Sixteen years ago, on this day, January 31st, 2009,
From January 31 to February 3, 2009, over 150 community based climate action groups and more than 500 people came together in Canberra to talk, debate, strategise and take action on climate change at Australia’s Climate Action Summit.
http://www.foe.org.au/australias-climate-action-summit
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 385ppm. As of 2025 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that from late 2006 onwards, there had been a great deal of awareness/alarm about climate change and its impacts in Australia and various actions in various places. By late 2008 it was obvious that the Rudd Government was doing a tremendous amount of backsliding and caving in to vested interests.
And so the Climate Action Summit was held in a period where there was a fragile elite consensus that wasn’t really worth a bucket of warm spit, and citizens were trying to do it for themselves.
What I think we can learn from this is that citizens can’t do it for themselves. They have to somehow create irresistible pressure on elected representatives, on states, on bureaucracies. But this is much easier said than actually done.
What happened next
Climate change, oddly, continued to be an open sore, kind of permanently, but especially until the end of 2011 when Julia Gillard managed to get climate legislation through the parliament.
Various climate action summits and efforts at NVDA and efforts at public pressure have continued ever since, and here we are – fubarred.
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:
January 31, 1979 – Alvin Weinberg’s “nukes to fix climate change” speech reported
January 31, 2002 – Antarctic ice shelf “Larsen B” begins to break up.
January 31, 1990 – Environmental Racism – then and now… Guest post by @SakshiAravind