Fifty five years ago, on this day, March 1st, 1970,
In 1970, New Republic was moved to describe the American environmental movement as “the biggest assortment of ill-matched allies since the Crusades- young and old, radicals of left and right. Liberals and conservatives, humanists and scientists, atheists and deists.” In his study of American environmentalism, Joseph Petulla identifies three main traditions: the biocentric (nature for and in itself), the ecologic (based on scientific understanding of interrelationships and interdependence among the parts of natural communities), and the economic (the optimal use of natural resources, otherwise described as the utilitarian approach to conservation).
(McCormick, 1991:ix)
New Republic 1 March, 1970, 8-9.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 325ppm. As of 2025 it is 427ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that at the beginning of 1969 the Santa Barbara OilSpill and the publication of the Earthrise photo got people thinking about degradation and destruction of the planet. And folks who were fed up with or not into protesting about the Vietnam War and getting their heads pummeled now had a different issue. But as the quote above suggests, everyone was “talking about it”, and that surely meant that a coalition or “alliance” or coalitions and alliances wouldn’t hold. People’s pre-existing cognitive perspectives and material interests would reassert themselves.
And so it came to pass within three years, especially after the 1972 Stockholm conference and the creation of various institutions like the EPA, the “broad support” had evaporated like morning mist.
What I think we can learn from this is that everyone can agree that “something must be done”, fewer on what that something is. And fewer still will take the action to try and make it happen. Others will be content with this or that shiny bauble to make themselves feel good..
What happened next
The first big eco wave had crashed along on the rocks of oil, energy, exhaustion, etc, by 1973.
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 this day, February 28th, 2007,
2007 Nine Facts about Climate Change Ray Evans [Originally published in November 2006 as a PDF (click here, 1.5 Mb). Launched in Canberra by Sir Arvi Parbo on 28 February 2007]
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 384ppm. As of 2025 it is 427ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the Lavoisier Group had been banging on since 2000 to the partial embarrassment of would-be allies. Now that climate was so steadily back on the agenda, the old war horses like Ray Evans were saddling up for another battle, possibly one last battle.
And the date, of course, is to coincide with a Labor Party summit in Parliament House where Kevin Rudd would talk about “the great moral challenge of our generation.”
What’s interesting about this one is that senior business figure Avi Parbo, by this time fairly ancient and a major figure in 15 years earlier in seducing Hawke’s Labor Party was lending his name to this tosh. RDS?
What I think we can learn from this is that for every action, there is an equal and spittle-flecked reaction, maybe not equal, but there’ll be one, because denialists want to provide sympathetic journalists with an opportunity to do a “yes, but” story.
What happened next
Evans kept pushing his nonsense faded and died in I think about 2014. But denialism did not die, and never will.
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.
The governments of the United States and Australia today announced an agreement to establish a Climate Action Partnership. The agreement was reached following meetings on climate change held in Washington this week between Dr. David Kemp, Australian Minister for the Environment and Heritage, and several senior members of the U.S. Administration, including: EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman, Chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality James Connaughton, Deputy Secretary of Energy Francis Blake, and Under Secretary of State for Global Affairs Paula Dobriansky.
The U.S.-Australia Climate Action Partnership will involve the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Department of Commerce, the U.S. Department of Energy, and the U.S. Department of State and their Australian counterparts.
The initial meeting will be coordinated by Under Secretary of State Dobriansky and Dr. Kemp.
The partnership will focus on practical approaches toward dealing with climate change.
Informal working groups will involve officials, under senior-level leadership, from the Departments of Commerce, Energy and State and the Environmental Protection Agency, and their Australian counterpart agencies, as well as research bodies and industry. They will focus on such issues as emissions measurement and accounting, climate change science, stationary energy technologies, engagement with business to create economically efficient climate change solutions, agriculture and land management and collaboration with developing countries to build capacity to deal with climate change. Released on February 27, 2002
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 373ppm. As of 2025 it is 426ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that George W. Bush had already pulled the US out of negotiations around the Kyoto Protocol. Everyone assumed that Howard, sooner or later, would announce that Australia was going to follow this because of the 1997 leak (LINK). and also Howard wanting to remain in total lockstep with the Americans, especially after September 11. But more generally, Australia has always been a 51st state or colony since 1942.
