Thirty eight years ago, on this day, March 30th, 1988.
By ED LION LONDON — Tens of thousands of morning commuters watched two Greenpeace members Wednesday scale the 170-foot-high Nelson’s Column in London’s famed Trafalgar Square and perch atop it for three hours to protest acid rain.
Seven Greenpeace members — including the two climbers and five others who had helped them from the ground — were arrested
March 30, 1988 Seven arrested in protest against acid rain
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 351ppm. As of 2026 it is 428ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The broader context was that acid rain had been a sore point for the UK, especially because the Scandinavians – the Norwegians and the Swedes especially – were complaining that sulphur dioxide from the coal fired power stations of the UK’s Central Electricity Generating Board were causing acid rain to damage Swedish ecosystems, and the Thatcher government was extremely hostile to all action on this.
The specific context was that there had been the European Year of the Environment. Greenpeace was riding high. 1988 was one of those years that where a decade happens in a month sort of thing, on climate but more generally on environmental concerns.
What I think we can learn from this is that they weren’t able to get the same level of concern going about carbon dioxide, because it is so central to everything that we do and hard to imagine replacing.
What happened next Well, the acid rain issue largely went away because the amount of coal being burned decreased for various reasons. The coal had slightly less sulphur in It, etc. The eco-concern fizzled out by 1992. Everyone was exhausted of staring into the abyss, and those few who had tried to get arms of the state to respond were simply exhausted and demoralised.
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.
References
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Also on this day:
March 30, 1948 – The Conservation Foundation founded
March 30, 1983- EPA sea level rise conference
March 30, 1992 – Thelma and Louise could teach humans a thing or three….
March 30, 2005 – The Millennium Ecosystems Report is launched.
March 30, 2007 – economist Nick Stern in Australia
March 30, 2007 – Climate as “the great moral challenge of our generation” #auspol