Thirty six years ago, on this day, July 25th, 1989,
Mineral Fuels Alternatives and the Greenhouse Effect Seminar in Melbourne
Australian Institute of Metallurgy
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 was from 1988 – thanks in part to the domestic work of the “Greenhouse Project” (a collaboration of the CSIRO’s atmospheric physics division and the Commission for the Future) – Australian public debate about the greenhouse effect and what to do about it high.
The specific context was that debates about how to reduce domestic carbon dioxide emissions were about what else besides coal (then dominant) might keep the lights on. Might it be natural gas?
What I think we can learn from this is that there were debates about replacing coal waaaaay back when.
What happened next – the coal lobby fought back (obvs) and even though the debate on natural gas continued, ultimately it was wind and solar that finally began eating into coal’s dominance, in the 2010s. Meanwhile, Australia’s per capita emissions remain staggeringly high, and the impacts of climate change are beginning to bite. Billions of cooked animals. What a species we are.
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:
July 25, 1977 – New York Times front page story “scientists foresee serious climate changes”
July 25, 1996 – Australian PM John Howard as fossil-fuel puppet
July 25, 1997 – US says, in effect, “screw our promises, screw the planet”