Thirty two years ago, on this day, October 19th, 1993,
“We simply must halt global warming. It is a threat to our health, to our ecology and to our economy. The problem frankly affects every sector of the economy.” Clinton, William J. 1993. Remarks at the White House Conference on Climate Change, October 19
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 357ppm. As of 2025, when this post was published, it is 425ppm. 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 that the US had gutted the UNFCCC (insisting that targets and timetables for emissions reductions by rich nations be removed or else) and then ratified it quite swiftly in December 1992. Al Gore, Clinton’s veep had published “Earth in the Balance” the previous year. Ah, such sweet and innocent times.
What I think we can learn from this is that a lot of what comes out of politicians mouths is just PR blandishments designed to distract you while your pocket is picked and your future is looted.
What happened next – Clinton’s emissions got him into trouble a few years later (i.e. he abused his position of power, for the umpteenth time). Nothing meaningful was done about US emissions. And the future continued to be looted, and the present started to catch up with the future, until we entered the Fafocene.
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.
Fifty three years ago, on this day, October 19th, 1972,
The Heads of State or Government of the Member States met in Paris on October 19-20, 1972. They declared inter alia that “economic expansion is not an end in itself.” Economic expansion, they noted, “should result in an improvement in the quality of life as well as in standards of living.” Stressing the importance of a Community environmental policy, they called upon the Community institutions “to establish before 31 July 1973, a programme of action accompanied by a precise timetable.”
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 327ppm. As of 2025, when this post was published, it is 425ppm. 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 that the European Conservation Year had taken place in 1970, and “the environment” had been flavour of the month for a while now. The UN conference on the Human Environment had taken place in Stockholm in June and given us… er… checks notes… the United Nations Environment Program.
The specific context was – the European Community was trying to carve out some useful positions, amidst a possible thaw in the “Cold War” (detente and all that).
What I think we can learn from this – the bland technocrats have been bland technocratting (1) for a long time. The emissions don’t seem to have plateaued very much.
What happened next – lots more warm words and bland technocratting.
(NB I am not sure Maoist adventurism and Great Leaps Forward are preferable, tbh). “There’s gotta be another way” …
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 four years ago, on this day, October 18th, 1991,
Fred Singer The Greenhouse Effect and Global Warming: Fact or Fiction? Tasman Institute Seminar
Not his first rodeo…
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 355ppm. As of 2025, when this post was published, it is 425ppm. 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 that carbon dioxide build-up had broken through as an issue in 1988. By 1989 the George C Marshall Institute (set up to shill for Reagan’s Star Wars bullshit) had entered the fray and was enabling denialist efforts, alongside the Global Climate Coalition etc. Australia was one market for its shite.
Singer – Singer had been a semi-respected scientist and bureaucrat from the 1950s onward. But at some point he had jumped the shark. Here, he was fresh from warping the words of a dying Roger Revelle, who had known that many people did not think Singer was much of a scientist…
The specific context was that the Ecologically Sustainable Development process was coming to an end and the moment of maximum danger – where the government might actually take on some of its recommendations – was about now. If you were going to bring out some idiot not very good scientist (as per Roger Revelle) now would be a good time. And so it came to pass…
What I think we can learn from this – evil people aren’t necessarily stupid or incompetent. (And conversely, the “good” guys aren’t all smart and competent.)
What happened next – The ESD got thrown in the bin by Paul Keating, who toppled Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke a couple of months later. The Tasman Institute kept up with the tours, economic modelling etc.
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.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 345ppm. As of 2025, when this post was published, it is 425ppm. 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 that by the early 1980s the evidence was basically in, as far as the scientists were concerned.
Carbon dioxide trapped heat.
Carbon dioxide was building up in the atmosphere.
More heat would be trapped.
You can make it more complex if you like…
The specific context was that the climate issue wasn’t going away, just because Reagan and Thatcher were ignoring it…
What I think we can learn from this – we knew plenty.
