A more organised opposition to the IPCC’s conclusions began in the USA on Earth Day (22 April 1996), with a message distributed widely, including to every member of the US Congress, and with the first issue of the State of the Climate Report attached in which the IPCC conclusions were challenged. However, just as this report was about to be published, the Union of Concerned Scientists denounced it in a press release, based on earlier contributions to the media debate about global warming by the man in charge, Patrick Michaels: “The forthcoming climate change report sponsored by Western Fuels Association is like a lung cancer study funded by the tobacco industry.”
(Bolin, 2007) Page 128
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 362ppm. As of 2026 it is 428ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The broader context was that the denialists had won major battles in 1989 to 1992 by convincing George Bush to play hardball and to threaten to boycott the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change the Rio treaty, if targets and timetables were included in the treaty text.
Then denialists had also defeated Bill Clinton’s BTU tax in 1993.
The denialists were also gearing up for a battle royale over the upcoming Kyoto conference, and here we see them sending a message on Earth Day to all congresspeople as part of the day-to-day routine of blitzing politicians with talking points, which will be picked up and used by friends and allies and will be a reminder to those who were not their friends and allies that they the bad guys still exist and can make trouble.
The specific context was that the Kyoto battles were just beginning…
What I think we can learn from this is that evil never sleeps, never takes a step back unless forced to.
What happened next: Evil has kept on winning. Oh well.
Fifty five years ago, on this day, April 22nd, 1971,
UTILIZATION OF SOLAR ENERGY-PROGRESS REPORT FARRINGTON DANIELS
Professor Emeritus of Chemistry, Solar Energy Laboratory, University of Wisconsin: “Fifth, a whole new emphasis on the use of solar energy comes now from the widespread concern over pollution of our environment. Solar devices produce no pollution-chemical, radioactive, nor overall thermal-and under some circumstances could replace some of our power generators which now do produce pollutant carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, radioactivity and excessive waste heat.”
(Read April 22, 1971) Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. 115, No. 6 (Dec. 30, 1971), pp. 490-501
Published by: American Philosophical Society
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/985842
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 326ppm. As of 2026 it is 428ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The broader context was that the solar lobby had been talking about carbon dioxide for a while!
The specific context was that everyone was running around talking about energy supplies – and this is BEFORE the oil shock.
What I think we can learn from this is that by the late 60s, early 70s, solar energy proponents were pointing to carbon dioxide build up as a reason for advancing solar development as quickly as possible. It wasn’t always or ever their first argument, but it was in the mix.
What happened next: The environmentalists got contained, exhausted, and then the Oil Shock came and delivered the coup de grace.
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.
Who are you – where did you grow up, what contact did you have with ‘nature’? (There’s good evidence to suggest that the main determinant of people getting properly switched on to environmental issues is unstructured play with minimal supervision in nature before age 11).
I grew up in the North Woods of North America—the band of mixed forest that stretches across Ontario, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota—and within biking or driving distance of Lake Superior. It’s a stunningly beautiful place, but the landscape wears many scars that are just under the surface—in the neighborhood I grew up in, all the trees are the same age, and some of them take root in a kind of slate gray soil made of crushed mine rock. It is a landscape rich with nonhuman life, but it is extraordinarily anthropogenic.
I remembering writing something back when I was 15 or so that mused on all of these things, on the many walks and hikes and drives that I had taken through the continent—saying that these were the reasons I had become an environmentalist. I still think that’s probably true. Doubtless, they are a big part of why I became an environmental historian, too.
2) Tell us a little about your academic background – undergrad what where why, ditto for masters and PhD.
I grew up in an academic family—both my parents were scientists. And I went to a small college for my undergraduate degree (Amherst College, in New England), and loved it. There were a lot of draws for me at the time (and I was extremely lucky to have a family who encouraged me to do essentially whatever I wanted for my undergraduate)—the size, the setting, an open curriculum, and so on. Though I’ve always loved reading history books, I went in as a music major, wrote my senior thesis in it, and only picked up history as a double major.
