Thirty years ago, on this day, March 29th, 1995, Federal Environment Minister John Faulkner, fresh from losing the carbon tax battle) gave a press conference
J Faulkner (Minister for the Environment, Sport and Territories),Press conference for the release of Greenhouse 21C, speech, 29 March 1995
Greenpeace’s climate campaigner, Mr Keith Tarlo, said the biggest single item was the $25 million program to promote clean coal technology in India.
“This is a scandal. (It) is a transparent attempt to promote the Australian coal industry and can only lock India into escalating greenhouse emissions,” he said.
Boreham, G. 1995. Industry Says Yes, Greens Say No To Emissions Policy. The Age, 30 March, p.3.
AND
Greenpeace said the biggest item in the package was $25 million to promote “clean coal” technology overseas. This was really meant to boost Australian coal exports and the “clean” meant only low sulphur content, it said.
Shehan, C. and McCathie, A. 1995. Bid To Cut Gas Levels – But It’s Voluntary. Sydney Morning Herald, 30 March, p.3.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 361ppm. As of 2025 it is 427ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that there had been a bloody and ultimately successful campaign against a mild, minor carbon tax. And here John Faulkner, who had proposed that tax had to pretend the booby prize, which was the Greenhouse 21 challenge (presumably had been written by civil servants or given to them by business as the lowest common denominator) would make a blind bit of difference.
What I think we can learn from this is that if you’re not going to have anything serious, but you still have “presentational problems” on an issue that voters might care about, then you come up with these bullshit voluntary schemes.
What happened next
Greenhouse 21 was a joke, as was the Australian Greenhouse office, as was Greenhouse Challenge Plus. And everybody stopped pretending that it was worth continuing to pretend by about 2005. But the pretence continues – it has to…
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 29, 1979 – Health impacts of carbon dioxide discussed…
March 29, 1993 – C02 Disposal symposium takes place in Oxford
March 29, 1995- Kuwaiti scientist says if global warming happening, it’s not fossil fuels. #MRDA