Forty seven years ago, on this day, May 22nd, 1979,
President Carter’s chief scientific adviser Frank Press requests NAS to look at CO2
[following MacDonald and Pomerance] Finally, weeks later, MacDonald called to tell him that Press had taken up the issue. On May 22, Press wrote a letter to the president of the National Academy of Sciences requesting a full assessment of the carbon-dioxide issue. Jule Charney, the father of modern meteorology, would gather the nation’s top oceanographers, atmospheric scientists and climate modelers to judge whether MacDonald’s alarm was justified — whether the world was, in fact, headed to cataclysm.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 3xxppm. As of 2026 it is 430ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The broader context was that from the mid 1970s, various scientists in the United States – we’re talking Gordon MacDonald, Alvin Weinberg, Roger Revelle, perhaps a few others – had been able to lobby the ERDA to start taking climate change seriously and put pressure on the higher-ups in the science establishment in the United States, especially President Carter’s Chief Scientific Advisor, Frank Press. And Press, on this day, asked the National Academy of Sciences to have a look at the issue with new eyes to see if the fears of the carbon dioxide action advocates were fair and justified.
The specific context was that Chief scientists understandably want to make sure a problem they are being told about is actually a problem, before they go to their political pay masters with it. That’s fair and legitimate.
What I think we can learn from this. That for all reasonable circumstances, we knew enough by the late 1970s to be taking action.
What happened next. The NAS did the study. This was the Charney report, and it said, “yeah, if we keep tipping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere there’s absolutely no reason not to believe that the temperature will go up significantly and that will cause a world of pain” and Press clearly didn’t like that, didn’t think it should be something on Carter’s agenda, especially in the following year, which was an election year.
Frank Press died 2020 – a life of magnitude https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2004812117
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.
When he was unceremoniously dumped by the Labor Party in late 1991, after failing to effectively counter Liberal leader John Hewson’s Fightback! campaign, the level stood at 355ppm.
When he died in 2019, the atmospheric levels stood at 411ppm (they’re now pushing 430ppm). I don’t intend to recap his climate mis-steps (see here) and missed opportunities (I did that already in this Conversation piece: Bob Hawke, the environmental PM, bequeathed a huge ‘what if’ on climate change). Nor do I intend to give a blow-by-blow account of who said what about what to whom tonight (a video was made and is already up – if you’re ‘into’ history, politics etc, it’s definitely worth your time.
What I intend to do is … serve up a few banalities and call it a day.
Banality one is that History is about what gets told and how. It’s also about what doesn’t get told (and how it is not talked about – usually by running out of time/focusing on something else.
Fortunately there wasn’t that much banality on display tonight at the Hawke (!) Centre on North Terrace. The event was to launch/publicise a new book ‘Gold Standard: Remembering the Hawke Government’.
It was ably compered (not facilitated!) by Misha Ketchell of The Conversation, who had managed to tear himself away from The West Wing to serve up a series of more-than-perfunctory soft-ball questions to the three professional historians (and co-editors of the book). These were (drum roll please)
They covered a lot of ground, and wore their deep expertise lightly (this should of course, be the norm among academics, but trust me, it ain’t).
They (especially Holbrook) were good on the way the Hawke government came to loom large as a picture of stability after the 2007-2018 bloodbath of the Prime Ministers. (Fwiw I think the Hawke/Keating era looms large because it was ultimately the death of the Australian Settlement, something discussed at the end of the event by – iirc- Bongiorno).
They (especially Black) were good on the way that the media landscape (mass, social) has transformed out of all sight, and how much more difficult governance is now. There’s a story (not told tonight) of Julia Gillard pointing out that you could offer a huge detailed set of policy statements and the journos would be hungry again hours later. The beast is hungry hungry hungry, and that isn’t helping anyone. (Thomas Mayo covered some of this last week in his Nelson Mandela lecture at the same venue, btw, and it too is well worth your time) – here, inevitably, is my blogpost about that.