If you’re not going to ratify Kyoto, then you need something else to soothe potentially worried voters. The most obvious something else is “tchnology will save the day.” It’s a brilliant narrative because it goes with the grain of technophilia, and because you can dismiss opponents of it as Luddites.
Here we see the Federal Environment Minister, David Kemp, who’s replaced Robert Hill, at the US Embassy, wittering about technology.
What I think we can learn from this: There’s no bullshit so humiliating that greasy pole climbers in vassal states won’t eat it up and ask for seconds.
What happened next
These various “Technology Partnerships” took up a lot of bandwidth and achieved nothing, And the emissions kept climbing
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.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 384ppm. As of 2025 it is 426ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that in sort of September, 2006 the climate issue had burst back on to the Australian political agenda thanks to the Millennium drought, Al Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth, the Stern Review, etc, There had been a massive “walk against warming”, and the question over as well, what was going to replace the Kyoto Protocol, and would Australia be in it?
By now Kevin Rudd had seized control of the Australian Labor Party from Kim Beasley, and was using climate as one of the sticks to beat John Howard with. So climate was extremely salient, and of course Four Corners, which is the ABCs flagship current affairs program had already tackled climate repeatedly in the 90s. In early 2006 it had broken the story about the “greenhouse mafia.”
What I think we can learn from this is that when you’re on the upswing of an issue attention cycle iI feeds on itself. It’s easy to write more stories. The public’s appetite for more stories has not been sated
What happened next is that climate stayed high on the political agenda for a surprisingly long time. This was because no solution was successfully implemented. Then the minority government of Julia Gillard, between 2010 and 2013 needed to push through carbon pricing legislation (this was exceptionally bloody).
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.
Twenty two years ago, on this day, February 25th, 2003,
In an attachment to a cabinet memorandum dated 25 February 2003, Treasury warned that “the current approach to domestic emissions mitigation is not a sustainable long term approach, with its heavy reliance on spending programs, prescriptive regulation and ‘picking winners’”.
Treasury said this would come “at a very high economic cost” whereas any credible long-term climate change strategy must involve shifting the bulk of the responsibility to emitters.
It said a broad-based market mechanism, such as an ETS, had the benefit of “inducing a least-cost path to reducing emissions and best positioning the economy to respond to future developments” https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/jan/01/liberal-coalition-cabinet-papers-emissions-
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 376ppm. As of 2025 it is 427ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that in June, 2002 John Howard had said that he would not be putting Australia’s membership of participation in the Kyoto Protocol forward for ratification,e. Australia would be outside.
But the climate issue was still live, with the Millennium drought ongoing and various attempts to sensitize people. There had been an attempt to get an emissions trading scheme through Howard’s cabinet, in August of 2000. That had been defeated thanks to Nick Minchin as the front person. And at this point, I suspect it was fairly clear that there was going to be another attempt at putting an ETS through. Treasury was simply saying what was obvious .
What I think we can learn from this is that there really was, among people who work on the economy, not a lot of debate about the need for some sort of price on carbon. That’s what you do. You raise the price of things that are causing harm, and hopefully you use the money to research things that will cause less harm. That’s the theory anyway.
What happened next Howard would literally, single-handedly killed off the emissions trading scheme later, in 2003. The emissions kept climbing, and we are absolutely toast.
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.
Climate scientist Professor Kevin Anderson has said that the much-vaunted Climate Change Committee has “systematically undermined the 2008 Climate Change Act – an Act that, in my view, was far ahead of its time.”
“It is not an independent committee. It was set up by government to give advice to government, and it is paid by government. Nothing in that implies independence. Through private discussion with a very senior CCC member, I was left in no doubt that the CCC chooses to push government as hard as they think government is prepared to be pushed – and that any harder, and their advice will be ignored and the Committee sidelined.”
