Fifty six years ago, on this day, December 11th, 1969, the Australian Prime Minister goes all tree-hugger.
In concerning ourselves as a people with what makes for a more satisfying life, we have to admit that we are mostly only vaguely interested in what is happening to our environment, and what is more important what, indeed, we are doing to it. The sins of commission, I think are perhaps as great as the sins of omission. We all of us as citizens pollute the very air we breathe, we savage our unique wildlife with little shame, we slay our fellows on the roads with monstrous carelessness and we accept the congestion of our cities as though urban sprawl was the fault of somebody else. We blame everybody but ourselves for the grey areas in our daily lives.
https://pmtranscripts.pmc.gov.au/sites/default/files/original/00002148.pdf
11th December 1969 – Gorton comments on page 15 of William Queale lecture
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 324ppm. 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 that Australia had been invaded in the late 18th century. Sorry “settled” for “progress” and “Enlightenment” etc etc. The ecological impacts, along with the devastating social ones, had been profound, in terms of extinctions, topsoil loss, invasive species etc etc etc.
The specific context was there was a growing awareness, in the late 1960s, of all the damage being done. This was the era when “Conservation” was respectable and before so-called Conservative parties had swallowed the neoliberal Kool-Aid.
One is reminded also of comments RFK Snr made about GDP the previous year…
What I think we can learn from this- there was a time when politicians at least acknowledged tensions between growth and environment. Now it’s all hidden under eco-modernist muck.
What happened next – a couple of years later the pressure had grown so much that a Department of the Environment was created. Now THAT’S what I call success…
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:
December 11, 1975 – German scientist gives stark climate warning in Melbourne
December 11, 1979 – conference on “Environmental Effects of utilising more coal” in London