What they didn’t cover (at all, or in great depth for my monomania)
So, for me as a former Australian resident and occasional visitor (nearing the end of the latest visitation), a few trends/dilemmas strike me afresh every time I cross the girt sea.
The exquisite vulnerability to climate change (which is being accelerated by the relentless search for fossil fuels for export purposes: The Australian Oil and Gas lobby has just finished its latest trade fair about 200m from the Hawke Centre. It faced only tiny protests, after State Premier Peter Malinauskas unleashed some nice authoritarian anti-protest laws in 2023).
The running sore of a lack of any real reconciliation with Aboriginal peoples (the acknowledgement of country at tonight’s event was pretty cursory, tbh). If October 7th hadn’t sucked all the oxygen out of the room, then the heart-breaking vote against the Voice would have really damaged Australia’s international standing.
The increase in inequality and the visible rise of rough sleeping (which is the merest sliver of the tip of the iceberg of homelessness etc). The ‘cost of living’ crisis is a permacrisis for many. It was not always this bad, at least in Australia…
Not all of this can be sheeted home to Hawke, but Hawke’s record especially on climate, the failure to keep the 1988 promise of a Treaty, and the failures around public housing (alluded to near the end), deserved, in my opinion, a bigger chunk of tonight’s assessment. It’s one thing to say you want to avoid hagiography, it’s another to actually avoid it. That said, this was a very nicely done event, and they did, after all, only have an hour. The closest we got to a discussion of neoliberalism (a word mentioned once or twice, almost in passing, and called ‘economic rationalism’ back in the day – though there are ongoing debates about whether those two are the same thing), was Black talking about ‘civil erosion’ the (global) collapse in trade union membership and so on, and then another mention in the context of too-much hagiography.
At this point Frank Bongiorno gave a shout out to his book about the 1980s, and pointed to a list of failures (of treaty, of public service reforms, of the marketization of services that would be better off under actual public control).
Interviewed long after being booted out of the Prime Ministerial role by her own party (sound familiar?) Margaret Thatcher was asked her greatest achievement. She said… Tony Blair.
Blair learned from Hawke/Keating – the early years of Blair gave me a real sense of déjà vu for the mid-80s, in terms of the way the political battles were fought. But I am a bit of a weirdo perhaps (1).
The economy grows, but the problems, the pile of debris we call progress, also grew. Now, 20 and 35 years after they left the stage, those problems are becoming impossible to ignore…
Footnote
At the bus-stop on the way home (after a fabulous meal at Dino’s, the Greek place at the King William Street end of Hindley Street) we bumped the sixteen-ish year old daughter of a friend. The mum is very smart, as is the daughter. I asked her is she knew who Bob Hawke was. Nope. But then, I don’t think at her age I knew who, say, Arthur Caldwell was. The caravan moves on.
Joe Hill (of the International Workers of the World)
[Update – speech I won’t give at the bottom of this post]
The American novelist, thinker and civil rights activist James Baldwin wrote, in January 1962, that “not everything that can be faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”
Ahead of another rally on the steps of Parliament House on Friday 22nd May (5.30 to 6.30), I think we need to face a few facts (as I see them – your mileage may vary).
(It seems to me that ) Malinauskas is in a much stronger position than he was a week ago.
First and foremost, he has completed the chopping down of the trees – there is no physical thing to defend anymore. [update – there may be some remnants, but the major job of work has been done, I think.]
Second, with the help of the Advertiser (of which more in a separate blog post) and all mass media he has painted his opponents as ‘extremists’ and smeared the lot of them (1). Sure, it won’t have worked as a smear on everyone, but it will have made some people reluctant to engage with future campaigns (the point of it is, after all, to raise the costs of ‘recruitment’ and ‘retention’). This is not new. See this below from 1970, with NSW Premier Robin Askin talking about ‘professional agitators’.
A significant number of people will be (understandably!) demoralised, disenchanted. This will especially be the case if the rally on Friday is smaller than the 2,000 is who turned up last Wednesday.