What happened next –
See Lord Ashby in House of Lords a few days later (am blogging it)
Sixty two years ago, on this day, October 17th, 1963,
17-18 Oct 1963 TRANSMITTAL The Honorable Leland J. Haworth Director National Science Foundation Washington, D. C. Dear Dr. Haworth: It is an honor to transmit herewith to the National Science Foundation the report of the Special Commission on Weather Modification, authorized by the National Science Board at its meeting on October 17-18, 1963, in accordance with Sections 3(a)(7) and 9 of the National Science Foundation Act of 1950, as amended, and appointed by you on June 16, 1964. The Commission was requested to examine the physical, biological, legal, social, and political aspects of the field and make recommendations concerning future policies and programs.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 319ppm. As of 2025, when this post was published, it is 425ppm. 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 that weather modification experiments had been going on since the late 1940s (mostly attempts to make rain). (There’s a long history – firing cannons at clouds etc.)
There had been a UN resolution on this in 1961 (Kennedy – link).
The specific context was that the US and the USSRwere deep into their scientific/military/technological dick-swinging contest, which had a year previously brought us all to the edge of armageddon.
What I think we can learn from this – that those who are banging on about the government controlling the weather are wrong, but they are in fact understandably wrong – HAARPING on about the weather.
What happened next – weather modification continued (Operation Popeye is an eyepopper) but by the late 1970s, thanks to – er, physics and international agreements – was on the backburner.
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.
The battle for the public mind is never-ending. And one of the key weapons remains… wait for it… books.
This below is inspired by reading Royce Kurmelovs’ review of a new tiresome pronuclear abundance tome that makes utterly baseless allegations about the funding behind “Friends of the Earth.” (Full disclosure, Royce is a friend, we’ve collaborated in the past and I had a very minor role in the research of this review).
A book is a “hook” – the author(s) get, er, booked, to appear on radio shows, tv programmes. The book is excerpted in newspapers, which are then quoted by columnists in papers and by politicians in parliament. The book can be the excuse for a tour of cities. The book gets you on podcasts. The book can get turned into instagram posts and tiktok videos.
None of this is new, but it is worth remembering.
Two particular (albeit American) examples should be part of any intelligent media-observer’s toolkit.
The first is the statement by Julian Simon about what the “conservative” movement needed. This from Jane Meyer tells you what you need to know.
His father evidently lost his mother’s fortune, motivating Simon to make his own. On Wall Street, he became a hugely successful partner at Salomon Brothers, where he was an early leader in the lucrative new craze for leveraged buyouts. But what neither Olin nor Simon had was influence over the next generation. “We are careening with frightening speed towards collectivism,” Simon warned. Only an ideological battle could save the country, in Simon’s view. “What we need is a counter-intelligentsia. … [It] can be organized to challenge our ruling ‘new class’ — opinion makers,” Simon wrote. “Ideas are weapons — indeed the only weapons with which other ideas can be fought.” He argued, “Capitalism has no duty to subsidize its enemies.” Private and corporate foundations, he said, must cease “the mindless subsidizing of colleges and universities whose departments of politics, economics and history are hostile to capitalism.” Instead, they “must take pains to funnel desperately needed funds to scholars, social scientists and writers who understand the relationship between political and economic liberty,” as he put it. “They must be given grants, grants, and more grants in exchange for books, books, and more books.” Under Simon’s guidance, the Olin foundation tried to fund the new “counterintelligentsia.” At first, it tried supporting little-known colleges where conservative ideas — and money — were welcome. But Simon and his associates soon realized that this was a losing strategy. If the Olin foundation wanted impact, it needed to infiltrate prestigious universities, especially the Ivy League.
The second is the Joan Peters debacle. Somebody wrote a book, published under her name in 1984, about how there weren’t any Palestinians in the 19th century – “a land without people for a people without a land” stuff, and the US academics lapped it up. Then along came Norman Finkelstein and Noam Chomsky… I URGE you to read Chomsky’s account, here.