While graduate school had certainly been a possibility, it took me several years to apply. I was disappointed with non-academic work, and though I figured there wouldn’t be a job at the other end of a history PhD, it would be a nice way to spend six years writing a book. In the end, I ended up with a book and a wonderful job.
It was a rocky path. I ended up switching my supervisor quite early on, and both my new advisors and my fellow PhD students radically changed my approach to history in a number of ways (a much bigger focus on labor and capitalism). I also think I probably came out the other end a better person—or at least a more thoughtful one. A couple of postdocs later, I’ve ended up at UCL.
3) In a nutshell (sorry!) what does your book – The Hobo: A History of America’s First Climate Migrants (Princeton University Press, 2026) – argue, and where did it “come from” – what gaps in the previous understandings was it filling, what ‘myths’ is it overthrowing, or at the least complicating?
Hobos were migrant workers because of an unpredictable climate and a steam-powered energy regime.
When we say “hobos,” we mean a group of long-distance migrant workers in the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century U.S., who moved seasonally between cities and the countryside. They existed in quasi-legal—really, mostly-illegal—spaces in the American West, dodging railroad police and working handshake contracts for bad bosses and rare but substantial payment.
And they existed for two reasons: First, the extraction industries hobos worked in had enormous year-to-year variability because of the climatic unpredictability of the American West. Employers never knew how many laborers they would need in a given season, so they hired migrants to plug the gaps. Second, no one managed to automate these industries, in large part because steam engines were big, bulky, and slow, unable to help much with harvesting wheat, cutting lumber, or construction. You needed human muscle power.
In the end, with new energy forms that could support much more miniaturized power, employers needed far fewer workers, and the mass migrant class vanished within basically a single decade.
I suppose relatively few people have thought about migrants environmentally. But this argument is less about gaps, and more about connecting disparate histories and asking what it means to consider them all together. Hobos are wonderful subjects in part because they travel so widely and work in so many different sectors—if you look through their eyes, you can see basically every industry of the American West at the same time.
4) Some readers will be thinking “but if you’re ‘rootless’ and have no love of/incentive of a particular place, then surely your attitude is going to be ‘use it up, move on’ – hardly an ecological example” – how would you respond?
There’s quite a number of ways I might respond to that. For one, some hobos often did love the environments they passed through—that was one big reason to go on frankly impractical cross-country trips in the first place. (Still is, as my own photo rolls can testify.) And their work absolutely orbited extraction and exhaustion, but this wasn’t really because they were rootless—it’s the other way around. Their work, and hobos themselves, moved rapidly to follow new and unexploited resources. In the end, pretty much everyone in the American West participated in this economy of relentless extraction—including farmers and ranchers whose families put down roots (ha, pun) for generations.
5) What were your favourite and least favourite bits of the process?
I love writing. Putting together everything into a narrative is a delight—from the outlining to the drafting to the chucking it in a bin and starting over. Writing a book is hard work; writing one that you like is nearly impossible. But I enjoy the challenge.
6) Who should read it (well, obviously, everyone should) and why? How would it help us make sense of our current and near future dilemmas/trilemmas/quadlemmas/n-lemmas?
You nailed it—it’s a book for absolutely everyone.
I really did try to write a book that basically anyone can pick up and read. That said, outside of people who want to read about hobos for their own sake, I think it’s for those interested in histories of the environment (obviously), capitalism, and specifically climate and energy. I think it’s also startlingly relevant to people who want to think about our own climate crisis.
Hobos faced an unstable climate and an energy transition, all while dealing with extremely precarious employment and threats of automation. In some industries, hobos were spectacularly unsuccessful in facing these challenges, and essentially disappeared from the workforce. In other industries, they successfully mobilized to defend labor and reduce precarity for everyone. Overall, their best moments came out of solidarity, and their worst out of prejudice and infighting.
As I write in the book, the situation hobos found themselves in doesn’t precisely map onto the one we face in the present day. Their climate disasters weren’t anthropogenic; the world was still being connected; the energy systems were different. But if you want to read a book showing how climate change and energy transitions changed life for the most destitute people in a society, read this one.
