Fifty three years ago, on this day, January 18th, 1972, the Washington Post runs a story, well
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 327ppm. As of 2025 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the Stockholm climate conference was coming. Eeryone was still therefore very aerated about environmental issues, generally.
Plastics were on a kind of similar trajectory as DDT. They’d gone from wondrous scientific, technological gift in the 1950s “Better Living Through Technology” to something regarded as potentially or actually dangerous. And the generational shift here is, of course, captured in the scene from the film The Graduate where Benjamin Braddock’s father’s friend, Mr McGuire,says “One Word. Plastics!”
But here we are with plastic even being found in the blood. It turns out, as per Barry Commoner and his laws of ecology, “there is no ‘away.’”
What I think we can learn from this is that these problems, these dangers, have been with us for two generations or awareness of them, but some of them are simply too hard to solve. DDT could be erased like the CFCs that were depleting the ozone. BUt carbon dioxide could not, and neither could plastics.
What happened next
Plastics continued to be everywhere in every sense. Oceans are full of them. They’re in the clouds, and we have doomed ourselves. So it goes.
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
Xxx
Also on this day:
January 18, 1964 – Nature mentions atmospheric carbon dioxide build-up
January 18, 1993 – Australian unions and greenies launch first “Green Jobs” campaign
January 18, 1993 – Job’s not a good un. “Green Jobs in Industry Plan” achieves … nothing. #auspol