Thirty-eight years ago, on this day, October 12th, 1986, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s science discussion show, Ockham’s Razor – soap box for all things scientific, with short talks about research, industry and policy from people with something thoughtful to say- tackled climate change… Yes. 1986.
Ockham’s Razor [Series 86, Episode 101] – The Greenhouse Effect, Part 1 – Cause – Doctor Brian Tucker [CSIRO Division of Atmospheric Research]
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 347ppm. As of 2024 it is 422ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the CSIRO had finally been able to ring the alarm bell about carbon dioxide. And people starting to talk about it, worry about it. And it turned up on the radio. The broader context was that there had been people on ABC radio science shows since 1969, – and conceivably earlier – warning about carbon dioxide buildup. We had Frank Fenner on 16th of September 1969 And we’d had Richie-Calder on the first ever Science Show in 1975.
What we learn is what we always learn – that we knew, we knew, we knew.
What happened next. The Commission for the Future put together the Greenhouse Project with CSIRO. It was effective in raising awareness among policy elites and mass publics in 1988 and 1989. And then they didn’t get further funding.
And as per the Rosaleen Love’s article in Arena, it all just went away because we can’t stare into the abyss for very long…
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.
Five years ago today (October 11 2019), the rules were amended – as they so often are – to allow for a new wheeze…
In 2019, Contracting Parties to the London Protocol adopted a resolution (LP.5(14)) to allow provisional application of an amendment to Article 6 of the Protocol to allow export of CO2 for storage in sub-seabed geological formations. Two or more countries can therefore agree to export CO2 for geological storage. To do so they must deposit a formal declaration of provisional application with the Secretary-General of IMO, and also notify IMO of any agreements and arrangements for permitting and responsibilities between the Parties, following the existing guidance. https://www.imo.org/en/OurWork/Environment/Pages/CCS-Default.aspx#:~:text=In%202019%2C%20Contracting%20Parties%20to,CO2%20for%20geological%20storage.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 411ppm. As of 2024 it is 422ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that CCS was becoming important for the rhetoric of mitigation, but there were various legal barriers. This helped remove one of them.
What we learn is that who is gonna let laws get in the way?
What happened next. The CCS bandwagon keeps trundling on. Too important to powerful actors not to.
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.
References
Wettestad et al 2023. ESG on Norway and Mongstad to Longship
On October 11, 2016, five brave climate activists, determined to act commensurately with the truth of unfolding climate cataclysm, closed safety valves on the 5 pipelines carrying tar sands crude oil into the United States. This is their story.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 404ppm. As of 2024 it is 422ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was Canadian and US companies were extracting huge amounts of oil from tar sands; the filthiest kind of oil you can imagine. The getting of it is especially destructive. So what do we do? We try to take nonviolent direct action and throw ourselves on the mercy of the courts. But the beast, the machine, the Juggernaut continues and the emissions climb.
What do we learn that there’s a juggernaut, and it’s hungry.
What happened next? From Wikipedia
All five participants planned to use the necessity defence to draw attention to their cause and justify their actions,[6] though three were not permitted to do so.[7] The judge presiding over the Johnston & Klapstein trial, Robert Tiffany, initially ruled that they could mount the necessity defense.[8] However, he then reversed his decision, prohibiting expert testimony that would establish the argument for necessity,[9] before dismissing the case before the defendants could present its necessity defense.[10] Klapstein said she was happy the charges were dismissed, but “at the same time, we were indeed disappointed not to be able to present this to the jury. We were hoping to educate the jury and the classroom of greater public opinion on the dire issues of climate change”.[9] Foster, Higgins, and Ward were prohibited by the judges overseeing their cases from mounting the necessity defense.[11]
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 10th, 1991, on the one year anniversary of Australia setting an ambitious greenhouse gas reduction target…
MELBOURNE: Accusing the Prime Minister, Bob Hawke, of a “gross betrayal”, major conservation groups united yesterday to condemn the Federal Government’s proposed resource-security legislation.
The executive director of the Australian Conservation Foundation, Phillip Toyne, said Mr Hawke was going ahead with the legislation despite a commitment last year that he would not.
He said the Prime Minister had made the pledge to himself and environmentalist-musician Peter Garrett, during a meeting between the three.
“He told us there would be no resource-security legislation. It was an unambiguous exchange of views and the intent was clear,” Mr Toyne said.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 355ppm. As of 2024 it is 422ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the Ecologically Sustainable Development process was clearly being gutted. And Hawke was not defending it. It was a long time since the heady days of 1989, 1990 when people were voting green. Hawke had other things on his mind, such as a potential challenge from Paul Keating, and also the new Liberal leader, John Hewson with his so-called Fightback! neoliberal policy. So the green issues could go jump, basically.