7) What next for you? What’s the next project?
It’s taken me a long time to come to terms with the fact that, although I’m a very fast writer on the day-to-day, projects seem to take a while. Writing is by far the fastest and most fun part of a book project for me; research is where I really tend to sweat it out and tinker with things for years. All of which is to say—there are a few different things that are brewing, including a probable second monograph on energy and American settler colonialism, but that and the others will all take a while to see the light of day.
8) Anything else you’d like to say.
Buy my book, of course! It’s quite affordable! Bookshop.org (US), (UK), or from the PUP website! (And the usual exhortations that requesting it at libraries, buying it from brick-and-mortar stores, and leaving reviews, are all great ways to help it out.)
Over thirty people gathered on Monday night to hear from four highly-engaged (1) and deeply knowledgeable speakers on the question of what is being done/can be done on biodiversity in Adelaide in the era of accelerating climate change.
The event was organized (very capably indeed) by Unley Voices for Climate Action.
After a brief welcome to country (2) and scene-setting, four speakers each had fifteen minutes to explain what is going on.
The first three were from Green Adelaide, a state government created and funded body which is “working towards a cooler, greener, wilder and climate-resilient Adelaide that celebrates our unique culture.”
They were
Sarah White, Regional Data Officer for Green Adelaide
They were followed by Di Salvi, the lead Climate and Sustainability officer from Unley Council, who gave an overview of what has been done/is planned locally.
(I took copious notes, but have doubtless got things wrong/mangled them, and will update accordingly).
Ms White kicked things off with a numbers-heavy (because numbers is what she does!) presentation that highlighted the work that has been undertaken to map – down to a house level, where the trees are, what they are, and what benefits accrue (especially in terms of their cooling effect).
In the brief Q&A for her talk she expanded on this – the Green Adelaide survey also captures the understory coverage (which is particularly important for biodiversity).
She was asked how frequently the surveys were done. The work is very resource intensive, and – if I got this right – it has been at four year intervals, with another survey just completed.
Dr Sheryn Pitman delved more into the overall strategies underlying the Green Adelaide effort, including the recently announced Urban Greening Strategy.
Tree coverage varies widely in the 17 (or 18, depending on how you count) areas covered by Green Adelaide (the Adelaide Hills is not included), from 1.7percent in Seaford to 52% in Waterfall Gully. There’s a target for 30% across the whole metropolitan area, but of course, they also have to look at species diversity for “future proofing” against disease etc (see my question at the end).
In the Q&A the thorny question of what actual powers Green Adelaide has at its disposal was raised, but deferred (see further down the blog post)…
The third presentation, from Nat Giffney, brought it to the nuts and bolts of what is being done and can be done by individuals and communities. Reflecting on the point that Adelaide was – before the settlers turned up – a particular biodiversity hotspot, with grassland, heathland, wetlands etc etc, Giffney said that “we need to use every little parcel of land. The starting (but not finishing) question was “what once grew where you live?” She explained that the Green Adelaide website allows you to find out, but typing in “native plants.”
She pointed out that tree hollows, useful for possums and birds, take a very very long time to form, and bigged up the work of volunteers who spend many hours removing agapanthus, which overtakes native species.
[Such is the history of introduced species – at this point I was put in mind of the wonderful concept of “biological cringe”, developed by environmental historian Tom Griffiths] See also here.
Biodiversity is, though we often fail to see it, is essential for the health of well, everything, and the ability to ‘bounce back’ (or to a different state) following floods, droughts etc. [see also though, ‘the great simplification’ and the Sixth Extinction].
So, we need plants at different heights and densities, lizard lounges, frog bogs and all the rest of it. The final plea was to make sure that bird baths are out of reach of predators, and cleaned regularly.
Right, before we continue with the rest of the report, a request. If you are reading this, there is a non-trivial chance you were living in Adelaide in the 1970s, and active on environmental matters. If so – and especially if you were involved in the campaign to get a deposit scheme going for beverage containers – I would like to interview you. ALSO, if anyone knows anything about M. Allen of Malvern, who wrote this letter to the Advertiser, published on December 14 1973, please get in touch.
