Welcome to a new style of All Our Yesterdays post! From the last four years of posting, there’s clearly a lot of stuff going on.
On January 1, 1958, American policymakers were reported to be worried that if THEY didn’t control the weather, those dirty commies would… January 1, 1958 – control the weather before the commies do! -Twelve years later, arch red-baiter President Nixon, had gone all Greta (remember, less than a week after his inauguration the Santa Barbara Oil Spill served as the start of the modern American environmental protest movement.) saying it was “literally now or never.”
Eleven years after that, a book by scientist William Kellogg and sociologist Robert Schware was published, the fruit of various labours under the auspices of the Aspen Institute.
January 1, 1981- “Climate Change And Society” published
Seven years later, after scientific consensus had hardened even further, another “conservative” (Radical right) president, the by-now-quite-senile Ronald Reagan put his signature to the Global Climate Protection Act – one of the various motherhood and apple-pie efforts by various US senators in the aftermath of the 1985 Villach conference.
January 1, 1988 – President Reagan reluctantly signs “Global Climate Protection Act” #CreditClaiming (Later that year the carbon dioxide problem finally became a political issue, thanks to a bunch of factors.)
The EU, which had in the early 1990s tried to get a carbon tax off the ground finally managed to start an emissions trading scheme. This made banks, consultants and economists happy.
January 1, 2005 – the EU Emissions Trading Scheme begins.
Finally, famed (and far-too-often-right) climate scientist James Hansen warned in a newspaper interview,
January 1 2007 James Hansen – “If we fail to act, we end up with a different planet”
Well, we failed to act, and the different planet is beginning to make itself obvious. Fun times in the Fafocene.
Are there other climate-related events that happened on this day that you think deserve a shout out? If so, let me know.
As ever, invite me on your podcast, etc etc.