On this day June 1, 1989, 36 years ago – the UK Labour party’s energy spokesman, a young ambitious MP called Tony Blair, was reported to have spoken out against a carbon tax, on the front page of the Independent.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 353ppm. As of 2025, when this post was published, it is 430ppm. This matters because the more carbon dioxide in the air, the more heat gets trapped. The more heat, the more extreme weather events. You can make it more complicated than that if you want, but really, it’s not. Fwiw, I have a tattoo of the Keeling Curve on my left forearm.
The broader context for this was scientists had been warning politicians for a good 10 years (longer in some places) about carbon dioxide build-up.
The specific context was that in September 1988 Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had given a pivotal speech to the Royal Society in London, saying the Greenhouse Effect was indeed here. In May 1989 Blair had already spoken out saying that market forces might not be able to solve the problem. Now he was willing to say state action wouldn’t work. Anything for a headline, whatever nonsense suited the moment. Blair only was consistent when waging class wars and, er, real wars.
What I think we can learn is this:
As human beings – the solutions to the problem were unpalatable, and because we turned from them then, well, we are now quite fubarred.
As “active citizens” – politicians in opposition oppose – no matter what is being proposed might have some merit – their need is to oppose. It’s all kayfabe.
Academics might want to ponder their complicity in this kayfabe.
What happened next: The tax idea tanked (it’s probably that its opponents within the Civil Service and Government had leaked it to help win their battle). Eventually carbon pricing did come into existence, if not to meaningful effect.
On this topic, you might like these other posts on All Our Yesterdays
Tony Blair and the loong history…
References
(as academic as possible, with DOIs if they exist.) hyperlinks.
You can see the chronological list of All Our Yesterdays “on this day” posts here.
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.
If you want to get involved, let me know.
If you want to invite me on your podcast, that would boost my ego and probably improve the currently pitiful hit-rate on this site (the two are not-unrelated).
On this day June 1, 1970, 55 years ago – a Public Relations flak realised there was money in the whole ecology thing – burnishing credentials etc.
Some business leaders and PR advisers warned that environmentalism might now be seized by “extremists” and the “radical left” to mobilize similar attacks on the entire business community. As PR consultant Clifford B. Reeves put it in 1970, the “environment” issue could become “a basis for a broad general attack on the entire industrial system, as well as individual companies.” Although such a broad-based critique of business and industry had not yet gained momentum, according to Reeves, environmental pollution “may be the thing that provides a basis for universal attack against private business institutions.” “As things are now shaping up,” he wrote, “industry is being cast as the villain of the piece. While its record is not all it should have been, industry has probably done more in a practical way than any other group to conserve resources and protect the environment. That story should be told more widely and forcefully, before adverse public opinion about industry hardens still further. Industry should be recognized as a willing partner in this movement, not an adversary.” Reeves urged steady progress in pollution abatement, combined with programs to publicize those voluntary efforts. He expressed hope that the “environment” could thus become a consensus issue, with industry viewed not as a villain but as a partner in the popular drive for environmental protection.
Conley, 2006 – p.70-71.
The quote is from
Conley, 2006 ENVIRONMENTALISM CONTAINED: A HISTORY OF CORPORATE RESPONSES TO THE NEW ENVIRONMENTALISM . PhD thesis
Clifford B. Reeves, “Ecology Adds a New PR Dimension,” Public Relations Journal (June 1970), 7-9, which I intend to track down….
Anyway, check this out from Ali Smith’s astonishing new novel Gliff
“Their mother up at the farm had had some weedkiller spray bottles delivered, and the label came off one of the bottles and it had a note written on the inside of it saying it was from someone whose job was to screw the sprayheads on to bottles that the factory machine had mis-screwed, and it said it was from an eleven year old who was getting sick from breathing weedkiller and wanted someone to help them. Which must have been a lie, his mother’d said, because the weedkiller said on the other side of the label that it was the bio-pure kind and that there was nothing poisonous to humans in it. Which is why she’d bought it.”
(Smith, 2024:107-8)
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 325ppm. As of 2025, when this post was published, it is 430ppm. This matters because the more carbon dioxide in the air, the more heat gets trapped. The more heat, the more extreme weather events. You can make it more complicated than that if you want, but really, it’s not. Fwiw, I have a tattoo of the Keeling Curve on my left forearm.
The broader context for this was that capitalist interests had been trying to reassure consumers of their goodness and rightness for decades – advertising really kicked into high gear in the late nineteenth century, with periodic surges after that as new technologies (colour printing, catalogues, radio, TV) came into effect. This is all part of the ongoing war of distraction. There’s plenty of good books about this, if you’re so inclined.