Sir – One reads (“Advertiser,” 11/12/73) of the Australian Government’s interest in entering the car manufacturing industry of the Miners’ Federation move towards development of a national trade union policy to conserve energy resources, of the prediction of the British National Development Council that the energy crisis will probably halve the growth of world trade and the fear of the Member for Angas (Mr. Giles) that future petroleum shortages may affect all of us as private individuals and the business community.
What none of these individuals or groups gives any consideration to is the fact that our past rapacious use of fossil fuels, both in industry and in the motor car, may well bring about changes in climate far more catastrophic to our way of life than shortage of fuel.
While conservation of energy resources is commendable, what is urgently needed is a complete reappraisal of our values and priorities and a thorough investigation of the long-term consequences of our actions in both the private and industrial sectors.
M. Allen
Malvern
Now, back to the report!!
Speaking last, Di Salvi of Unley Council had the hardest job – keeping the attention of the audience after a solid 50 minutes of very dense information. She managed it with aplomb, telling a compelling story about the Council’s efforts in creating more tree cover and wildlife cover (full disclosure, my late father, Mike Hudson, was a Councillor for many years, with an interest in ‘pocket parks’ before they were sexy).
Thermal sensors are available via the Unley Library catalogue, so you can take an inventory of your house and garden.
The Council did a “tree voucher lottery” skewed towards areas in Unley with less foliage, and this appears to have been a success, with fruit trees being particularly popular, and most of those planted still alive.
There are, of course, challenges
A micro-break to stretch legs and recombobulate from the large amount of information received was followed by a short and sweet Q and A.
The first question was “more of a comment” but – gasp, a short and pertinent one (it didn’t come from a man) – it was about the importance of night lighting and not making life hell for nocturnal creatures. The happy news is that not only is there a webinar on this (the webinar series “will beat Netflix”) but when Unley Council was replacing some lighting recently, they made sure the new stuff was wildlife friendly.
The second question was from me – I asked if thought had been given to the speed of climate change and what trees etc will survive the temperatures we are likely to be seeing in the year 2050 (which is only just around the corner). Pleasingly, the answer was an emphatic yes.
“Are there priority species?” asked someone. Well, that’s complicated, because of course there is no one size fits all plan for such a wide variety of habitats.
The question of what actual power Green Adelaide had to enforce, rather than cajole, came up, and was fairly deftly dealt with (no legislative or budgetary power, but the kind of ‘soft power’ – data dependent – that can make some meaningful changes.) Until we institute the green eco-utopian government, that’s probably the best we can get? (as distinct from hope and plan for).
“What is being done about fake lawns?” asked someone. It turns out that some councils have banned them, and Sarah White pointed out that the data that Green Adelaide is able to provide about the cooling function of real lawns helps policymakers see the light.
An expert on climate extremes suggested that Green Adelaide run an educational campaign to inform people that the time to water their gardens is BEFORE the heatwave starts (once it has started your efforts will be pretty futile) and this was received with great enthusiasm by the Green Adelaide representatives.
And then, very shortly after 9pm, the event was brought to a close. Nicely done!
Dates for your diary
Btw – You can email the Unley folks on – uvforca@gmail.com
May 3rd GreyBox Day
May 18 – next meeting of the Unley for Climate Action crew.
Possibly June 1st for “virtual powerplants” meeting (about batteries alongside solar panels, and feeding back into the grid).
Random reflections
The event was urgently needed, for me at least. I needed something to restore my faith in “activism” – in the idea that people could put on an event that started on time, did what it said it would do and was generally efficiently and effectively run. (I won’t link to my rant about last Friday, but you can find it if you look)
What would I change? Very very little. Perhaps a ‘turn to a person you don’t know’ at the outset, and a ‘clap clinic’ style device for keeping people to time. If the speeches could have been recorded, that would be great for people who couldn’t attend (but this is labour intensive and the game may not be worth the candle!). These are quibbles. It was a fine event, and lovely to see an all-female panel for once (fanel as opposed to manel?)