What we learn is that for everything there is a season and seasons for environmental concern, rarely seem to last more than a year or two. And then the pull of greed and “must keep the economy bubbling along” comes back stronger than ever. And so it came to pass.
What happened next two months later, Hawke was gone. Paul Keating successfully challenged: he was not a fan of environmental issues. And especially the so-called amorphous greenhouse issue. And it’s fun when you read his memoirs or biographies, it just doesn’t crop up. It’s just staggeringly absent.
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.
Three posts today about something that happened on Monday 9th October 2006
Australian scientists and charities produced a report “Australia Responds: Helping Our Neighbours Fight Climate Change” – see this blog post
The Australian Labor Party piggy-backed its own statement about climate refugees – see this blog post
Therefore someone born on that day in the South Pacific would be turning 18. Happy Birthday (a letter to them here)
The only thing left to talk about, imo, is what is to be done now, by people of good intentions and determination?
I offer – for what it is worth, a few suggestions about what white middle-class people like me, with training and education, might usefully do. I am happy to be told I am wrong, but please be specific. I am happy to be told what I have missed – as per the organisations, I will add advice.
Then I link to organisations working on this stuff. I have no idea if they’re any good. The list is NOT exhaustive. If you know of other good organisations, please share and I will add them.
What is to be done
Educate yourselves and others about climate change – not the science (bare bones is enough there) but the politics, the techniques used by those who want to slow or stop action, the pathologies that affect social movements and civil society in their (so-far not all that impressive) efforts to make states and corporations be less ecocidal. Or do the ecocide slower.
One resource (I don’t do false modesty – is the AOY site. It’s ramshackle, under-signposted but not actually THAT hard to use. There’s a search box.
Another resource (I don’t do false modesty; it’s a passive-aggressive extortion bid for attention and reassurance) is ME. I am MORE than happy to come on podcasts, do workshops etc. I am, on my day, a good communicator and also designer/executor of formats that are genuinely participatory and energising. Hit me up
You need to know about – the history (at least a little) of Australia’s international criminality on climate change, which is ABSOLUTELY 100% bipartisan. There is net zero significant different between LNP and ALP on this.
Take sustained action. Sorry, but that means being involved, at least a little bit, in a group.
Groups suck. They are riven with (usually undeclared) turf wars, brittle egos, dysfunction etc. They waste time on pointless meetings
But if you try to do stuff on your own you will be a) less effective and b) very likely shorter-lived in your efforts.
Groups suck. But suck it up…
Try to be a less-terrible ally.
People of colour, poor people etc have got far more immediate (and, gasp) important things to be doing than helping well-meaning white people be less-terrible allies. It’s exhausting emotionally, it means they have less time for the stuff they need to do.
There already exist LOADS of resources for white people to get stuck into. Here’s a brief. Please suggest additions. Please USE these resources. Please step into discomfort (together) and stay there.
Liu, Helena. “White allyship.” In Redeeming Leadership, pp. 141-156. Bristol University Press, 2020
If you have academic training and access to resources, do two things
First, share the skills you have – research, writing, etc – with people who want to take on those tasks. Don’t be a chokepoint, for your own particular needs
Secondly, expose lies and tell the truth. Study the rich. There is so much to be done, so few doing it.
Organisations
[NB This is from a google search. If someone else who actually knows first-hand has made a better list, I will take this down and point to their work]
This workshop will explore how we can build solidarity with climate impacted and marginalized communities, by understanding the ways that systems of oppression impact our activism, everyday lives and those of our communities.
On Saturday 6th (well, Sunday 7th am Australia time) I was uploading already written and proofed blog posts to the website. I had enough attention left in me to realise that at least a year ago I had fouled up my database, and the upcoming post for “October 9” was utterly invalid. To see if I could easily Close The Gap,I went to my SHED (Secret Huge Eco Database) to see what I had for that date.
I found something old that I knew about but had never really understood its implications. Or maybe, to be extra-fair to myself – the implications weren’t apparent when I entered it.
This has led to, shall we say “a flurry of activity.”
On Monday October 9, 2006, a group of Australian charities and pressure groups, who’d been working with the CSIRO, released a report “Australia Responds: Helping Our Neighbours Fight Climate Change.” (download here if you like).