I just read this on Facebook, and I think it is accurate (emphasis added) –
I know yesterday was disappointing, honestly, the past week has been tough. A lot of us are feeling depleted, angry, depressed.. Just tonight I even ate half a tub of ice cream trying to cope
The point is that those people who were previously engaged in “activism”, or have strong existing sympathetic networks will be better able to deal with those feelings, but those who are – for whatever reason – more isolated, will be having a really really tough time of it. Grief can easily curdle into cynicism and disengagement.
If Malinauskas is stronger (some will dispute this) and ‘we’ are weaker (some will dispute this) then this makes the campaigns to come (MotoGP, Fracking moratorium) more difficult. Momentum counts for a lot.
Crucially, then, the same mistakes must not be committed.
For me, the rally on Wednesday May 13 was a seriously missed opportunity to get those who attended (and those who didn’t) energised, connected and inspired. There were very very few concrete and engaging actions being suggested. It was (and I was listening closely) mostly about what other people (politicians) were already doing, and a petition to sign).
I wrote a blog about this, and suggested that the number 585 could have been used. Here is the end of a ‘speech I would have given’
This is great. Thank you. But this is not enough. We need more. So a final pledge is coming up..
We need artists, poets, songs. We need tiktok videos, we need memes, slogans. We need blogs. We need letters to the Advertiser. Sorry- I was just playing with you. We need to bypass the Murdoch media. We need lawyers, we need conversations, we need networks. We need people standing outside football matches with placards and information about what is being done by this government, and in whose benefits. We need – well, we need more ideas than I have, we need all the ideas, skills and energy that YOU have.
Does each of you pledge to go home from here and – alone or with your friends – come up with a list of five things you all can do, with your knowledge, your skills, your networks, your time? Then DO those things, get better at those actions. Share those actions? Do you?
(Hopefully ‘yes’)
Talk to five people
Write an eight sentence letter to the Premier and your MP
Come up with a list of five things to do.
If you pledge it, then on three, 585!
(hopefully people chant 585)
What is to be done
The American linguist Noam Chomsky once wrote
“If you go to one demonstration and then go home, that’s something, but the people in power can live with that. What they can’t live with is sustained pressure that keeps building, organizations that keep doing things, people that keep learning lessons from the last time and doing it better the next time.”
It is not clear to me that the organisations trying, valiantly, to defend the parklands are able to do this – time will tell, she usually does (1).
We have to face facts (which doesn’t guarantee that we will ultimately change them).
The parklands are under siege. They have been before. This below is from 1984.
We have to develop skills, knowledge, relationships. We have to spot where we have absolute lacks or single-points of failures in our organisations and networks. That takes time, effort and does not come with any endorphins.
We have to give guidance, encouragement and support (emotional, intellectual etc) to people who are new, who have limited time, who are despairing
We have to acknowledge that there are risks in despair leading people into de-activation or into (more) conspiracy theories, or into smugness and dismissal of posts (like my last one and this one too presumably) that try to raise questions of efficacy.
Friday’s rally will – I presume – predominantly be attended by a subset of those who were there last Wednesday. The mood will be angry, sombre. There will probably be some recriminations, some hopelessness. I don’t think the ‘stop the chop’ chant will work in the same way.
All this is an enormous challenge for the speakers, for the strategists.
Not an insurmountable one, but enormous. A bit like the polycrisis we face – of a collapsing biosphere, hollowed-out democracy, accelerating wealth inequality, and AI-enshittification.
Happy times.
Footnotes
I’d like to believe that nobody could be stupid enough to have tried to doxx Malinauskas, that it must have been a ‘false flag’. But I also know that – sadly – it is entirely possible that it was simply an own goal by people unable to think through the likely consequences of their actions.
Four minute speech I won’t give at the rally on Friday May 23
I want to take you to a bad place. Then, we come back, and we start walking, together, to a better place.
Let’s remember the last week. The trees being chopped down, the possums and birds fleeing. The naked contempt that the Premier has for democratic norms, for heritage, for Mij Tanith and the others who put their bodies in the way of his ego.
Just for a few seconds stand in your anger, your despair, your sense of hopelessness.