The beauty of the book technique is that – if it comes from a ‘reputable’ publisher – it gives any old bullshit argument a heft, a solidity, it doesn’t deserve. It sells copies (publisher happy) and the author gets exposure, and bandwidth gets taken up, nonsense talking points get repeated and regurgitated, no matter how many times the book is “demolished” (see Chomsky above)
Twenty four years ago, on this day, October 16th, 2001
Washington, DC – With many areas of the country still facing tight electricity supplies in coming years, Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham today announced more than $110 million in new projects to apply leading edge clean coal technologies to improve the reliability and environmental performance of the Nation’s coal-burning power plants.
Abraham announced that the federal government will share the costs of outfitting eight power plants to become “showcases” of ways coal plants can continue generating low-cost electricity with better performance and in compliance with tight environmental standards.
October 16, 2001 Abraham Announces Projects to Bolster Electricity Supply from Coal Plants “Power Plant Improvement Initiative” is Precursor to President’s Clean Coal Technology Program
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 371ppm. As of 2025, when this post was published, it is 425ppm. 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 that the US was in one of its periodic phases of announcing “energy independence” (see also Nixon in late 1973).
The specific context was Dubya Bush on the campaign trail had said that carbon dioxide would need regulating. After his daddy’s Supreme Court picks gifted him the White House, his boss (Dick Cheney) kibboshed that.
What I think we can learn from this – they lie, they lie, they lie.
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 and I lived in a rational world, a world that cared about the future of human life – and indeed all life – on the planet, then by now October 15 would be internationally recognised as “The Day We Woke Up.”
We don’t, it isn’t, and the carbon dioxide concentration continues its relentless climb because we are pouring 40 billion tonnes into the atmosphere every year.
October 15 has two claims to be Wake Up day. The first and perhaps weaker one is that 54 years ago, in 1971, a report with the ominous title “Inadvertent Climate Modification” was published, in the run-up to the first big United Nations conference on the human environment, in June 1972.
The bigger claim, the one this article/blogpost/jeremiad covers, is the climax of a meeting of climate scientists gathered (not for the first time) in Villach, Austria in October 1985.
The statement they made is that day is painful. Here’s the beginning of it.
The Conference reached the following conclusions and recommendations:
1. Many important economic and social decisions are being made today on long-term projects major water resource management activities such as irrigation and hydro-power, drought relief, agricultural land use, structural designs and coastal engineering projects, and energy planning all based on the assumption that past climatic data, without modification, are a reliable guide to the future. This is no longer a good assumption since the increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases are expected to cause a significant warming of the global climate in the next century. It is a matter of urgency to refine estimates of future climate conditions to improve these decisions.
2. Climate change and sea level rises due to greenhouse gases are closely linked with other major environmental issues, such as acid deposition and threats to the Earth’s ozone shield, mostly due to changes in the composition of the atmosphere by man’s activities. Reduction of coal and oil use and energy conservation undertaken to reduce acid deposition will also reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, a reduction in the release of chloro-fluorocarbons (CFCs) will help protect the ozone layer and will also slow the rate of climate change.
3. While some warming of climate now appears inevitable due to past actions, the rate and degree of future warming could be profoundly affected by governmental policies on energy conservation, use of fossil fuels, and the emission of some greenhouse gases.
Villach gave scientists who attended the confidence (and a document) to go knocking on as many policymakers’ doors as they could. They did this, and less than three years later the climate problem finally became an “issue” that politicians could not actively ignore (1).
The climate issue
An awareness that something must be trapping some of the sun’s heat goes back to 1824, and the French scientist Fourier. By the mid-19th century, “carbonic acid” (carbon dioxide in solution) had been identified as one of those “greenhouse gases” by Eunice Foote (her work forgotten and only rediscovered in 2010) and John Tyndall. At the end of the 19th century a Swede, Svante Arrhenius, did the calculations and guesstimated (if you call a year of manual calculations, mostly to distract from a messy divorce guesstimating) that if you doubled the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere (principally by burning oil, coal and gas, with a side order of cutting down trees) then you’d heat the planet by 1.5 to 3 degrees above pre-Industrial levels. Arrhenius welcomed this – it would take hundreds or thousands of years and would allow food growing much further north. Soon after other scientists disputed Arrhenius’s findings, (falsely) saying that carbon dioxide didn’t act quite the way Arrhenius was assuming. Arrhenius replied, but carbon dioxide theory was largely (but not entirely) neglected until a British steam engineer called Guy Callendar presented a paper in 1938 saying that a) the world was warming (this was not controversial) and b) carbon dioxide levels were detectably higher (this was more controversial) and c) the first was being caused by the second (this was basically dismissed). Callendar received little support or interest in the UK, but American and Swedish scientists were less skeptical. The pivotal moment came in May 1953 when Gilbert Plass, a Canadian physicist working at Johns Hopkins University presented work that confirmed Callendar. Plass said that
The large increase in industrial activity during the present century is discharging so much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere that the average temperature is rising at the rate of 1.5 degrees per century.
