Twenty-nine years ago, on this day, November 13th, 1995,
Asked yesterday [13 November] for an update on Australia’s domestic performance, Dr Hamilton told the Herald that he still could not identify any savings. “I’d like to be able to,” he said.
Dr Hamilton said a major reason for the Government’s failure was that the advice from the bureaucracy was “very skewed” and came from sections that shared a world view with the coal, oil and gas industry.
Gilchrist, G. 1995. Greenhouse Gas Policy Has Failed. Sydney Morning Herald, 14 November, p.4.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 361ppm. As of 2024 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that there had been a battle over whether to have a carbon tax. The carbon tax had been defeated in February and the consolation prize, the booby prize, was the Greenhouse Challenge, entirely voluntary, self-reporting… all that nonsense, no punishment for failing to hit targets. You know the drill. And this made it entirely obvious that the Toronto target for reducing emissions by 20% by 2005 was no longer even worth pretending about.
What we learned is that unless you can keep the pressure on the politicians, they will pretend they never made those promises. And then, when it’s no longer possible to meet those promises, they’ll say, “Well, we must be pragmatic.” You know the rest. “I’m not here to pick over yesterday’s failings. I’m not stuck in the past. I’m looking to the future.” They are taught this in “Being Corrupt Spineless Dickheads 101.”
What happened next, the Greenhouse Challenge kept being used to soothe enough of the people who needed soothing. Not all of them by any means but enough. It was replaced by a Greenhouse Challenge Plus, which must be hard to keep a straight face to. And then, alongside this, emissions trading schemes were proposed and defeated. And the emissions kept rising.
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:
November 13, 1963 – Ritchie Calder warns of trouble ahead because of carbon dioxide…
November 13, 1975 – climate testimony to House of Reps committee