“
It called for lots of sensible things, including
Increase Australia’s overseas development assistance (ODA) in line with most other developed nations to 0.5% of GNI by 2009 10, and 0.7% by 2015.
Review Australia’s immigration program in light of the expected impacts of climate change. This review should consider mechanisms to support people displaced by climate change within the region. • Make a strong commitment to support disaster risk reduction, mitigation and preparedness measures within the ODA program.
Adopt a national framework for reducing Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions by at least 60% of 1990 levels by 2050, with an implementation timetable that will provide a 20% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 382ppm. As of 2024 it is 422ppm, but check here for daily measures.
By the way, something else really important happened on the same day – Anthony Albanese made a statement on how Australia needed to take climate refugees.
You can also read my Open Letter to a Tuvaluan turning 18.
And here is a fourth post (no, nobody has ever told me to shut my damn mouth – why do you ask) tying it together and suggesting some answers to the only question that matters “What is to be done?” It also has links to various organisations trying to help.
The context was the Australian government under Bob Hawke had made noises about accepting climate refugees. Keating ignored the whole issue, and under him the “fuck the world, we’re gonna sell soooo much coal bwahahahaha” strategy got moving. John Howard dialed it up to eleven. Then 12. John Howard belongs in one particular place close to sea-level. That place is The Hague.
From Labour’s “Our Drowning Neighbours” discussion paper
What we learn is that
NGOs can get scientists on board, and work their guts out and it will be a one-day wonder. A political party (especially in Opposition) will piggyback on the work. And the media will very very quickly lose interest, for a variety of structural reasons.
And so it came to pass.
What happened next
The report generated a certain amount of attention.
The low lying nation of Kiribati is just one of our Pacific neighbours facing the real day to day effects of climate change.
Rising sea levels, huge tides and unpredictable winds are already a part of life there. So what do you do when climate change is literally on your doorstep?
Anyway, then the caravan moved on. Peter Garrett, the next climate spokesman after Anthony Albanese, name-checked it in February 2007 at Labor’s little shindig at Parliament House.
But the whole question of accepting climate refugees in the future became, well, somewhat awkward under Julia Gillard. Then along came Tony “Stop the Boats” Abbott and that’s all she wrote.
What happened nextmore generally.
The NGOs kept NGOing.
Meanwhile
The coal exports kept rising.
This had consequences.
The bank balances of Very Important People kept rising.
The donations – official and unofficial – to parties and individuals – kept rising.
Which was all great, obviously , and far more important than the fact that
The emissions kept rising.
The atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide kept rising.
The seas kept rising.
The whole language of “climate refugees” became a bit awks for the Gillard Government, so was shelved. Everyone moved on.
But the issue did not go away, and then – in November 2023…
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.
Eighteen years ago, on Monday October 9, 2006, the climate spokesman of the Australian Labor Party (then in opposition, and positioning itself to attack Prime Minister John Howard ahead of an election due soon-ish) released a statement with the snappy title
“Labor calls for International Coalition to Accept Climate Change Refugees”
It begins
“It’s in Australia’s national interest that we lead on climate change, not wait decades to act.
While the Minister for Environment accepts Australia “does have a substantial role to play in helping smaller, less-developed countries” that will be devastated by rising sea levels, he fails to show leadership. The Howard Government does not have a strategy to combat climate change and its impact on Pacific countries.”
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 382ppm. As of 2024 it is 422ppm, but check here for daily measures.
You should be able to view it on Anthony Albanese’s very own website. It was there as of 0530 Australian Time. If it is no longer there, for some inexplicable reason, well, you can see screenshots and the text are at the foot of this post – Just Scroll On. I’ve even added some hyperlinks and footnotes [in square brackets].
By the way, something else really important happened on the same day – a coalition of human rights and development organisations released a report called “Australia Responds: Helping Our Neighbours Fight Climate Change”. Here’s a post about that.
And here is a fourth post (no, nobody has ever told me to shut my damn mouth – why do you ask) tying it together and suggesting some answers to the only question that matters “What is to be done in solidarity?” It also has links to various organisations trying to help.
The context was that in the late 1980s the Hawke government (Labor, for the younger readers who may not know) was trying to both Care About “The Greenhouse Effect” and also flog a lot more coal (e.g. January 30, 1989). In August 1988 two academics had flagged the possibility of climate refugees and Australia’s responsibilities, at a conference in Sydney. At the July 1989, at the 20th South Pacific Forum, well look at what the Australian Financial Reviewreported
“Both Australia and New Zealand indicated that they and the rest of the world would undoubtably be prepared to take humanitarian action in moving people driven out by rising waters” reported Steve Burrell in an article titled “ENVIRONMENT DOMINATES FORUM” from Tarawa, Kiribati, The Australian Financial Review, 12 July 1989.