It wasn’t just individual companies selling their products, either. Trade associations would band together to sell “the system” – see Captains of Consciousness, Collision Course etc.
The specific context was that by 1970 the “eco-wave” was already a year or more old – there had been intimations of trouble (Rachel Carson) but the Torrey Canyon (1967) and Santa Barbara (Jan 1969) oil spills had upped the awareness. Industry needed to fight off regulation, and look good. Public relations was the key thing here…
What I think we can learn is this:
As human beings – we like to be lied too, especially if the truth would force us to be more citizen-y.
As “active citizens – “they lie, they lie, they lie.”
Academics might want to ponder… how they are more often than not just the sophisticated end of the PR industry.
What happened next:
A massive public relations effort started, kept going. The mystification machines churn out so much, the mere quantity is enough.
On this topic, you might like these other posts on All Our Yesterdays
(as academic as possible, with DOIs if they exist.) hyperlinks.
You can see the chronological list of All Our Yesterdays “on this day” posts here.
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.
If you want to get involved, let me know.
If you want to invite me on your podcast, that would boost my ego and probably improve the currently pitiful hit-rate on this site (the two are not-unrelated).
Thirty one years ago, on this day, May 31st, 1994, the chair of the International Negotiating Committee (INC) R Oyela Estrada gave a speech at the Royal Geographical Society
“In his remarks to the Royal Geographic Society in London on May 31, 1994, INC Chairman Raul Estrada Oyela said that for the time being the Convention process was “waiting for (scientific) inputs from the IPCC but I wonder if they will come in time. Almost one year ago, explaining the needs of the Convention to the IPCC Bureau, I had the feeling that the IPCC was suffering (some) kind of ‘Dr. Frankenstein Syndrome’. After all, the idea of a Convention was nourished by the IPCC, but now the Convention starts to walk and begins to demand additional food, the IPCC answered that it had its own program of work and could not deliver products by client’s request. … We hoped, for instance that the Convention would profit from an IPCC workshop on the objectives of the Climate Convention in Fortaleza, Brazil, in April (1994). However, the workshop was postponed for October (1994), most probably for very scientifically sound motives. The point is that the INC shall meet next August and we are not going to have that input then” (Estrada-Oyela, 1994). London based New Scientist took these comments to make a news story entitled “Frankenstein Syndrome Hits Climate Treaty” marking the first public criticism of the IPCC by an INC official (The New Scientist, 1994).
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 359ppm. As of 2025 it is 430ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was the IPCC had been set up in 1988 and delivered its report in 1990. The negotiations for a climate treaty began in earnest in 1991, were flummoxed by the United States. No targets or timetables for emissions reductions were included. The rest is history.
What I think we can learn from this – the science and the politics work on different timescales, with different ideas about what success is.
What happened next COP 1 took place a year later, and gave us the “Berlin Mandate” which gave us the Kyoto Protocol which gave us (checks notes) nothing.
And the emissions kept climbing. And the concentrations kept climbing. Rather like that pile of wreckage in that note by that Walt Benjamin chap.
xxx
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.
Agrawala, S. Structural and Process History of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Climatic Change 39, 621–642 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1005312331477
Twenty-nine years ago, on this day, May 30th, 1996,
The Federal Government’s promise of no new taxes included carbon and other so-called greenhouse taxes, the Minister for the Environment, Senator Robert Hill, told the Minerals Council of Australia in Canberra yesterday
Callick, R. (1996) Greenhouse tax off the agenda, Hill tells miners. Australian Financial Review, May 31
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 362ppm. As of 2025 it is 430ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the fossil fuel lobby had been fighting – half-assedly but with structural advantages and then cleverly and successfully – against any carbon pricing since the late 1980s. They’d created something called the (Australian) Industry Greenhouse Network in the early 1990s, and it had spearheaded the fight against the Toyne/Faulkner carbon tax proposal of 1994. But the Australian Mining Industry Council had gone Too Far on the question of Aboriginal land rights. They’d had to call in one of capitalism’s fixers – Geoff Allen – and on his advice rebrand as the Minerals Council of Australia and change their CEO. Once that was done, both Labor and Liberal meatpuppets, sorry, “politicians” were happy to bend the knee.
What I think we can learn from this. The trade associations are a good (not perfect, but good) barometer of what a sector wants and how the state responds.
What happened next. The MCA kept on winning. Which meant everyone bar the C-suite and the shareholders kept losing. And the losing accelerated.