Footnotes
(1) I would encourage everyone – but especially men writing about women – to avoid the word “passionate”. It is far too often code for “emotional/over-invested/unreliable” with shades of “hysterical.” See also Malcolm X and the use of the word “articulate.” (And Chris Rock, for that matter).
(2) It was a nice touch to flag that first nations people are reclaiming their language and fire practices and that “for 190 years they’ve put up with colonization.”
Update April 22.
Here are some links kindly sent through by the Green Adelaide folks
Green Adelaide Webinar recordings: Webinar – YouTube (this is where people can access ‘The colour of the night: wildlife sensitive lighting’, along with a lot of other topics).
Fifty five years ago, on this day, April 21st, 1971, a forum organised by “Resources for the Future” (by “the” they mean “rich white people with guns”),
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 326ppm. As of 2026 it is 428ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The broader context was that MacDonald had been banging on about carbon dioxide for quite some time. Commoner knew what he was talking about. And Glenn Seaborg, as chair of the Atomic Energy Commission, had been aware of carbon dioxide build up for a long time. The first public statement that I’ve been able to find is his commencement address in 1966 at, I want to say UC San Diego, anyway, June ‘66 and there had been other similar announcements, I think he’s quoted in the New York Times in the late 60s. And here he is again on this question.
Also, Fressoz, in “More and More and More” has a section on how much the nuclear guys knew from the early 1950s…
The specific context was that Earth Day has happened, and the Stockholm conference in June of ‘72 is on its way. And therefore everyone is scratching their head about energy and the environment and economic growth.
What I think we can learn from this is that we knew.
What happened next: the energy oil crisis of ‘73 basically put the kibosh on any questions about reducing fossil fuel usage, and here 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.
It comes down to what your definition of “movement” is.
If you believe, as Adam Bandt and his colleagues seem to, that a movement is a bunch of people from a Big Organisation, jetting in from their HQ and standing on a stage, offering “hope,” authenticity and validation to ranks of people who are sat mutely in rows, wanting their (begging) bowls filled up, then Friday was another success in a long line of successes.
If you believe, as I and a few (many?) other people do, that a movement is made up of individuals, small groups, large groups, pulling mostly in the same direction, as frenemies, helping each other out, learning from each other, sharing ideas and resources, then Friday night was another catastrophic shit-show/missed opportunity in a world that can’t afford any more missed opportunities.
That’s it. That’s the post.
Read on at your peril.
First let”s say the good stuff (because one of the standard response-but-not-replies is that I “never say anything positive” (1)
The event, at the Jam Factory on North Terrace, had a fair number (150? 175?) of people present (certainly slightly more than at Thursday’s rally).
Most of those people (but not all) seemed to enjoy themselves, and get what they wanted (or at least expected?)
They heard from some voices that are too rarely platformed (i.e. First Nations people)
Er…
That’s it
Not much, is it? And absolutely not enough. It wasn’t enough forty years ago and it most definitely is not enough now.
Here’s what happened, from my perspective. On Thursday, there’d been a rally. It was held under time and place constraints. Here, on Friday, the organisers had more space and time to show what they could do.
There were people at the door to check that everyone had RSVPed, that their name was On The List. This felt a little bit “off”, and I almost decided to test the idea that I wouldn’t be able to get in without giving a name and email. But then they found me on one of their sheets of paper (we will come back to this).
The event was billed to start at 5pm but it was quarter past when we were called to order (we will come back to this). People were mostly sat on the chairs, talking to people they knew. There were empty seats, but also people standing at the back and the side. Perhaps 150 people?
The event started with a lovely coming-onto-the-stage led by Uncle Jack and his fellow panellists, and a welcome to country. After that, I gotta write, it was mostly downhill.