The same year English science communicator James Burke had produced a show – shown in Australia called After the Warming. It is – spoiler – about the future of a warming world, in which he included a scenario about climate refugees getting machine-gunned. Watch it on Youtube here. (1)
Then, in late 1991 Hawke lost a Labor Party room spill (there’d been one earlier in the year). The next Australian Prime Minister, Paul Keating, killed the “greenie nonsense.” A carbon tax was proposed and defeated by big business (1994-5) and then vacuous “voluntary action” was proposed. The Liberal Government of John Howard had been in power from March 1996 and had dialled Keating’s climate vandalism up to 11. And then to 12. By 2006 the Australians were still alongside the USA as the public face of the Venus Lobby, but Labor were beginning to use climate as one of the sticks to beat Howard with.
What we learn is that
Labor in opposition were shameless attention hounds, willing to piggie-back on other people’s intellectual and political work (then again, ‘the game’s the game’).
Labor in opposition were willing to make all sorts of lovely sounding (vague-ish) promises and enough civil society organisations either roll over and squee with delight, or refuse to get their shit together to say “yeah, honey, you don’t make that happen, there’s gonna be serious trouble.”
More generally
Political parties like to be parasites on civil society. They like to take what they want (in this case a chance to get more news for their guff) and don’t really care about the consequences for the wider ecosystem, if they can even see it (mostly they can’t).
For political parties civil society is at best a place to get authenticity, credibility and competent/ambitious personnel from especially when in opposition or facing a new challenge they can’t trot out the usual bullshit with confidence and without reputational risk.
For political parties civil society is at worst (and therefore usually) a bunch of clever and determined people who are agitated and agitating about how, now that you are in government you are not in fact keeping any of the nice (vague) promises you made when in opposition. Poach the smartest, install your own meatpuppets, defund and deride is the main way of dealing with them, alongside some patronising guff about “politics is the art of the possible, you have to govern from the centre” and all the other excuses. Make sure you keep big business sweet, because when pitchfork season comes (and it does, periodically), they are the guys who might send the helicopter to get you out of the palace.
If only somebody had written a short perfect book that ended with this
“The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again: but already it was impossible to say which was which.”
What happened next
Then Labor leader Kim Beazley got knifed by Kevin “I’m from Queensland, I’m here to help” Rudd about six weeks later [Wikipedia]. The shadow climate portfolio went to Peter “in the end the rain comes down” Garrett, who name-checked the “Australia Responds” report (see next post) in February 2007 and then turned his attention to helping funnel enormous sums of taxpayer money to a real climate response, namely Carbon Capture and Storage.
Happy times.
Albo took on other jobs over the years. I don’t quite recall where he is these days, but wherever it is, I am sure he is working day and night to turn the fine words of 2006 into real policy. Oh yes. BUT, in the interests of fairness, alongside all his sterling work to expand coalmines, there was, in fact, in November 2023, an agreement to offer Tuvaluans (280 a year) visas to study and/or work in Australia.
Journalist James Burke reports from the year 2050, where humans and the Earth have survived global warming. Using an innovative device called the “Virtual Reality Generator,” a computer effect that projects different environments on a location, Burke shows various scenarios of global warming and illustrates the potential effects of today’s actions. Burke also addresses the impact of climate change on historical events (and vice versa).
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 in Australia’s national interest that we lead on climate change, not wait decades to act. [AOY1]
While the Minister for Environment [2] accepts Australia “does have a substantial role to play in helping smaller, less-developed countries” that will be devastated by rising sea levels, he fails to show leadership. The Howard Government does not have a strategy to combat climate change and its impact on Pacific countries.
On today’s AM program [3], Senator Campbell’s limp response was to put off action: “The major impacts, the long-term impacts, of climate change will take many decades to unfold.”
Pacific countries need a plan now, not when they are already under water. [4]
Tuvalu is expected to become uninhabitable within 10 years because of rising sea levels, not in “many decades” as the Minister said. [5]
Pacific countries are increasingly vulnerable to extreme weather events, including contamination of their fresh water supplies.
Labor supports the Kyoto Protocol [6] and has a comprehensive plan to assist Pacific countries threatened by climate change.