From there on, other scientists took up the mantle. Thanks to the International Geophysical Year (1957-8) super accurate measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide began to be taken around the world, most importantly and famously at the Mauna Loa observatory in Hawaii and Antarctica (as far away from factories and forests as you can get).
Throughout the 1960s, awareness and concern grew generally about the impacts of human actions on the natural world (Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring being the most famous, but by no means the only example).
In the late 1960s pressures grew and various bodies (including NATO!) began to monitor environmental issues. The International Council of Scientific Unions set up the Scientific Committee of Problems of the Environment (SCOPE). The 1972 UN Conference on the Human Environment put “environmental matters” on the agenda, and a few agreements were signed. Another outcome was the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP). SCOPE and UNEP co-hosted the Villach meeting, along with the World Meteorological Organisation.
At the same time, Exxon and other oil companies were looking at the problem. As the website, full of documents released because of various lawsuits, says “Exxon Knew.”) (see also All Our Yesterdays posts)
The first World Climate Conference, held in Geneva in February 1979 could have been the moment when the issue broke through, but rearguard actions by skeptical scientists (including John Mason, head of the influential United Kingdom Meteorological office) prevented a stronger statement. In the US, then led by Jimmy Carter, Gus Speth and others were trying to push through greater awareness of the issue (see for example the Global 2000 report).
The politicians were not interested. New UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was briefed by her chief scientific advisor on the climate issue and was incredulous, saying “You want me to worry about the weather?”
Ronald Reagan was not even aware of Global 2000 (and famously said that trees cause pollution). The people behind him were actively hostile to environmentalism (see Dunlap and McCright). Nonetheless, scientific work continued, and members of congress (including a young Al Gore) were listening. By 1982 was on the evening news in the United States
Why 1985?
By 1985 UNEP and WMO had co-hosted several meetings on climate, chaired by the redoubtable and enormously respected Swedish scientist Bert Bolin (from 1959 onwards Bolin had been trying to raise concern about C02 build-up.
There are competing explanations for why the Villach Conference had what influence it did. One is simply that, thanks to recent work on the basket of non-C02 gases as being, if combined, almost as important as C02 the science was now clear enough, and the warming fingerprint emerging, that the scientists felt able, and indeed compelled to act.
The other is that – thanks to the discovery of the Ozone hole, atmospheric scientists now had enough credibility and access to decision-makers to make a concerted push on carbon dioxide worth a shot.
The short term impacts in the English-speaking world were most felt in Australia, the US and Canada.
In Australia the Science Minister of the day, Barry Jones, had been able to establish (in the teeth of indifference, derision and opposition from his Labor colleagues) a “Commission for the Future.” It chose to launch “The Greenhouse Project”.
I haven’t dug into the details, but this was in all probability influenced by Villach. The Australian Environment Council (made up of state and federal environment ministers) had been aware of the greenhouse issue in 1981 (and individually much earlier). It had then literally disappeared from the agenda of the AEF’s meetings until June 1986, when the head of the Atmospheric Physics Division of the CSIRO gave a presentation, based on Villach (2). Various ministers (including South Australia’s Don Hopgood, began spreading the word.
By 1988, ozone and greenhouse (often conflated and confused) were being discussed very widely in Australian society.
