Seventeen years ago, on this day, October 25th, 2006, opposition leader David Cameron launches “Can I have the Bill” campaign in London, a few week’s ahead of the Queen’s speech in which the Labour Government announced its Climate Change Bill.
If you go here you can see the Getty images I don’t have a licence for.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 382ppm. As of 2024 it is 422ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that David Cameron had become Conservative Party opposition leader the previous year simply by memorising an eight minute speech and not being David Davis or Ken Clark. One of his key tactics was to “detoxify” the Conservative brand by embracing soft green environmentalism so middle class people wouldn’t be quite as repelled and would feel less guilty about voting the way that they thought would benefit their own economic self interest. And so he’d hugged a husky and so forth. And now, he was trying to outflank the Labour and Liberal Democrats on climate ambition.
We’d seen this before with Chris Puplick and Andrew Peacock in 1989-90 in Australia.
What I think we can learn from this is that these periods of competitive consensus exist. They tend not to last terribly long though.
What happened next Cameron kept banging on about CCS. He had a wind turbine put on his roof to precisely no effect. And in 2008, the Climate Change Act became law. And there was an up of ambition from 60% to 80% emissions reductions by 2050. And of course, we’ve now said that we’re going to go to net zero, except we’re not.
The thing to remember was that very, very few Conservatives voted against the Climate Change Act. But this is because most of them are both obedient and thick and didn’t understand the implications. And even if they did understand the implications, loyalty to your leader is far more important than any particular stand you might want to make.
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 three years ago, on this day, October 24th, 1991 AMEEF (Australian Minerals and Energy Environment Foundation) was launched in Canberra by Martin W. Holdgate, then Director General of the IUCN,
(The Mining Review, Dec 1991 – p8-10.)
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 357ppm. As of 2024 it is 422ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the Australian mining industry had come in for a lot of flak, for environmental criminality, degradation, or whatever you want to call it. And this included the climate issue.
They pushed back, calling their critics all the names under the sun, but they also needed some sort of positive front foot to put forward. And here we have the Australian Minerals and Energy Environment Foundation, which is one of those outfits that you can set up to dish out awards to yourself, and press releases and the occasional book. And this is a soothing lullaby to middle class people who want to believe that everything’s okay. Alongside this, there’s also been AMIC’s “Mining: it’s absolutely essential” campaign. They had done adverts and all the rest of it trying to TV adverts, newspaper adverts, etc.
What I think we can learn from this is that there are these basically hollow organisations made up of well-meaning, but probably naive or desperate scientists and bureaucrats. They do some good work, you could say, at the margins. They’re trying to change the system from within. It’s maybe better than sitting on your ass and complaining or making websites I don’t know. But if social movements had to tackle the Juggernaut, they need to see this as another tactic. But they won’t, because we’re not smart enough to solve the problems that we are causing with our smarts without cutting.
What happened next I think it’s defunct? Website looks, ah, interesting. https://ameef.com.au/
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, October 23rd 1989 Republican Governor of New Jersey Thomas Kean issues an executive order. Yep. it was a broadly bi-partisan issue, until 1990-1991, and the beginning of the organised fight back by the fossil fuel interests…
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 353ppm. As of 2024 it is 422ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that at this stage you could be a Republican and still give a shit about climate change and be seen to be doing something or wanting to do something about it. The culture wars hadn’t really hardened the arteries of the body politic. That’s not to say that what the Republicans were proposing as solutions were going to work. But at least they acknowledged that there was a problem. The fact that that seems like a small mercy or something noteworthy tells you how decayed we are.
What I think we can learn from this is that we knew and that it wasn’t always a culture war.
What happened next remained governor of New Jersey until 1990 and the culture war hardened
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 three years ago, on this day, October 22nd 1991, the Cold Warrior physicist William Nierenberg, in the grip of Relevance Deprivation Syndrome and loving being part of the “George Marshall Institute” which he had co-founded, tells attendees of the World Petroleum Congress in Buenos Aires, Argentina that there will be
no more than 1 degree of warming by the end of 21st century.
See Oreskes and Conway Merchants of Doubt page 189 (they say 1992, but I am fairly sure they’re wrong). See also Bolin 2007, page 72.
[from a chapter of Merchants of Doubt available here].
