Forty years ago today, there’s another of those well-catered greenwash events…
INDUSTRY: CARING FOR THE ENVIRONMENT
HRH, JOHN DAVIDSON, ANTHONY BIDDLE, BRUCE FALKINGHAM, JEREMY QUICKENDEN, PATRICK WEATHERILT, WILLIAM WILKINSON, BRIAN LETCHFORD, NICOLA LYON, JONATHAN FRANKLIN, JOHN HINCH, MARTIN HOLDGATE, MICHAEL SPURR, GEOFFREY LARMINIE, RICHARD LINDSELL, ANTHONY CLEAVER and WILLIAM WALDEGRAVE 30 April 1986
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 347ppm. As of 2026 it is 428ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The broader context was that the environment concerns had never really completely gone away after the early 1970s. Industry had created various astroturf and greenwashing initiatives at an international level, things like the WICEM that had been meeting in, I think, Versailles, I want to say, in 1984.
The specific context was that the ozone hole had been discovered. Amazon rainforest, deforestation, oil spills, fairly regular industrial accidents and disasters and so industry was always wanting to claim that it was a responsible corporate citizen, blah, blah, blah,
What I think we can learn from this is that you will always find politicians, especially on the right, but also centrists, which is pretty much everyone these days, are willing to play along with that, because that’s who donates the campaign funds, and that’s who provides the non-executive directorships once the party or the electorate finally tire of you.
What happened next: The greenwash really kicked into gear from sort of 1990 onwards. We need to think of greenwash and denial as two cheeks of the same arse.
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:
April 30, 2007 – Rudd hires Garnaut – All Our Yesterdays
April 30, 1985 – New York Times reports C02 not the only greenhouse problem