Labor’s policy discussion paper, Our Drowning Neighbours, advocates the establishment of an international coalition, led by Australia, to accept climate change refugees from Pacific countries.
The paper recommends the establishment of a Pacific Climate Change Centre to monitor climate change, protect fresh water sources and plan for emergency evacuation where necessary.
Labor welcomes the release of today’s report, Australia Responds: Helping Our Neighbours Fight Climate Change, by a coalition of groups including Oxfam and World Vision.
The report reinforces Labor’s call for urgent action to reduce greenhouse emissions and highlights the need for climate change to also be addressed through the aid budget.
All Our Yesterdays footnotes, from October 2024
[1] Yes, the national interest. Which seems to be always identical to the short-term needs of the fossil fuel industry and its mates, no matter which political party is pretending to hold the reins of power. Not to rain on anyone’s parade (btw, in the end the rain comes down, obliterates the streets of the Blue Sky Town. Just sayin’]
[2] The hapless Senator Campbell. Clive Hamilton is spectacularly rude about him in Scorcher, a book worth reading. Howard replaced Campbell with some guy called Malcolm Turnbull. Turnbull urged Honest John to ratify Kyoto (no dice). Turnbull went on to a storied career as a fearless, skilful and highly successful policy entrepreneur on climate, outmanoeuvring the forces of darkness and saving both Australia’s reputation and its physical safety.
[3] Ah, the ABC. Bless. This suggests, btw, that the press release might well have been a brainfart on the day – an ambitious policy wonk suggesting an anodyne statement hooked onto the Australia Responds report would be enough to get some headlines, and punch the bruise that was Howard’s climate dilemma. I could probably find out, maybe. But the game would not be worth the candle.
[4] Thank goodness Albo has worked tirelessly these last 18 years to turn that banal exhortation into shiny reality. (ahahahaha- which stands for All Hail Albanese All Hail Albanese)
[5] Really? And the scientific basis for this headline grabbing claim is? Is? It’s almost as if the ALP doesn’t care about either science or the credibility of environmentalism, if there is a momentary advantage to be had.
This paper investigates how the Kyoto Protocol has framed political discourse and policy development of greenhouse gas mitigation in Australia. We argue that ‘Kyoto’ has created a veil over the climate issue in Australia in a number of ways. Firstly, its symbolic power has distracted attention from actual environmental outcomes while its accounting rules obscure the real level of carbon emissions and structural trends at the nation-state level. Secondly, a public policy tendency to commit to far off emission targets as a compromise to implementing legislation in the short term has also emerged on the back of Kyoto-style targets. Thirdly, Kyoto’s international flexibility mechanisms can lead to the diversion of mitigation investment away from the nation-state implementing carbon legislation. A final concern of the Kyoto approach is how it has shifted focus away from Australia as the world’s largest coal exporter towards China, its primary customer. While we recognise the crucial role aspirational targets and timetables play in capturing the imagination and coordinating action across nations, our central theme is that ‘Kyoto’ has overshadowed the implementation of other policies in Australia. Understanding how ‘Kyoto’ has framed debate and policy is thus crucial to promoting environmentally effective mitigation measures as nation-states move forward from COP15 in Copenhagen to forge a post-Kyoto international agreement. Recent elections in 2009 in Japan and America and developments at COP15 suggest positive scope for international action on climate change. However, the lesson from the 2007 election and subsequent events in Australia is a caution against elevating the symbolism of ‘Kyoto-style’ targets and timetables above the need for implementation of mitigation policies at the nation-state level.
In English? It’s all make-believe. It’s all kayfabe.
I hope your 18th birthday is a day of happiness for you (1) with your family, friends and wider community.
Birthdays are celebrations, time for reflection and thinking about the future. There was a time when that was mostly in the context of a person’s own circumstances, and that of their family. Over the last generation – since before you were born – birthdays (and of course every day) happen with the dreadful knowledge of climate change.
I am not going to explain to someone living in the South Pacific what that means.
For the people where I live, sea level rise is an abstract thing. They think – if they think of it at all – as lines on a graph. For people where I live, storms that flatten towns and islands are something they see in Hollywood disaster movies or, lately, on television news programs.
Nor am I not going to whitesplain colonialism, extractivism or the ways your life is hemmed in by rich people and their corporations who want to get richer.
I am not going to lecture you about white people who claim to have your best interests at heart, Through The Power Of The Free Markets or under some other banners. You know all about these types of people, their words and the value of those words from your own life, from the hard-won wisdom of your parents and your elders.
