like energy efficiency and solar energy r&d.
What we learn is that you just have to stay in the game when the good times pass, but you just have to stay in the game. Keep your capacity to act going. Greenpeace managed it. Grassroots groups, not so much…
What happened next? Greenpeace kept going. Faulkner’s Carbon Tax died in February 1995. Keating was toast in ‘96. And the emissions kept climbing.
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:
September 12, 1958 – Letter in The Times about … carbon dioxide build-up
September 12, 2003 – Newcastle Herald thinks the future of coal looks ‘cleaner’…