The interview covered a range of topics, and is being released in installments. Part one, on the physical impacts we can expect is here. Part two, on “Team Mann vs Team Hansen” and the speed of recent warming is here. Part three on Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ support for a third runway at Heathrow, aviation in general and the quality of advice being offered is here. The interview was conducted by Dr Marc Hudson, who has interviewed Professor Anderson on several occasions over the past 15 years. Dr Hudson runs All Our Yesterdays, an “on this day” website about climate politics, technology, protest that covered events from 1661 to the present day.
The transcript of the relevant portion of the interview can be found below.
You are free (and of course encouraged) to use this material for commercial or non-commercial purposes. Please cite both the source (i.e. that the interview was conducted by Marc Hudson, and the URL of this page
I think it’s a very alternate universe when you get the gig [as Ed Miliband’s SPAD] over Chris Stark. So what will Chris Stark say, or has he said, and he should be saying what you’ve just said. So, what’s going on there? How come the politicians are not even getting the sort of scientific advice that they should? And this leads into your and my concern about the cognitive, intellectual corruption of academia, which, with a few honorable exceptions, has “not covered itself in glory.” To throw in as many cliches as I could.
Kevin Anderson 20:15
Well, obviously, Chris Stark was previously the CEO of the Government’s Climate Change, Committee. But he’s now gone on to become Ed Miliband’s advisor on climate change issues, particularly on decarbonising power.
My problem with the Climate Change Committee is that it has systematically undermined the 2008 Climate Change Act – an Act that, in my view, was far ahead of its time. This would have been much less an issue if the academic and expert community had not run scared of countering the CCC’s preference for what they deemed to be politically acceptable rather than what is scientifically necessary to deliver on our climate commitments.
The CCC is not an independent committee. It was set up by government to give advice to government, and it is paid by government. Nothing in that implies independence. Through private discussion with a very senior CCC member, I was left in no doubt that the CCC chooses to push government as hard as they think government is prepared to be pushed – and that any harder, and their advice will be ignored and the Committee sidelined.
I see that as a perfectly reasonable position to take if you then don’t claim to be an independent committee. But it also then requires the academic community to hold the CCC to account – based on the science, our analysis and the climate commitments our governments repeatedly sign up to. But that hasn’t happened – quite the opposite.
Set against a weak academia and a similarly weak funding agency, the UKRI – or as it was called previously the research councils, – the CCC have effectively dictated the research agenda. When the CCC has said jump we’ve asked how high – rather than why!.
First our research had to fit with a 60% reduction in emissions by 2050, then it was 80% by 2050, then carbon budgets were introduced, but quickly shifted to a Net Zero 2050 framework. In effect, the boundaries of analysis have been dictated by the CCC, as if the committee is some form of Oracle. This was bad enough. But with Chris Stark becoming the CEO, he was such a highly effective leader of a government committee, a real smooth operator, that a weak academia was left even more in thrall of the CCC. So, whilst we might endeavour to do objective research on cutting emissions, it is inevitably set within the CCC’s deeply political boundary – one that is far removed anything aligned with our Paris temperature and equity commitments
I realise very few if any academics will agree with me here, at least in public, though it’s a different story in private, but I see the CCC as having fundamentally misinformed and let down, not just the UK policy makers and the public, but of course, the people who already are and will be impacted by climate change. But this failure has been actively facilitated by the supine academic community that has not stood up for academic integrity, simply bending to will of the CCC; just look at the ubiquitous ‘net zero 2050’ framing of our research, language and publications; barely a whimper of dissent. It’s the old cliché, bad things happen whilst good people stay quiet. Sadly, and very specifically on mitigation (so not on climate science), I see cowardice rather than academic integrity as the collective hallmark of our contribution thus far.
Fourteen years ago, on this day, February 24th, 2011,
She announced this in her courtyard, alongside the Green party (as for the multi-party committee the previous year) and this time also bringing in the independent MPs. Look, it said, parliamentary numbers are locked in, this is not a hypothetical any more – she had the will, and it would be done. An hour later in question time the PM would describe the carbon price as ‘a scheme that would start with a fixed price for a fixed period, effectively like a tax’ – no lawyer language or weasel words, no hiding: she was going to make the case.