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 five years ago, on this day, May 29th, 1992,
“On 29 May 1992, the Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) announced its intention to undertake an efficiency audit of DPIE’s energy management program. The audit was to consider the potential for improvement in the administration of the program and in the reporting of program performance. The auditors focussed on the administration of the interim greenhouse gas response initiatives with a view to contributing to efficiencies in the implementation of the NGRS’”
House of Representatives Standing Committee on Environment, Recreation and the Arts EFFECTIVENESS OF THE IMPLEMENTATION review of Audit Report No. 32 1992-93—an efficiency audit of the Implementation of an Interim Greenhouse Response
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 356ppm. As of 2025 it is 430ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was various “greenhouse” responses had been proposed. Most had been killed off in the committees and left to die by the wayside. Those that had survived the hazing and salami slicing needed to be looked at for “value for money” etc.
What I think we can learn from this is that you can’t teach an elephant to tapdance.
What happened next On this particularly? I don’t know. But have a look at Australia’s response to climate change and tell me it hasn’t been catastrophically suicidal. Go on.
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 six years ago, on this day, May 9th, 1989 the Canberra Times pointed to sea level rise as a thing.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 353ppm. As of 2025 it is 430ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that by mid 1989 you could not move but for documentaries, newspaper articles, magazine articles about the Greenhouse Effect, at least in Australia. This was part of that.
What I think we can learn from this is that we got all the warnings we needed.But “we” – civil society – was never able to overcome its own inertia and fears, the resistance of the state and the corporates. Not even able to really try, unless you count manifestos, marches and other meaningless maunderings in the absence of sustained, iterative, reflective praxis – and who has the mental, financial, emotional or temporal bandwidth for any of that?
What happened next. The August 1990 invasion of Kuwait by Saddam Hussein knocked the issue of The Environment from its perch (something had to – journalists and readers were getting bored!). It turns out we cannot easily – in the words of Donna Haraway – “stay with the trouble.” And then the denial campaigns properly kicked in and everyone settled into a generations-long game of kayfabe, of pretend. Eventually though, by the late 2010s onwards, the consequences of previous failure began to catch up with us. Mephistopheles was knocking on the door, waiting to collect…
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.
You can listen to this here (NB Terrible Sound Quality – if/when I do actual podcasting I will have to get some proper kit!)
May 28, 2025, with the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide at 430ppm, up from 315ppm in 1958.
Three pieces of news today tell you everything you need to know about the planet and the prospects for our species. Taking them in turn – physical, government-capital and “resistance”.
The world could see its first year of warming above 2°C by the end of the decade, leading climate scientists have warned for the first time…. The chances of seeing a year above 2°C of warming are still very slim, with the WMO/Met Office team estimating the probability at 1 per cent.
She quotes Leon Hermanson of the Met Office as saying “It’s exceptionally unlikely, but it could happen”
It was the WMO – the World Meteorological Organisation that coordinated the use of satellites and other forms of data collection. In the mid1970s it was a key node in international cooperation and discussion of carbon dioxide build-up. The WMO hosted the First World Climate Conference in February 1979. It could and should have been a turning point in the way politicians thought about atmospheric pollution. Almost ten years later it was – along with the United Nations Environment Program – co-founder of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
To the surprise of precisely no-one, in Australia, the Federal Labor government led by Anthony Albanese has said yes to climate chaos, by granting an extension to Woodside’s North West Shelf project. As per the Australia Institute, this is a disaster on five fronts.
The ALP was recently returned to office in Australia, with the overt climate denialists of the Coalition punished by voters. However, given decisions like these, one cannot but be reminded of the mournful closing lines of George Orwell’s Animal Farm – so spoilers –
“The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”
Resistance
Thirteen years ago the UK commentator George Monbiot asked the right question. In an article called “The Mendacity of Hope” he wrote
“So this is the great question of our age: where is everyone? The monster social movements of the 19th century and first 80 years of the 20th have gone, and nothing has replaced them. Those of us who still contest unwarranted power find our footsteps echoing through cavernous halls once thronged by multitudes“
In late 2018 a new group – “Extinction Rebellion” – made a splash with a declaration of rebellion in Parliament Square in London and then the occupation of five bridges across the Thames. A “rebellion “in London in April 2019 gained a lot of press attention, but a follow-up in October 2019 was less successful and the wheels were wobbling, if not yet actually coming off. 2020 saw COVID and also offshoots from XR – a “Pink Party”, Insulate Britain and then, in 2022, “Just Stop Oil.” High profile arrestable actions followed, as did media smears and police and security service activity. Many JSO activists have gone to jail. JSO has recently announced it is ceasing its activity. However, the past is not even the past.