Kirsty Bevan of the Conservation Council of South Australia got things under way. The transcript could be submitted to the “I” column of UK satirical publication Private Eye. She also said that us gathering there in the evening was an “action”? Really? Are we emptying the term “action” so far as to include these sorts of meetings? A rally outside an AGM would, in some people’s minds, be a borderline example of an ‘action’, but a meeting counts as an action now? If the rest of the event had been good, I wouldn’t be “nit-picking” (2), but it wasn’t.
The standard line appears to be that the Santos business model is causing climate change. This is indisputable, but the question is then, how do we stop it? (3)
Next up, Adam Bandt, formerly a Greens MP. – “together we are going to build a movement.” Again, it comes down to what you think a movement is. In my view there was basically no “movement-building” going on.
Bandt also flipped through the stump speech memes he had deployed at the rally. “Governments don’t go to war over the sun and wind…”) “There’s more of us than there are of them.” And then, cringe, “Remember the Franklin Dam campaign.” Well, about half the audience were 60 or more, and CAN remember it (it culminated in a 1983 High Court decision saying that the Hawke Federal government DID in fact have the power to over-rule the Tasmanian government on the question of a hydro-electric dam). But maybe the example of a ‘victory’ you are pointing to is … (checks notes) … FORTY-THREE YEARS AGO then maybe – just maybe – you’re doing something wrong?
Bandt then held out the promise of the audience being able to “take a couple of actions” and that he would tell people what they were (we will come back to this).
Then, the bombshell.
Bandt quickly and casually announced that the event – which had been advertised as a Q&A would not, in fact, have q and a, because there wasn’t enough time
This was astonishing, and absolutely – in my opinion – deadly for the credibility of ACF and CCSA as campaigning organisations.
They had advertised it as such. They had the venue for two hours. They started fifteen minutes late for no apparent reason. Nothing was stopping them holding the advertised Q&A.
This was a brazen bait-and-switch
Either they never intended to do a Q&A, or they did but some OTHER reason stopped them and they were too scared/embarrassed to say what that was. So they came out with the “lack of time” excuse instead and relied on everyone being too polite to make a big deal of this.
Why am I making a big deal of this?
Because “we” are supposed to be better than the lying conniving exploitative extractive assholes who are trashing the planet
“We” are supposed to be honest, competent etc
Either they never intended to do it, or “something came up.” I am not sure which is worse. It simply cannot have been a lack of time. That is a brazen lie and it is shameful that Bandt had such a low opinion of the audience that he thought it would fly. The only thing more shameful is that the audience went along with this. So much for their self-respect.
Then followed the speeches from the First Nations representatives, which almost redeemed the whole sorry show. Almost, but not quite.
For me, the key call was from Kara Kinchella. “We have to do better than we’re doing.”
Quite.
But on the evidence of this awful event, which was pure ego-fodder, we are NOT doing better, and we seem not to know or care.
Bandt then did a “conversation” style thing with the three speakers, making sure to interject favoured campaign factoids (Santos has had sales of $47bn over the last ten years, and paid zero company tax.”
At just after six pm (with the venue available for another hour!) Krsty Bevan drew the formal event to a close. Almost. There was still time for Bandt to claim that there were “a few hundred of us here tonight” (nope). And that we should all sign a petition and saying “I look forward to seeing you at the next rally.”
It was (to me) fascinating that the impending (mid-May) Australian Energy Providers annual conference was NOT mentioned. Could it be that ACF and the CCSA are afraid of bad publicity because of those “bomb-throwers” of Extinction Rebellion?
The final, inevitable, invocation was to stay, listen to some music and buy a beer “talk to each other” – having done precisely nothing to design the meeting around making it easier for people who came not knowing anyone to talk to strangers.
Some people did stick around, but I was not the only one heading for the door. And at the tram stop I met someone who’d been at the same event and we compared notes, agreeing that it had been intensely top-down, designed it seemed to us mostly about gratifying the egos of the comperes (this is distinct from the panellists) and harvesting contact data for future use.
I will write again about all this, but I have a couple of (well, four) closing thoughts to share.