I was one of those who thought it seemed like the best of a bad lot of options at the time.
Instead, it became proof that she’d lied.
(Cooney, 2015: 87)
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 392ppm. As of 2025 it is 426ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the 2010 Federal election had led to a hung parliament (not as much fun as it sounds, say the ‘comics’). This meant that neither Labor nor the Coalition could form a government without getting the agreement of a bunch of independents (and one Green). And most of the independents wanted… a carbon price. So Julia Gillard signed on the dotted line and created a Multi-Party Committee on Climate Change. The Liberals and Nationals were invited, but declined to take part. The MPCCC beavered away and on this day a press conference was held. The evening held extra horrors for the PM, who – and this is hard to believe – had not workshopped/rehearsed a response to the obvious question “How come you’re introducing a carbon price when you said days before the last election that you wouldn’t?”
Here’s some more quotes –
Prime Minister Julia Gillard called a media conference for mid-morning on 24 February 2011 to announce the Discussion Paper on a proposed carbon mechanism. It was a showing of the prime minister flanked by other MPCCCC members from the Labor Party, the Greens, Rob Oakeshott and me. Before I went down to join the group for a photo my policy adviser, John Clements, cautioned me about standing with the group. He thought that being seen with the Greens might be interpreted as agreeing with their agenda. He didn’t quite say it would be, ‘A courageous decision, Mr Windsor,’ in the best Yes Minister’s Sir Humphrey voice, but that’s what he meant.
(Windsor, 2015: 137)
It is my greatest regret that I did not provide more fearless advice to Julia to avoid this error [tax/fixed price]. Labor’s carbon price was an emissions trading scheme and we should have argued that until we were blue in the face.
(Combet, 2014: 252)
Within twenty-four hours the ‘no carbon tax’ election pledge cut through the electorate like a scalpel. Every media interview for months was dominated by a broken promise that was falsely marketed as a ‘lie’. Debate on climate change and carbon pricing was derailed by the poisonous politics. My job was to try to make the science and policy the issues once again.
(Combet, 2014: 252)
On 24 February 2011, six months after the election, a proud Julia Gillard announced agreement in principle between Labor and the Greens on a carbon pricing scheme for Australia. The Greens and the independents stood beside her in the prime minister’s courtyard, Bob Brown given virtually equal status. Gillard was making minority government work. In the process she signed her death warrant as prime minister.
(Kelly, 2014:362)
Abbott’s media conference the same day saw one of the most brutal assaults by an Opposition leader in a generation. Labor never saw it coming. Abbott called Gillard’s position ‘an utter betrayal of the Australian people’ and predicted a people’s revolt. He enshrined the issue as trust: ‘If the Australian people could not trust the Prime Minister on this, they can’t trust her on anything.’ He said ‘the price of this betrayal will be paid every day by every Australian’ in terms of higher power prices. Abbott launched a campaign that would make Gillard unelectable. Yet most of the ALP thought they had just negotiated a minority government triumph.
(Kelly, 2014:362)
What I think we can learn from this is that optics matter.
What happened next? An indescribably wild six month fight about carbon pricing, with it on the front page of the Australian “newspaper” almost every day…
See also all the misogynistic crap about “Ju-Liar,” “Ditch the Witch” and “Bob Brown’s Bitch”
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 two years ago, on this day, February 23rd, 1993, Peter Walsh’s brain vomit confronted readers.
The substance of O’Brien’s paper was that greenhouse scaremongering – embraced and promoted by the chattering classes – was wildly speculative, potentially dangerous and, to the extent that it had any scientific basis, was based on dated estimates of temperature and sea level rises which in most cases the original authors had revised downwards. Moreover, the scientific findings of the 1990 International Panel on Climate Change had been widely misrepresented.
Walsh, P. (1993) PUTTING GREENHOUSE IN ORDER The Australian Financial Review, February 23, page 17
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 357ppm. As of 2025 it is 426ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that Peter Walsh had stopped being an MP at the 1990 Federal election. The former Treasurer, perhaps suffering Relevance Deprivation Syndrome, had thrown himself into various causes, including greenhouse denial. This particular column was a gloating attack on the ACF’s Mark Diesendorf.