It’s horrible, isn’t it? Not a place to stay, not a place to return to.
We can’t go over it. We can’t go under it. We have to go through it.
We have to go through it, together, helping each other as we walk.
If we want to be in better shape a year from today, we have to walk together, we have to grow, learn, organise and perhaps win.
We have to grow, as individuals and groups. We have to grow our skills. So many, but a key one is to become good at having conversations with people who don’t know what is going on, or are too busy to be involved, or have swallowed the lies and the smears.
We have to grow the size of our groups, by making it easier for busy people, unconfident people, to be meaningfully involved without coming to endless meetings, or being online 24/7.
We have to learn – the history of our state – and it didn’t begin in 1836. The politics and economics of the moment. We have to learn how social movements work. We have to learn from our past successes and mistakes. We have to learn how protest movements grow and win or lose, how they get distracted, divided, repressed.
We have to organise – along our streets, our places of work and worship, among our friends and acquaintances. And today’s stranger is tomorrow’s acquaintance may well be next year’s firm friend. By organise I do not mean everyone joins a party and takes orders from on high. I mean we share skills and knowledge, we learn from others, we strengthen the ties of those all around us to form networks, overlapping, stronger here than there, so that w.
Not everyone has to become expert at everything, but all of us can – and must – get better at something. All of us can – and must – contribute to growing, learning, organising.
Over a hundred years ago, a real labour leader – as opposed to Malinauskus – Joe Hill, was executed. Famously, he said ‘don’t mourn, organise.’
Nine days ago we stood here, chanting “stop the chop.” Today we are chanting “stop the chop – never again”.
Today I say to you, do mourn, but then organise. Grow, learn, organise, and, a year from now, we can be winning.
Demonstrating her continuing interest in climate change, Margaret Thatcher invited John Houghton to present the scientific findings of IPCC(1990) to her Cabinet on 21 May 1990.
Folland et al 2004
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 354ppm. As of 2026 it is 430ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The broader context was that again, the British government had been warned repeatedly about climate change. New Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, in 1979 had responded to her Chief Scientific Advisor, “what you want me to worry about the weather?” And there had been other attempts to get her on board. Finally, in 1988 for domestic political reasons, she pivoted and gave her speech at the Royal Society. This set the ball in motion.
The specific context was that in April of 1989 Thatcher had held a one day seminar for her cabinet on what to do about the greenhouse effect. I think Houghton was there. A lot of other people were too. In November of ‘89 she’d given a talk at the United Nations General Assembly, and here she was as the IPCC First Assessment report was released, asking the head of the Met Office, (I think he’d retired from that post by then, but had become the chair of IPCC Working Group 1, I want to say) to give a presentation to her cabinet.
What I think we can learn from this is that the problem was not lack of information. The problem was the stupidity, greed, etc, of various politicians, but also the social and electoral systems that allowed them to be stupid and greedy and societal systems as well.
What happened next. Thatcher continued to manage the climate issue with nice speeches, but she never picked up the green gauntlet, either literal or metaphorical. And you see this pattern again and again. “Oh, look, we’ve had the top scientist in to speak to us. Therefore, give us a break.” And it’s rubbish. But liberals are happy to fall for it.
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.
Many scientists predict that as population increases and we industrialise more we will send the earth’s control mechanisms out of gear. It’s not the end of the world – just the end of us…
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 371ppm. As of 2026 it is 430ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The broader context was that the Third Assessment Report of the IPCC had come out this year saying, “look, we’ve really got to reduce emissions much more sharply than we’re contemplating with the Kyoto Protocol. There will be serious trouble ahead.”
The specific context was that the Australian Government was resisting any action, and the Australian national broadcaster had some spine still back then, and was trying to get people to think through the implications.
What I think we can learn from this is that there are journalists still finding space to raise these questions back then, at least. I’m not sure how it is now.
What happened next? Well, more documentaries, more questions, but very little action.
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.