All I have got for you is the following.
The day you were born, Monday October 9th, 2006, Australian charities and scientists were trying to get Australian politicians to give a damn about the problems climate change was already causing for your parents, and the ever-greater threat it would pose to you as you grew from child to adult.
Australian politicians either ignored this report, or used it as a step up for their own hollow ambition.
If I could see you, I suspect I would see a raised eyebrow and a quiet smile. “You expect surprise? Shock?”
When I was turning 18, the newspapers and television (this was before the Internet, long before social media) were full of “The Greenhouse Effect,” as we called climate change back then.
So my first advice’ – let no-one tell you that somehow they didn’t know.
If you will allow a second, final piece of advice. It is natural for a young person on the cusp of adulthood to be deeply frustrated with the world they have inherited, that those older have not sorted out the big problems. On climate, please do not blame your parents. Or your grandparents. The people of the South Pacific have been raising their voices for decades, pleading with the rich countries to act, explaining that the peril facing the South Pacific would grow and grow, and devour everything.
That they were basically ignored is not the fault of the speakers, but those too greedy, arrogant and stupid to listen. The problem is not to be found in Kiribati, or Tuvalu or anywhere near you. The problem is in New York, Manchester, Canberra, Adelaide, Auckland, Berlin. And elsewhere. But I am not here, in this letter, for geopolitics.
For my part, I will continue my inadequate efforts. I will try to be an ally. I will fail repeatedly, of course. But people like me – with privilege, education, water coming out of my tap and food in my belly – have far more to do than we have been doing, if we want to be able to look you – and any children you have – in the eye.
Finally, I hope, despite the knowledge of what is coming (some of it is already here, but so much more is to come), that your celebrations are full of joy. And at some point, of course, thanks to the November 2023 agreement, welcome to Australia.
Footnote
By the way, you are both a tired rhetorical device, but at the same time, you are flesh and blood; dozens and dozens of real human beings, with names, hopes, families, endangered homes, becoming an “adult” (or turning 18 – perhaps that does not have the same cultural or legal weight where you live) across the South Pacific.
Nigel Calder’s article in New Scientist on 8 Oct 1964 (at the time of the 1964 general election). Calder’s article expressed dissatisfaction with the similar policies offered by the two main parties, and called for the creation of two very different political parties, X and Y. This seminal article basically espoused two different visions of the future: ‘Party X’ technocratic, ‘Party Y’ ‘ecological’. What is interesting about Calder’ s vision is how much of the vision for ‘Party Y’ was to become part of the early 1970s environmental message.
(Herring, 2001)
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 320ppm. As of 2024 it is 422ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that awareness of environmental problems was growing. Whether it was Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, or the Buchanan report about traffic in cities. And it was clear that there were unmet political needs because both main parties were all about economic growth. And the proposal for a technocrat party and an ecological party as we would never call them was a sensible one. But there are simply too many cross cutting needs and myths. These are not the official lines as people see them, because people think they can have their cake and eat it. And for a certain amount of time you can, but eventually, you look down and you have an empty plate and a face full of food. You no longer have your cake.
What we learn is that these debates about technology “versus” ecology whatever, they go back. Well, they go back earlier than 1964. But they were expressed plainly in New Scientist in 1964.
What happened next? The article was, I’m told, influential in some circles, largely ignored more broadly.
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.
Sixty-six years ago today (October 8th, 1958) British meteorologist Gordon Manley wrote to his friend, steam engineer Guy Callendar, who had – for the past twenty-plus years had been banging on about carbon dioxide building up in the atmosphere as a (or even the) factor affecting the climate.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 315ppm. As of 2024 it is 422ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the International Geophysical Year was happening. More people were coming on board with the carbon dioxide theory, Gilbert Plass, GER Deakin, Appleton, etc. And Manley was congratulating Guy Callendar bless.
What we learn is that Guy Callendar was getting a little bit of recognition and was getting published still in journals like Tellus and so forth. But he wasn’t being carried through the streets on people’s shoulders, as perhaps he should have been. Such is the nature of humanity when the wrong person making the announcement, if you’re Miss Triggs.
What we learn is that you can be right and not get the credit you deserve. That’s one of the oldest stories in the book.
What happened next Callendar had a couple of more really astute observations in him about, for example, why theories aren’t popular, and so forth. And he died in 1964, 37 years to the day after Svante Arrhenius died.
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.
References
CP 1, Gordon Manley to Callendar, 8 October 1958, cited in Fleming, 2007
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