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 356ppm. As of 2024 it is 422ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the climate denialists were in full throat, trying to dampen enthusiasm for a climate treaty. The negotiations for this were going nowhere, but you never knew. So one way to seem “reasonable” was to say that if there was going to be any warming, it would be very, very mild. Nirenberg had been a lead author on the 1983 report by the National Academies of Science which had come out two days after the Environmental Protection Agency’s report, “Can We Delay a Greenhouse Warming?” The EPA report stands up. Nirenberg et al’s? It has aged like a glass of milk.
Nirenberg was a tool and his prediction of “no more than one degree Celsius of warming by the end of the 21st century” is laughable and contemptible. And as a silly old man, he should have shown a bit of humility.
What I think we can learn from this is that there is such a thing as Relevance Deprivation Syndrome and that those of high status suffer the most from it.
What happened next I think Nirenberg kept being a denialist asshole till he died. Because God forbid that you admit that you were wrong.
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.
See also
WORLD PETROLEUM CONGRESS 1991 Source: Energy Exploration & Exploitation , 1991, Vol. 9, No. 6 (1991), pp. 344-353 Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/43753814
What I think we can learn from this is that by the late 1960s, people in the know were beginning to take note…
What happened nextThe issue was ‘there’ in the lead up to Stockholm, but there was not the hard evidence yet. By the late 1970s, it was obvious to anyone with intellectual integrity that there was a serious problem ahead (but ‘ahead’ might mean another thirty years).
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.
The question is this. Who is the bigger climate criminal – John Howard, Prime Minister of Australia 1996-2007, or Anthony Albanese, same gig from 2022 to ??. It’s not as straightforward as you think.
My answer is below. It’s not clear cut, and I am keen to hear your arguments. In the tweets/replies/comments, etc. Suggested hashtag #HowardOrAlbo
For those to young to remember, and those who have done their best to repress the horror: John Howard did enormous damage to Australia, across a wide range of issues. For these purposes, I’ll stick to climate.
A one paragraph history lesson.
After the shock of the Liberals going to the 1990 Federal election with a stronger emissions reduction target than the ALP, the opponents of meaningful Australian climate action had successfully mobilised in the early 1990s. They prevented any ambitious contribution by Australia to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in 1992. They gutted the Ecologically Sustainable Development process initiated by Bob Hawke, Labor Prime Minister from 1983-1991. They stopped any effective action going into the National Greenhouse Response Strategy (December 1992). In all this they were helped by Labor’s Paul Keating, who rolled Hawke in late 1991. In 1994-5 the opponents of climate action, co-ordinated by the Business Council of Australia and what we now know as the Minerals Council of Australia. They laid the groundwork for Australia to plead for “special treatment” internationally, using farcical economic modelling.
Then John Howard came and dialled it all up not to eleven, but to twelve. He doubled down on the economic modelling, which was all horseshit, literally funded by the oil coal and gas companies. He made promises about renewables in order to buy off the worried Liberals, promises he then did everything to avoid keeping. He arm-twisted and bullshitted his way to an incredibly generous deal at Kyoto (and then pulled out, once his mate George W. Bush had led the way). He did everything he could to slow renewables, including organising a meeting of fossil fuel company CEOs to demand their help (I am not making this up). He twice killed off an Emissions Trading Scheme, the second time – in 2003 – against his united cabinet. On and on and on I could go.
Anthony Albanese is worse.
If we can only send one Prime Minister to the International Court of Justice at the Hague it should be loveable raised-in-social-housing Albo.
Here’s my reasoning.
John Howard has two (weak-ish to laughable) arguments in, ah, “mitigation.”
First – he was born in 1939. He was raised to believe that there were no limits to the Earth’s bounty, and that if there WERE limits, well, technology would fix them (1) . He was 30 when the whole eco-doom thing started, and could say “this is a yoof fad”, even while his party, the Liberal Party, created a Minister for the Environment for the first time. I wrote about this in an academic article called “Wind beneath their contempt: Why Australian policymakers oppose solar and wind energy”(Hudson, 2017). There’s a Conversation article about it here.
Second – in the 1990s, even after the Second Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 1995-6 it was possible – if you really really engaged in a lot of motivated reasoning – to believe that climate change was mostly a greenie scare designed to create a dreaded Superstate of regulation. The commies had lost the Cold War and were starting a war about Heat to have another go.