A report on Villach appeared in Search, the magazine of the Australian and New Zealand Association for the Advancement of Science.
In the United States, senators (Republican and Democrat – this before the Republican went totally mad) held hearings – the famous one is with Carl Sagan.
The Washington Post, until recently a proper newspaper ran articles based on Villach and its aftermath such as “A Dire Forecast for ‘Greenhouse’ Earth” (June 1986).
The Canadians, long aware of the issue, hosted a crucial meeting on The Changing Atmosphere in June 1988, in the same venue that they were also hosting the G7 meeting.
In the UK the response to Villach was much more muted. Fred Pearce quotes a senior scientist, Tom Wigley, as saying Villach was a “waffly non-event” whose influence has been “grossly exaggerated.” This is backed up by an interview I did recently with a British scientist who was also at Villach, and the documentary record I’ve been able to uncover at The National Archives – Villach did not “light a fire” under the British, for reasons that intrigue only me.
From 1988 on there have been countless reports and warnings. The IPCC continues to produce assessment reports (six and rising) and special reports on this that and the other. All these reports may eventually serve a purpose as flood defences. If “we” had been able to absorb the import of what those scientists said at Villach, and act accordingly, it might have been different – or, perhaps the most we could have done is delay the impacts we are seeing now for a few years.
Villach, for me, represents the tragic dilemma of our species. We are smart enough to cause ourselves no end of problems. We are smart enough to see some of those problems before they hit. We are not, it seems, smart enough to do much about some of them.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was just under 350ppm. Now it’s at 425 and climbing more each year. There are large amounts of gnarly trouble ahead. Relatively small bits are already here. More is to come.
Pearce, F. 2005. The Week the Climate Change. New Scientist volume 188; issue 2521
Footnotes
Things have changed back.
That scientist, Brian Tucker, is a somewhat confounding figure. He had written a monograph on Carbon Dioxide and Climate in 1981. Upon retirement he decided the whole issue was overblown, possibly a hoax, and contributed a couple of appalling articles to a right-wing/libertarian junk-tank, and generally made a fool of himself.
Ro Randall is a retired psychoanalyst with decades of extremely useful contributions to social movements (and latterly the climate movement) under her belt. For more, see links at the foot of this interview.
Sparked by a recent listen to a really good “Bridging the Carbon Gap” podcast interview she did a few years back with some young Americans, I sent her a few questions by email. The full text, unedited, is below.
What do you think is going on with the pretence that climate change isn’t happening – in the United States banning the phrase (along with many others) and in the UK with the Conservative Party saying it would repeal the Climate Change Act. Is this people just denying grim realities that would overwhelm them? What can psychoanalysis tell us about this, and where it might end?
I think there are three things worth bearing in mind here: bad faith actors, failures of leadership and the psychological state which psychoanalysis calls disavowal, a form of denial which is extremely common.
Top of my list is the existence of bad faith actors: very powerful people and organisations who have no interest in doing anything at all about the climate crisis who have been working hard to subvert, slow and prevent action. They have deep pockets and huge influence. I’m talking about fossil fuel interests and their think tanks, bankers and other representatives of big capital for example. These people can see that really tackling the climate crisis means adopting a very different economic model. This is anathema to their short-term planning horizons and their pursuit of profit and growth at any cost. They refuse to imagine that the systems they are part of might come to an end or might change. Some of these people passively obstruct change, but many are more active and are gaining ground as politics in many of the so-called ‘advanced economies’ shifts rightwards, seeking scapegoats for the ills of a disintegrating society.
Second is the way that these destructive influences have increasingly captured the ear of governments and this means that there is a lack of leadership on the climate crisis. When political leaders fail to embrace the definite, difficult actions which the climate crisis demands and fail to produce compelling narratives about why they are essential, people who are themselves in states of disavowal find one side of that conflict – that there is possibly nothing really the matter – comfortably confirmed.
