Fifteen years ago, on this day, March 26th, 2010, the Labor government was forced to give details of the size of the (large) Australian delegation to COP-15 in Copenhagen.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 390ppm. As of 2025 it is 427ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that Copenhagen hadn’t just been Kevin Rudd tearing up the speech that had been written for him, rewriting it and delivering it to a total lack of applause. No, Copenhagen had been 70 or 75 officials and experts and so forth, all flying halfway around the world to save the world. And the Liberals were wanting to punch the bruise, and so requested the information in order to have the ammo that to run a one day wonder, “waste of money, pointy headed bureaucrats with their snouts in the trough style” article. And so it came to pass.
What I think we can learn from this
that any international negotiation is going to involve sherpas at the summit and all sorts of other malarkey. And for those who are opposed to the agenda of whatever the summit is, it’s a very easy writes-itself kind of critique. And that’s what happened.
What happened next
A couple months after this Rudd was gone. The climate issue, however, was not…
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:
March 26, 1979 – Exxon meets a climate scientist