What I think we can learn from this
Old White Men who’ve had all the power they’ll have but still breathe: what are you gonna do?
What happened next
Walsh went on to be a leading light in the Laughable Group Sorry “Lavoisier” Group.
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.
Thirteen years ago, on this day, February 22nd, 2012,
On 22 February 2012, Richard Lindzen gave a talk to invited guests in a rented room in the Palace of Westminster. Note that contrary to some reports about the seminar, it was not presented to UK Parliament. Any member of the UK legislature can rent one of the many Palace of Westminster rooms for private purposes; that is what happened in this instance.
Lindzen’s presentation, the slides of which can be viewed here and video can be seen here, appeared very similar to presentations given by Christopher Monckton. In fact, Lindzen’s talk contained many of the same climate myths we recently debunked from Monckton, which frankly does not reflect well on Lindzen. The slides and presentation are almost identical to Lindzen’s testimony to the US House Subcommittee on Science and Technology hearing in November 2010, which in turn was almost identical to a presentation he gave at a Heartland Institute conference 6 months earlier. In fact, Lindzen did not even update some of his graphs with data beyond mid-2010 for his UK presentation.
Lindzen’s presentation contained so many misrepresentations that it would be too time consuming to address them all; however, we will address most of them here, including the base on which Lindzen built his house of misinformation cards.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 394ppm. As of 2025 it is 426ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was tthat there was a very small number of very determined Conservative MPs and grandees who did not nod through the 2008 Climate Change Act. The had said from the get go that it was unnecessary and or unaffordable and or impossible. Tey did what these people always do, which is get a “prestigious” scientist to come along and tell them that they were right. Lindzen has a history of being, frankly, wrong.
What I think we can learn from this
You hold a meeting in the House of Commons, you put out a press release. It encourages your side. It might get some press coverage. It might cause some people to think that there is still a debate about the existence of climate change and the severity of it. Bish, Bosh, job done.
What happened next is that the anti Climate Change Act people kept going, and finally, in 2023 the elite consensus around the need to do something (a lot) about climate change fractured when Rishi Sunak thought that he could cling to power when he and his underlings totally misinterpreted a by election result in London. Hilarity did not ensue.
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.
See also
Richard Lindzen is a very special character in the climate debate – very smart, high profile, and with a solid background in atmospheric dynamics. He has, in times past, raised interesting critiques of the mainstream science. None of them, however, have stood the test of time – but exploring the issues was useful. More recently though, and especially in his more public outings, he spends most of his time misrepresenting the science and is a master at leading people to believe things that are not true without him ever saying them explicitly.
Twenty one years ago, on this day, February 22nd, 2004, we were promised clean coal…
JUDGING by the heavy hitters attending a conference on the Gold Coast this week, geosequestration is about to get a substantial workover in Australia in the next few years.
Geosequestration is the capture of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and placing them underground. To some environmentalists the concept is about as popular as toxic waste.
For Australia’s biggest export industry, coal, geosequestration may be the difference between death and survival.
Wilson, N. 2004 Turning coal clean and green. The Australian, February 21.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 377ppm. As of 2025 it is 426ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that interest in technological solutions to climate change – solutions is doing a lot of work in that sentence – were being promulgated especially by the Australians and Americans because they had not signed up to the Kyoto Protocol. The Australian coal industry was going along with the fantasy of “clean coal” – , at least rhetorically, but not putting any of their own money where their mouths were. They have the skills to deal with digging stuff up, solids and moving it from place to place. CCS is all about pipes and valves and so forth. I mean that you can overstate this. The coal industry does have some experience with these sorts of things, but not enough.
Also, the sums of money involved in making CCS “work” are staggering.
What I think we can learn from this is that people have been wittering about CCS loudly in public for a very long time. And we don’t have any CCS worthy of the name.
What happened next
The CCS bubble in Australia burst in 2010. Chevron did its ridiculous Gorgon plant, (signed off by one P. Garrett, then Federal Environment Minister) which has never met its promises. However, CCS is now currently having another “moment.”
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.