The recent public release of a 45 minute UK-produced film, “National Emergency Briefing”, now showing across the UK, presents the opportunity to expand its screening internationally and this is one of the first international sites. A narrated and curated synthesis of information presented by leading UK climate and biodiversity experts in November 2025, this film is coupled with audience reaction and highlights the escalating climate and nature emergency we all find ourselves in. Extreme weather events, existential climactic threats and tipping points, water and food insecurity, social unrest, human health impacts and collapsing biodiversity and ecosystems are all featured – and resonate globally.
The other motivation for holding this event at this particular point in time is the convergence of two important events. During Laudato si’ Week (May 17-24), we re-double our efforts to care for our Common Home and take the lead from Pope Francis’ 2015 Encyclical. The Laudato si’ week’s theme this year is fittingly “From Hope to Action” and comes at a time when increasing numbers of people across the globe are discerning and directly experiencing this rapidly unfolding “ecological overshoot” emergency. In 2026, the Laudato si’ week also overlaps with the period between Ascension Thursday and Pentecost Sunday. At this time, we also await the Holy Spirit, as we are sent forth under guidance and with gifts. The timing is also important as the event closely precedes National Reconciliation Week(27 May – 3 June), the theme being “All In”, a call for action and a commitment to wholehearted reconciliation.
This event, combining spirituality, Indigenous perspectives, and science, has four broad aims.
1. The screening of the “National Emergency Briefing” film will initially present a science-based, factual and realistic account of the true extent and gravity of the climate and nature emergency before us. The conclusion is that immediate and drastic reductions in the use of fossil fuels are needed – and hence anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions.
2. The information presented in the film will then be contextualised for audience members who live in the Southern Hemisphere and in Southern Australia. Garry Goldsmith, a Narungga man and representative, will present Indigenous perspectives, wisdom and culture, and highlight the devastating cultural impact the harmful algal bloom has had on his people and community. He will also outline the activities and aims of the newly formed Southern Australian Aboriginal Land and Sea Management Alliance, Garry being the co-Chair. Darren Ray, a well known local meteorologist and climatologist, will then present updated climate change and related projections, their regional and local implications and what this means for community resilience.
3. Emma Sandery, Beau Warren and Michael Dwyer, drawing from a diverse set of backgrounds and experience including community sustainability, simplicity, climate change, community gardening, landscaping, permaculture and fiction writing, will then present practical and tangible community and individual actions which are available and required right now. Importantly, the outcomes of these actions include a restoration and strengthening of Planetary/One Health, as well as renewed and functional relationships with our planet and each other.
4. Lastly, the event will conclude with audience discussion and participation in a Q&A with a presenter panel. There will be an opportunity to explore the needed transformation into sustainable, self-sufficient, simpler, localized community life thriving within biophysical limits.
As it is a 150 minute event, an interval will provide some opportunity for refreshments, a chat and greetings.
More event information is included in the link below – as well as several ways you can register (or just turn up). Please join us for something very important.
Fifty nine years ago, on this day, May 19th, 1967,
Debate on Environmental Pollution, Rockefeller University, New York, Barry Commoner, Rene Dubois, Athlene Spilhaus.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 322ppm. As of 2026 it is 430ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The broader context was that the pollution issue is beginning to break through beyond simply air pollution in cities. People are beginning to think about the long term, longer term implications. This is partly due to the fact that you’ve had books like Silent Spring published in 1963 based on the 1962 New Yorker articles and a flurry of other books. So you have three interesting people here talking at Rockefeller University in New York, and one of them is Spilhaus, who had studied under Roger Revelle, and whose cartoons about science had appeared in newspapers around the United States, including the greenhouse cartoon in 1958 Spilhaus was well aware of the dangers of carbon dioxide buildup. Commoner’s book Science and Survival had come out the previous year and it had also had a section on carbon dioxide build-up…
The specific context was that the Vietnam War was raging, the ‘hippies’ were protesting etc.
What I think we can learn from this intellectuals had been saying what was at stake for a very long time. The problem with intellectuals, well, there are many, but one of them is they’re not very good at helping social movements think through the implications of those social movements’ current strategies for maintaining hope or momentum or whatever, and how those strategies might hinder the growth and expansion of the social movement framing.