First, there was a kind of ‘love-bombing’ going on (so much so that it gave me flashbacks to a late 1980s ‘Festival of Light’ meeting I went to(4). Repeated effusive (fulsome, in the original sense) thanks for attending, but without any attempt to say thank you in a meaningful way (i.e. by enabling people to form or strengthen the kind of weak ties (as per Granovetter) that make a movement.
Second – some of those people present – especially ones who are already plugged into networks – DID have a good time, did have a kind of bonding/re-charging of their batteries. But so what? that’s not enough, and certainly not enough compared to what could have been done. It all has a vibe of the animals singing Beasts of England to soothe themselves after the latest evidence of their defeat at the hands of the pigs and the dogs. (That’s an Animal Farm reference)
Third – if people who attended are turned into ego-fodder, if they leave without new connections, new ideas, then whatever hopium the organisers have ‘inserted’ into them fades and they have to come back for more, or they just to give up.
Fourth – there is an irony in all this. We (the good people) are opposed to Evil Organisations who disregard the skills and lived experiences of local people, who see those people only as in the way or simply usable as resources. But when the same dynamic – top down, extractive, is used by nominally different campaigning organisations, we are so colonised, so desperate to believe in a Brighter Future, that we don’t even see the dynamic.
So what happened and why does it keep happening?
So why did I write this?
For the shiggles. Because a couple of people said they were curious. Because I am not writing enough.
What response do I expect?
For the most part, absolute silence.
For the next part, indifference, derision and ad hominems.
For the next smallest part, willful incomprehension and counter-“attacks” that set up various strawmen and knock them down.
There is a limit to how much ‘defensive writing’ you can do, in order to try to maintain a conversation with people who are – in my experience – absolutely determined NOT to have a conversation about these issues (namely the ongoing failures of ‘big’ green organisations). The more you try to anticipate their responses (again, not replies) and neutralise them, the more time and energy you waste, the more reader(s?)-bandwidth you take up, the more you allow low-rent people to live rent-free in your head. And for what? So, foregrounding the ‘good’ stuff (which ain’t that good) is my only conscious attempt to frame this in ways ‘acceptable’ to the ‘right’ people. They’re not reading, and if they’re reading they’re not taking it in, and if they’re taking it in then they’ve not been doing anything, and will continue not to. What was that about ‘rent-free”? Sigh.
Words matter. And they reveal how we conceptualise the world, and our actions. Gathering for a meeting as “action” my very fat arse.
Also, if you’re doing housekeeping, perhaps actually ask someone from the venue where the toilets are?
Fifty six years ago, on this day, April 20th, 1970,
“The GCMI began with a pilot recycling program in Los Angeles, launched on April 20, 1970, just two days before the first Earth Day. It set up eight collection centers at glass-container manufacturing plants in the Los Angeles area and cultivated interest in the southern California media by inviting journalists and camera crews to opening day events and supplying prepackaged ideas for feature stories. Offering a penny per pound for used glass containers that were brought in, the GCMI spread word of the program to “churches, colleges, schools, youth groups, civic and service organizations, Garden Clubs, PTA’s, ecology clubs” and other organizations, inviting them to bring in bottles and jars for recycling.”
(Conley, 2006,: 96)
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 325ppm. As of 2026 it is 428ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The broader context was that Americans had a conserver culture sort of, kind of, sort of until the 50s. And then you see jeremiads by people like Vance Packard, (the Waste Makers etc). And there’s real concern about the ongoing despoilation of America, its natural beauty, blah, blah, blah. And also there’s the Malthusian fear that resources are running out, so rather than reduce resource use and share equitably, which, of course, would be Dictatorial Communism, we will instead have recycling to make everyone feel better about themselves. And so it came to pass.
The specific context was that Earth Day was just about to happen. Earth Day was, in fact, huge.
What I think we can learn from this is that as per TS Eliot, we can only handle a little truth.
What happened next: Recycling became virtue signalling, a bit like ratifying the Kyoto Protocol or whatever, and acted as a kind of mitigation deterrence, or Meaningful Action. Deterrence, aka MAD. Oh, I like that Mutually Assured distraction – have to use that!