It was nonsense, of course it was, but we all believe nonsensical things, occasionally. And so what if some temperature records were falling? Australia is a land of extremes… Dorothea McKellar yadda yadda yadda. Yes, there’s a Millennium Drought (pray for rain, said Howard, in April 2007), but Australia has always had droughts. Howard could grasp some flimsy bullshit climate “doubt.” It had no substance, but it was there.
Finally, in his defence, too at least Howard never pretended to give a rat’s arse. At least he had enough respect to be open in his contempt for the black armbands, the green armbands etc.
Albo has none of that.
Albo was born in 1963. He was 9 when The Limits to Growth came out. Questions of environmental damage and danger were just there for him growing up. He was 20 when the Franklin Dam was saved by his beloved Labor Party. He was 25 when Bob Hawke came over all “green,” when Australia was freaking out about the hole in the Ozone and the Greenhouse Effect.
Albo? How many impossible bushfires? How many killer heatwaves and temperature records smashed? How many incinerated animals? A billion? Two? Are you waiting till the number gets to 5 billion, Albo?
What are you planning as your excuse, in ten years, Albo? I’d really like to know. Oh and, btw, that sound you hear? It’s your old boss, Tom Uren, spinning in his grave.
Whatever your excuse is, it won’t fool anyone. Except maybe you? And maybe in the Alboverse that’s all that matters. Top “leadership”, mate.
Meanwhile, Albo has told us how much he cares. Albo has been making a song and dance about how much he cares for two decades.
The Senate Inquiry into the Energy White Paper has concluded the Energy White Paper will delay critical action on climate change for another twenty years [All Our Yesterdays post here]
And the ALP is forever telling the Greens they are irresponsible (2). Because Labor has suuuuch a good record of following through.
On that subject, a quick digression about one of Albo’s enablers.
Health Minister Mark “The Climate Wars” Butler, sat there like a Trappist monk, watching Albo shit over the portfolio that was his “passion”. Mate your silence is heard. People remember your book, all the lovely words. People hear it and draw conclusions about the quantity and the quality of your sincerity and your courage. You think anyone will be impressed when you mumble something about Caucus rules and Party loyalty? How about some loyalty to the community you claim to represent? The city you are supposed to speak for? How about, I don’t know, even some species loyalty? Mene mene tekel upharsin, eh?
So Howard IS a climate criminal. He should be sitting in the dock by the North Sea. But Albo belongs alongside him, and I think in front of him. Albo has no excuses. Not the excuse of outlook, not knowledge. Albo is the guy in the Kudelka cartoon from last weekend.
Basically, this. As per Richard Denniss’s quotetweet
Australia has relied on rorting rules rather than cutting carbon emissions for decades…
Carbon offsets, carbon capture & storage, clean coal…& now nuclear…any magical future solution can be used to justify subsidising fossil fuel expansion in the present
Yep. This is bipartisan. But the chickens are coming home to roost (or are they among the incinerated billions of animals?) And Australia’s “ambition” is utterly inadequate, as per Bill Hare’s May 2024 Conversation article and Carbon ActionTracker work.
[Btw, the disclaimer at the bottom, in reference to Royce Kurmelovs, applies equally to Dennis and Hare.]
But before you go out and save the world, inquiring minds would like to know – in your opinion – Albo or John Howard? Who is the bigger climate criminal?
Further reading
I have focussed on two “personalities.” There is always the danger of a morality tale, ignoring the awesome power of the networks of determined, clever and remorseless individuals and groups that have played and won the game called “capture the state.” The reading below (especially the Royce Kurmelovs’ book, to be spoken of in the same breath as Guy Pearse’s work) should help with that.
Even Tony Abbott , born 1957, kinda sorta has that excuse (though he and his best mate Malcolm Turnbull are the same age)
I am not now, and never have been a member of the Green Party of anywhere. Or any political party. And as for the Greens, I am not always a fan of how they do bread and butter politics. Here and here. And here, I guess.
DISCLAIMER
I helped Royce with bits of research and we continue to collaborate. For clarity, he had no foreknowledge of this article, nothing to do with it. Same goes for two other ppl whose work I drew on – Richard Dennis’s and Bill Hare. Didn’t consult them in this, no idea if they will applaud or be horrified. My views alone.