“Four Just Stop Oil protesters who were planning to glue themselves to the taxiway at Manchester Airport have been jailed.
Officers arrested Indigo Rumbelow, Margaret Reid, Leanorah Ward and Daniel Knorr as they were making their way to the airport on 4 August 2024.
They were equipped with heavy-duty bolt-cutters, angle grinders, glue, sand, Just Stop Oil high-visibility vests and a leaflet containing instructions to follow when interacting with police.
All four were found guilty of conspiracy to intentionally cause a public nuisance and jailed at Manchester Minshull Crown Court for between 18 and 30 months. Additionally, they were each fined £2,000.
“
So what can we expect?
We can expect more temperature records to fall. It would be no surprise to me at all to see us breach two degrees by 2030, though I suspect that won’t actually happen until, say 2035. What does this mean? It means that the second half of the twenty-first century will make the first half of the twentieth look like a golden age of peace, love and understanding.
We can expect more extractive capitalism projects to be given approval by supine/captured governments (though one should resist the illusions of a golden age -elected and unelected policymakers are almost always and everywhere mere meat puppets for whoever has the most money. It can be more complicated than that, but it usually isn’t.)
And given that the consequences of our species’ failure to act on scientists’ warnings are clear to all but those most determined to deny reality, we can expect more resistance.
The failure, over the last thirty five years of citizens in the West – with freedom of speech, assembly and information – to build strong, determined and resilient social movements and civil society organisations is a fascinating puzzle. Or perhaps a mundane puzzle, made fascinating by the consequences of the failure.
In any case, despite the jailings, expect more resistance at some point – which is not to say that that resistance will be any more effective than what has gone on these last thirty six years, as annual carbon dioxide emissions went up by almost 70 per cent and the atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide rose from roughly 350 parts per million to the current level of 430ppm.
Inspired by the brilliant “Letters from an American” podcast by Professor Heather Cox Richardson, I bashed out this below.
May 27, 2025, with atmospheric carbon dioxide at roughly 430.36ppm, up from 315ppm in 1958.
Speaking at the Australian gas industry’s annual conference in Brisbane the CEO of energy giant Woodside, Meg O’Neill, tried to stiffen the spines of her fellow fossil fuel activists by attacking young people who were taking what she called an ideological stand against fossil fuels. As Graham Readfearn of the Guardian Australia reports, she suggested the young are hypocrites for ordering cheap online consumer goods “without any sort of recognition of the energy and carbon impact of their actions”.
I want to give two bits of context – first historical about the gas industry’s response to climate, and secondly about the nature of these trade events.
It was not always like this. In the late 1980s, when the Greenhouse Effect” – which we now call climate change – was first a hot political issue, the Australian Gas industry had an initial interest in the greenhouse effect in supplanting coal. This continued in the late 1990s when the Australian Gas Association – the peak trade body at the time, was led by one Bill Nagle, who saw gas as “cleaner than coal.” He broke with the Australian Industry Greenhouse network. Coal interests were not impressed at the show of disunity. As described in the 2007 book High and Dry by Guy Pearse Nagle was warned by a senior Minerals Council figure
“You know, you pursue this hard line and you scratch the coal industry too much harder and they will come out and we will start talking about nitrous oxide emissions, methane, or pipe leakages…Don’t do it, because if you do it we’ll have a big brawl between the energy industries in this country in the public arena which won’t do anybody any good.”
Nagle’s efforts to reorient the Australian Gas Association failed.
On these sort of conferences – they act as a watering hole for lobbyists to rub shoulders with ministers, for trial balloons to be flown, and carefully honed publicity slogans to begin their journey to “common sense” – repeated by journalists, politicians and other “thought leaders.”.
The Australian Coal Association, now defunct, used to run bi-annual conferences. In 1990, much of the talk was given over to the greenhouse effect – including speakers saying it wasn’t real – and what might be done to blameshift or even take actual technical steps. Conferences like these also allow inadequate and/or hasbeen journalists the chance to feel important by their proximity to power and wealth, and provides cheap (pre-written) copy. So it’s a win win all around, except for the – checks notes – planet.
By the way, for more details about the gas industry, you can check out Royce Kermelovs’ recent book Slick and various reports of The Australia Institute on how much – or little – tax the gas giants pay, and who benefits.
What is the incumbent strategy on display
What O’Neill said is a very well established rhetorical technique. This process of infantilizing critics, ignoring the strongest or most socially powerful critics and instead aiming fire at children, is clever, devious and cynical.
