Thirty two years ago, on this day, December 21st, 1992, Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating went to the provinces…
“Adopting clean production methods which minimise waste and pollution and maximise efficient use and recycling of resources is essential to the success of our manufacturing industry. The market is there for cleaner industries and cleaner products. It is also there for environmental management systems and technologies. Australians are developing those things. The drive for environmentally friendly industries and the protection of our natural environment is, in short, part of the economic drive, part of the international competitive drive in which Australia is engaged.” (Paul Keating: Statement on the Environment 21 December 1992)
Also – The Prime Minister, Mr Keating, will announce today the ratification of two international treaties that will extend Federal Government powers over the environment.
Garran, R. 1992. Keating to flag new environmental leap. Australian Financial Review, December.21
And
The Prime Minister’s Environment Statement, released in Adelaide on December 21, last year, was weighted heavily towards water and air quality.
It was noticeable for its lack of any of the most contentious of the pressing environmental problems, such as the setting of firm greenhouse-gas reduction targets; any attempt to implement the recommendations of the ecologically sustainable development working groups; the introduction of effective national endangered species legislation – to name just some.
Toyne, P. 1993. Environment forgotten in the race to the Lodge. Canberra Times, March 8 p. 11.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 357ppm. As of 2024 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that Keating had come to power exactly a year previously. He had inherited an Ecologically Sustainable Development policymaking process, which neither he nor the federal bureaucrats were at all fond of.
Keating had not gone to the Rio Earth Summit, the only one of the OECD leaders not to do so.
The bureaucrats had spent a year shoving it into 17 committees and just generally killing it off (though they were too blatant and caused a bit of a storm…See August 6, 1992 – Australian environmentalists and businesses united… in disgust at Federal bureaucrats)
There had been a National Greenhouse Response Strategy released a couple of weeks before early December
This was him, probably through gritted teeth, having to talk about stupid green issues. And as Toyne said, it was silent on the all-important question of greenhouse targets.
What we learn is that in the same way that in nature, you’ll find the cubs and babies of another father getting unceremonious killed by the new father (and this being genetically the smart thing to do) you’ll find policies – good, bad and indifferent – that were put forward by the previous person, whether they’re in your party or on the opposition party, unceremoniously wiped out and that’s what happened here. Though you can overgeneralise this, it was simply that Keating was in thrall to the neolibs, who had hated and still hated environmentalist issues which they regard as silly green irrelevant externalities and a Trojan horse for SOCIALISM.
In 1994 Keating would chide environmentalists for their focus on the “amorphous” issue of greenhouse gases. https://allouryesterdays.info/2022/08/01/august-2-1994-australian-prime-minister-paul-keating-says-greenies-should-ignore-amorphous-issue-of-greenhouse/
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:
December 21, 1993 – European Union agrees to ratify UNFCCC
December 21, 2005 – US activist William Rodgers commits suicide