Two hundred years ago, on this day, October 21st, 1824, Joseph Aspdin got a patent…
By 1817, he had set up in business on his own in central Leeds. He must have experimented with cement manufacture during the next few years, because on 21 October 1824 he was granted the British Patent BP 5022 entitled An Improvement in the Mode of Producing an Artificial Stone, in which he coined the term “Portland cement” by analogy with the Portland stone,[3] an oolitic limestone that is quarried on the channel coast of England, on the Isle of Portland in Dorset. See below for the text of the patent. [Wikipedia]
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 270ishppm. As of 2024 it is 422ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the Industrial Revolution (not called that at the time!) was in full swing, all sorts of wondrous chemical and physics innovations were happening. often led by empiricists, rather than theoreticians because we didn’t even have an atomic theory of matter at that point, or not one that we liked.
Why this matters is that cement has an astonishing carbon footprint. 8% of global emissions? I haven’t had time to track down a source better than CBS. But ballpark,that seems right-ish] And we’re not going to be net zero if we’re still making lots of things out of steel and cement using current techniques. Whether you can muck around with the clinker or you need CCS, who knows? We’ll find out. My money is that climate change will continue to be an unmitigated disaster.
What happened next we went head over heels in love with cement.
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.
A report on the conference ‘Climate and Offshore Energy Resources’, Royal Society, 21–23 October 1980
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 339ppm. As of 2024 it is 422ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the First World Climate Conference had happened in Geneva the previous year, but Bolin was still trying to shepherd stuff around CO2 build up through the scientific collaboration systems, with help from Mustafa Tolba. Bolin of course had been banging on about climate change and CO2 buildup since 1958. And Bolin had been at a 1969 conference at the Royal Society and here he was 10 years later.
What we learn is that we knew, and that Bolin did his best.
What happened next. It was another 8 years before elite politicians had to start paying lip service to “the greenhouse effect.”
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.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 308ppm. As of 2024 it is 422ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius had been dead for four years buthis ideas about CO2 as something building up in the atmosphere that would cause warming was still around. And every so often a newspaper will pick up on it. We’ve had several other examples of that already on All Our Yesterdays for example, here and here, [New York Times and The Oregonian].
What we learn is that good ideas go through rough patches. Bad Ideas can go through noisy patches. Do we get closer approximations of reality? Yeah, I think we do. We split the atom goddamnit. Go us, brainy murder apes!
What happened next It would be another 20 years before Gilbert Plass would make his statements at the American Geophysical Union meeting…
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.
Twenty three years ago, on this day, October 20th, 2001, four years to the day after they’d tried to give him solar panels, Greenpeace nailed John Howard.
Greenpeace noted in an October 20 [2001] media release, “In its ongoing attempt to avoid an agreement that has any legal consequences, Australia has tried to weaken the whole Protocol by substituting the word ‘should’ for the world ‘shall’ throughout the compliance agreement, weakening its legal power. [Compare Paris panic in 2015] Australia also wants to be able [to] play with its figures on forestry and land use, and is trying to get the rules written so it doesn’t even have to say exactly where the forests are.”
Jennifer Morgan from the World Wildlife Fund described Australia as the “leader of the backtrack camp”. The Climate Action Network awarded Australia a “Fossil of the Day” award for trying to gut the compliance regime.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 371ppm. As of 2024 it is 422ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that here we were, a month after 911 and a month before the next Federal Election. John Howard was still being a prick on climate. Of course he was. He was breathing. He had defeated an emissions trading scheme. He had slowed down renewable energy as much as he could. And he’d already kind of promised that he wasn’t going to ratify Kyoto, (though he didn’t make that announcement until June of the following year.)
What we learn is that Greenpeace has been telling the truth to Howard and all of these politicians but you shall know the truth and the truth really shall not set you free. Anyone who tells you that the truth will set you free is either a god-bother, a helpless liberal or hasn’t been paying any attention.
What happened next? Howard won another two elections (2001 and 2004), caused more mayhem and despondency. And the emissions kept climbing. And the coal exports. And the LNG. And the profits accruing to a few companies. And here we are.
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.