Disavowal is the third factor I think we should consider. Disavowal is the psychoanalytic term for a form of denial where you hold two contradictory positions at the same time, keeping them safely separated in different compartments of the mind. On the one hand you know that the climate is changing, that it is desperately dangerous and that everyone’s lives need to change in order to deal with it. On the other hand, you also wish to carry on with life as usual. You don’t want to have to engage politically, you don’t want to give up the comforts of your accustomed lifestyle and – if you let yourself dwell on the other side of this dilemma – you are justifiably terrified. Conflict between the two parts of the disavowal dilemma means that many people are only too willing to take comfort from leaders who either pay weak lip service to the crisis or worse, deny outright that action is necessary.
In the UK we have seen XR and JSO, avatars of hope to some, basically crash and burn. What went wrong? What could have been done differently to get people participating in – or thinking of participating in these groups – to be more accepting of the idea that this was always going to be a marathon, not a sprint where the problem would be largely “solved” by 2025?
The demise of any political group is painful and demoralising for its members as well as for the wider movement and I’m sure that they themselves have spent a lot of time chewing over how to think about their work and analysing what they might have done differently, as well as feeling bitter or angry about the lack of wider public support and the relentless attacks from the political establishment. The two organisations are also not exactly the same. Although JSO grew out of XR its activities always seemed to be more focused and more cleverly executed. And you can see from the XR website that its viewpoints have evolved somewhat from the first heady days of 2018. The points I make below are purely about a possible psychological dimension to XR’s difficulties and I don’t want to minimise the real political difficulties that all climate action groups face.
From a psychological point of view, one thing stood out to me when XR arrived on the scene and strikes me still. XR had an interesting mix of age groups. As well as young people drawn into politics for the first time, there were many people in their 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s. Some of these had undoubtedly been involved in other strands of the climate movement and some of them in other strands of Non-Violent Direct Action, but many of those I met were completely new to any kind of climate action. Although they had known about climate change for years they had not felt the need to do anything about it, either personally or politically, at work or in their community: the knowledge had been split off, isolated in a separate part of their mind. They had, in other words been in thrall, for decades, to the defence of disavowal that I talk about above. People offered me various reasons for this inaction, most of which I found unconvincing: “I didn’t know,” “They didn’t say it was so serious,” “There wasn’t anything to be involved in,” I would be told. Climate change has been on the political agenda since the 1980s and surveys in the 2005 – 8 period found very high levels of both public awareness and public concern about climate change so it was unlikely that these people hadn’t known. I was reminded of someone with a serious alcohol problem who maintains that knowledge of its dangers was unavailable to them, or that no organisation existed that could help. Although such claims can be easily challenged, amongst a group of people who feel the same way, challenge is unlikely.
Emerging from a state of disavowal is an incredibly painful business. It involves looking back and questioning how you have lived your life, acknowledging the way you have – consciously or unconsciously – parcelled difficult conflicts up for your own convenience and ease of mind. Guilt and shame play a big part: guilt that you didn’t act politically when you could have done, guilt that you continued living a high carbon lifestyle because it suited you, shame at what your complicity says about the kind of person you might be. It’s perhaps not surprising that few people wanted to go down this road but in addition XR itself offered some easy ways of making sure that it was a road that was easy to miss. XR offered a lot of different ways of defending yourself against the pain of emerging from disavowal.
Firstly there was a focus on urgency that led to an atmosphere of manic activity. My impression was that it was hard to find space to question the goals, strategy and tactics that the leadership offered and that reflection, when it came, did not involve questioning the direction of the organisation and the type of actions chosen. Building coalitions and engaging with a wider public both seemed to take a back seat in the face of this urgency. Manic activity is a powerful way of avoiding emotions like guilt and shame but when the manic phase ends the descent into depression and inaction can be fast and overwhelming. I met many people whose initial euphoric engagement with XR tailed off into depression and hopelessness.