By framing climate change as an issue that young people with their silly views and silly consumer habits are concerned with, rather than something scientists have been studying and warning about for 35 years, tat the Secretary-General of the United Nations, the late Pope Francis and countless others have screamed themselves hoarse over. O’Neill is setting up a straw man and knocking it down.
O’Neil is ducking and weaving away from the substantive issues that actual adults would need to confront, because she has nothing else if Woodside is to continue making profits, it will have to keep extracting selling fossil fuels that will be burnt and the carbon dioxide From those long molecules of gas will be released into the atmosphere, trapping heat. She knows this, and she also knows that carbon capture and storage and carbon dioxide removal is frankly, “solution” even if it were to work, which it has not so far.
Ultimately, O’Neill is deploying a version of what I call the “hypocrite/zealot” trap. If a critic benefits from fossil fuels they can be dismissed as a hypocrite. If they are vegan who never flies or drives, they can be dismissed as a zealot.
What are the earliest/clearest examples of this incumbent strategy being deployed, either on climate or in another context?
This trivialization of opponents and this willful ignorance is not new. Indeed, it pre-dates the battles over climate and environment, as laid out in Oreskes and Conway’s magisterial 2010 work “Merchants of Doubt,“
If you want to look at how incumbent trade associations and supporters of what are now regarded as horrific practices – slavery, child labour etc defend themselves – I would strongly recommend ES Turner s 1950 book Roads to Ruin: A Shocking History of Social Progress.
How has this incumbent strategy been challenged/delayed/defeated in the past?
So, how to respond? How does one challenge these techniques? Well, simply naming them is a start. By explaining, in clear, vivid and non-technical terms what O’Neill and others are doing, it makes it riskier for her and her colleagues to repeat the same trick again. But that can’t come from the young, because it will look like special pleading. This push back has to come from adults, and preferably ones with scientific and business credentials.
What power/forces would be needed to combat/move this incumbent strategy to the “too costly” or “not effective” space?
There is a new-ish expression doing the rounds – “every accusation is a confession.” While I don’t think that is always true, I do think it holds in this case. On some level, presumably, O’Neill knows what she is doing. She is the child here, refusing to accept realities that would force her to stop doing what she wants. Those she accuses of being children, they are the adults.
What is required is a properly grown-up conversation about where we find ourselves – at 430ppm and rising fast, Why we are here, why almost 40 years of scientific and political concern about climate change has in no meaningful way worked. That would require independent media, brave professionals and brave professional bodies, social movements and political parties that were not made up of -mostly- meatpuppets for extraction.
What makes the creation/maintenance/extension of that power/that adaptation more difficult.
Look, itt seems unlikely, given the last 40 years, that we are going to start being grown up now, when the social inducements to fantasies of technosalvation and explicit and implicit denial become stronger and stronger.
Thirty five years ago, on this day, May 28th, 1990, the Canberra Times reports on the report of Working Group 1 (the science bit) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 354ppm. As of 2025 it is 430ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the IPCC had been agreed in 1988, with pressure from the United States Government, which was keen to avoid a repeat of the ozone issue, where uncontrollable scientists had “bounced” (in the perception of politicians and state functionaries) governments into action. It was not a precedent they wanted reinforced, so the IPCC was set up to head off things like the Advisory Group on Greenhouse Gases….
The IPCC was asked to produce reports in November 1988 and did so in record time. The Working Group 1 report was presented to Thatcher’s cabinet by John Houghton, head of the Met Office and head of Working Group 1.
What I think we can learn from this. The politicians were briefed. It is not a question of whether they knew enough. They did.
What happened next. The negotiations for a climate treaty were deformed by resistance from the United States, the Gulf states and then Australia. No targets and timetables were set for emissions reductions by rich countries. The IPCC sank into a routine of producing special reports as requested and assessment reports on a five or seven year cycle.
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.
Ninety eight years ago, on this day, May 27th, 1927, the Ford Motor Company ceases manufacture of the Ford Model T and begins to retool plants to make the Ford Model A.
For more info, read this below from someone who has had a couple (cough, cough) of letters published in the pink’un.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 306ppm. As of 2025 it is 430ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the American economy was booming. Jazz Age, Prohibition, Gatsby etc etc. Could the good times EVER end?
What I think we can learn from this is that the choices we are given – for “positional goods” – that allow us to demonstrate (to ourselves as much as others) our “individuality” and our “freedom” are, um corporate creations.
Is there something between this and dungeons like East Germany? I don’t know. Probably there was. But now? It’s not clear to me at all.
What happened next The marketing of trivial differences to feed (and create) people’s insecurities was ramped up and up. The emissions went up. The concentrations went up. The Great Acceleration happened…
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.