No one particularly is; I could give it a go, but I’m too idle and dispirited.
What happened next. Commoner ran for President in 1980.
The emissions kept climbing. Btw, if you’re reading this in the US and can get hold of a recording and transcript, that’d be ace – would be fascinating to know if carbon dioxide build-up came up…
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 four years ago, on this day, May 18th, 1972, Wayland Kennet (the greenest of Labour types) holds forth on ‘ecology’,
“All ears are ringing with the eschatological buccinae of Ehrlich, Commoner, Meadows et al.”
Since you ask,, a buccina was “A brass instrument that was used in the ancient Roman army, [1] similar to the cornu. An aeneator who blew a buccina was called a “buccinator” or “bucinator”.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 327ppm. As of 2026 it is 430ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The broader context was that Kennet had been switched on for a while, and had been an effective minister in the Housing and Local Government department, which is where ‘environment’ ‘sat’ before the coming of the Department of Environment. Kennet also, pretty much single-handedly, wrote the first Environment White Paper, in May 1970.
The specific context was that the Stockholm conference was coming. Ehrlich and Commoner had visited the UK repeatedly and the Limits to Growth people had released their report. The Stockholm conference was impending. Buccinae, as Kennet says…
What I think we can learn from this. There was a moment of alarm, half a century ago. There might have been time to act. It certainly WAS the time to act. But, well, oh well…
What happened next. These spasms last three years or so. That’s about as much reality as anyone wants to face. Then, in 1973, thanks to war in the Middle East, oil prices went through the roof and the environment stuff was shunted aside…. Oh how times change.
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.
Thirty six years ago, on this day, May 17th, 1990,
‘We will have to make it clear to our electorate how much pain and anguish they will have to suffer in order to save the planet’, said David Trippier, UK Environment Minister
(quoted in the Guardian, 17 May 1990).
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 354ppm. As of 2026 it is 430ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The broader context was that the British government had been warned repeatedly about carbon dioxide build up and done nothing. And here we have a specific example. The British government is figuring out what to do about setting reduction targets and what it would do in the case of a climate treaty which is looking more and more likely. And so the British Minister wants to highlight the costs and to try and dampen down enthusiasm for action by talking about the so-called pain and anguish of acting. He doesn’t talk, of course, about the pain and anguish for other species or for future generations, because they’re not going to help him get re-elected. And that’s the distant future, far off countries of which we know little.
The specific context was that everyone was jockeying ahead of upcoming climate negotiations.
What I think we can learn from this is that climate change was the mother of all collective action problems, and we – unsurprisingly – flunked it epically.
What happened next. The British government continued to do very little substantive on climate change, (though, ironically, more than many countries), 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.
“When civilized man looks out from the padded cell of urban life, what a destruction of the human environment he would see if only his eyes had not become too narrowly focused on his house, his motor car, his golf course, his cocktail bar and his television set. he would see a countryside despoiled, wild life being exterminated, vegetation withered, air and sea polluted, rivers made foul, green fields turned into dumps for rubbish and old model cars, and the night and day hideous with a blasphemous blare of uncontrolled noise. Is the only remedy for this to thicken the insulation and increase the comfort of the padded cell, or can we do more to mitigate or check this destruction.”
Why that would be the then governor-general of Australia, Paul Hasluck, who’d been a Liberal politician for decades. This was back when conservatives were trying to conserve things (1).
Adelaide, btw, is where the Labor Government is busy destroying a portion of the parklands for the ‘upgrade’ of a golf course. I could go on I did, here).
On golf’s ecological impact, well – I have no doubt that
a) there are some academic studies
b) that the golfing industry have hired plenty of spin-Doctors and spin-Professors (see what I did there?) to muddy the waters.
I wasn’t planning to write long, and don’t have time, so I will just post a book cover (borrowed it today from the library) and move on.
Footnotes
(1) Yes, I know they were trying to “conserve” a very specific patriarchal and anthropocentric – and, frankly, Eurocentric and racist as fuck – version of “Nature”, but still…