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 today the first (Afaik) Hollywood film to mention global warming was released – Soylent Green (spoiler, it’s made of people), based on an Overpopulation Novel by Harry Harrison called “Make Room, Make Room”
On this day 36 years ago, April 18, 1990 President Bush’s conference finishes,
Shortly thereafter President Bush invited representatives of the 20 most influential countries in the world to a White House conference on science an economics research related to global change (17-18 April, 1990, in Washington). Even though the FAR would soon be completed and was intended to serve as the basis for negotiating a climate convention, no invitation to attend the conference was extended to the IPCC. I was surprised and sought an explanation through my contact in the USA (Dr Robert Corell) and I was soon thereafter invited to attend. For the first time I sensed that the IPCC messages might be disturbing the formulation of a US policy about these matters.
(Bolin, 2007: 59-60)
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 354ppm. As of 2026 it is 428ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The broader context was that Republican politicians, presidents and vice presidents, – looking at you, Reagan and Bush – had been ignoring carbon dioxide build up. There had been a real warning and a real opportunity to do something meaningful back when it was still possible in 1977-81. That opportunity was ignored.
The specific context was that in 1988 George Bush, running for president and vulnerable on environment matters because he hadn’t done anything, (his Democratic opponent, Michael Dukakis, who kind of sort of had), announced that people who were worried about the greenhouse effect were forgetting about the “White House effect”, and that if he were to be president, he (Bush) would in his first year in office, convene an International Meeting on what to do about it. Well, Bush had won the 1988 election handily, and then guess what, did not hold the International Conference.
And when he did finally hold the international conference, he somehow, his people somehow “forgot” to invite the chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Swedish scientist Bert Bolin. Funny that.
What I think we can learn from this is that people like George Bush are hopefully rotting in hell for many reasons, climate change denial and obstruction being near the top of the list.
What happened next: Bolin died in 2007 having lived long enough to see the IPCC get the Nobel Peace Prize, and to have the hope that, who knows, maybe, in Copenhagen, in two years time, there would be a meaningful global deal, and there wasn’t.
Thirty three years ago, on this day, April 17th, 1993,
The Prime Minister, Paul Keating, and the Minister for Primary Industries and Energy, Simon Crean, have denied knowledge of alleged Treasury proposals for a $1.9 billion energy tax.
Mr Crean rejected reports in The Weekend Australian and The Age on Saturday [17 April] which suggested that a tax on the energy content or fuels and possibly carbon emissions, being discussed by Treasury and the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, had drawn on studies by the Department of Primary Industries and Energy.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 357ppm. As of 2026 it is 427ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the anti-greenhouse action forces had won famous victories in 1991 and 1992, watering down the National Greenhouse Response Strategy and the Ecologically Sustainable Development process to derisory levels. However, they knew that, because of international ratification of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the battle would not be going away…
The Business Council of Australia and others were paying very close attention to what was happening in the United States under Bill Clinton and the BTU tax, and also what was happening and Europe, where carbon tax had been defeated there.
I don’t know who leaked what to force Keating and Crean into this public statement, but the obvious question is cui bono? And a leak like this, feeding a story to tame journalists (there is rarely another kind sadly) means that you get to fire a shot across the bows of the pro-tax crowd. But of course, suppressing fire, as anyone who’s been in a proper fire fight will tell you, doesn’t really work.
What I think we can learn from this is that there are always games, wheels within wheels, you name it. This is one of them. We learn that 33 years ago, the straightforward, surely uncontroversial proposition that you tax things that are harmful in order to discourage their use and to encourage the creation of alternatives, was beyond the pale (Keating really hated the greenies).
What happened next
Well, there was an environment minister called Ros Kelly. She had to resign. Her replacement was another guy who knew all about the issues, the late Graham Richardson, he had to resign, quit, I forget which. And then Senator John Faulkner came along… And in early 1994 was saying, “Yeah, we might be looking at a carbon tax.”
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.
