Thirty five years ago, on this day, May 11th, 1990, the Australian Financial Review ran the following, based on an early example of “the sky will fall if we give the greenies an inch” economic ‘modelling’. There’d be much more of this nonsense over the coming years – it’s a favoured tactic, because, well, it works.
Sustainable development is catching up with Australia fast. The economy is going through an investment boom which could provide the export revenue in the 1990s that would make our current account and foreign debt positions “sustainable”….
The accompanying table lists 26 major investment projects under consideration which Access Economics says appear to be in danger of environmental veto, including the Cape York spaceport (worth $350 million), the Very Fast Train project ($4.5 billion) and 24 resource and manufacturing projects valued at $11 billion.
Stutchbury, M. 1990. Environmental threat to investment boom. Australian Financial Review , 11 May.
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 capital was having one of its periodic bouts of panic that the meatpuppets it owned in the nominal independent “State” (aka “politicians” and “senior civil servants”) might not respond to string-pulling quickly enough, and might end up – under popular pressure – passing laws that hindered the rights of the filthy rich to get filthier richer quicker. When that happens there’s hand-wringing and pearl-clutching and then reports produced about how the sky will fall if Intemperate Action is taken. There’s a sideline in issue denial (usually done with plausible deniability). There’s quiet words with key people about where they see themselves in five years (non-executive directorships etc or out on their ear) and the point is made that nobody is indispensable and that opposing political parties will be happy to receive donations etc.
What I think we can learn from this.It is about capital accumulation. Don’t get in their way unless you’re happy to be roadkill. This is the lesson all junior apparatchiks are taught. Those that learn it may last a while. Those who don’t learn it won’t, by definition.
What happened next No serious impediments have ever been placed on the ability of capital to “invest”/extract/whatever they want. Australia is becoming an uninhabitable slagheap, full of miserable angry people. The figures behind the Harvester Settlement will be squirming in their graves… Oh well.
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:
May 11, 1971 – U Thant gets The Message
May 11, 1988 – “Greenhouse Glasnost” USA and USSR to co-operate on climate
May 11, 1990 – the Financial Times on good intentions not cutting it – All Our Yesterdays