Secondly, XR kicked off with a powerful narrative that every previous initiative on climate change had been useless. This went as far as blaming organisations like Greenpeace for lack of progress on climate goals. Blame, shame and guilt were thus projected outwards and did not need to be faced internally. Many of those I met were unaware of the roads protests, climate camp or the anti-fracking groups and seemed not to believe that anyone had ever used NVDA before. Young people often feel like this, finding their elders useless and struggling to believe that they were ever politically active, but most of the people who offered me these views were long past their youth. There was thus a refusal to learn from others’ experience, while at the same time – in their focus on long-ago political groups like the American civil rights movement and the suffragettes – claiming that this was exactly what they were doing. The focus on imprisonment as something which would trigger government action was also curious: most NVDA organisations work hard to keep their members out of prison, if at all possible, in order that they can continue the work. The creation of martyrs has rarely been an overt goal. Psychologically it is hard not to see this as an unconscious desire for punishment for unexpressed guilt and shame about previous inaction.
Finally, in addition to these specifically psychological factors, the few protests that I attended often had an unclear focus and communication to the public seemed poor. Demonstrators were not engaging in conversation with passers-by while the protests themselves, which frequently involved stopping traffic, seemed focused on disruption to the public rather than specifically to fossil fuel interests, government or other powerful players. Alienation from a wider public thus happened rapidly and it was easy for government to get support for vicious crackdowns on all forms of protest. Add to all this the effects of the pandemic and it is perhaps not surprising that the movement struggled. JSO’s protests seemed more carefully targeted and although they were a smaller organisation, they may have been more successful in the long run.
Without wanting to be glib, at a species-level we seem to be in the same state as a previously healthy person who had blotted out that everything dies, and is now beginning to be confronted with signs of their own vulnerability and even mortality. What sorts of symptoms – compensations, magical thinking, denial, projection etc – might we see in the coming years in the UK?
I think it’s important to think about who ‘we’ are in this question. In a society riven by inequality and systems of dominance there is never a universal ‘we’. We are never really all in something together, just as we are never all following the same psychological path. Although there are undoubtedly people who are caught up in the dynamics you suggest it is important to recognise that in extreme situations most people actually respond with empathy, kindness and cooperation, stepping in to help each other and share resources in a common goal of survival. Rather than fix on the negatives of magical thinking, denial and projection we may do better to focus on how to build systems of sharing and kindness and cooperation.
In your magnificent climate change novel “Transgression” [reviewed here] the central character, Clara, is about 19 in 2009. So she’d now be 35. What is she doing now? Did she find a way to reconcile with her friend Ruby, who was much less convinced of the need for – and efficacy of – climate action?
Thanks for calling it magnificent! I’ve just started writing a sequel to “Transgression”, set in 2065 – 70, when Clara is in her late seventies and the world has changed dramatically. I won’t say anything more yet and I’m not even sure if I will manage to complete it – so many other things seem to get in the way of the concentrated space needed to write.
Anything else you want to say? (recommended viewing, reading, whatever)
There’s a film Climate in therapy, directed by Nathan Gross of I am Greta fame, which I hope may get some UK screenings soon. It’s about a group of climate scientists taking part in two days of group therapy to help them cope with the pain of being constantly in contact with the reality of what is happening and you can see a trailer at Climate in Therapy I think it would be particularly useful for climate scientists who often don’t find good spaces to talk about the impact their work has on them personally.
And the book I’m currently enjoying reading is Luke Kemp’s Goliath’s Curse, a challenge to the Hobbesian idea of individual self-interest and violence via a fascinating dive into what archaeology and anthropology can tell us about the realities of societal collapse in the past and how this might help us view the future.
This is one of many interviews Ro has kindly done.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 387ppm. As of 2025, when this post was published, it is 425ppm. 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 that the ACF had pushed as hard as it could for carbon pricing in 1994-5, and been defeated. Various carbon pricing schemes had been defeated in the subsequent decade and a half. What a horrible settler colony, with such contempt for everything.
The specific context was that business had been fighting hard, and winning all the time. The CPRS had already failed to get through parliament once, and a second go was coming up.
What I think we can learn from this – you can – and have to – try using your opponents’ tools, but don’t expect to get that much traction.
What happened next – Abbott toppled Turnbull as Leader of the Liberal Party/Opposition. Rudd’s dreadful scheme fell, but he lacked the spine to call a double dissolution election and Julia Gillard had to clean up his mess.
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.
