Twenty years ago, on this day,
While Washington Slept article by Hertsgaard
The Queen of England is afraid. International C.E.O.’s are nervous. And the scientific establishment is loud and clear. If global warming isn’t halted, devastating sea-level rises will be inevitable by 2100. So how did this virtual certainty get labeled a “liberal hoax” in the U.S.? Try the same tactics Big Tobacco used to deny the dangers of smoking.
“http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2006/05/warming200605
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 382ppm. As of 2026 it is 430ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The broader context was that American journalists had been writing about carbon dioxide build-up as a potential problem for a very long time. One of my favourites is from the Chicago Tribune front page in March of 1982, but there are others.
And here we see Mark Hertsgaard, author of Earth Odyssey, among others, doing a magazine feature at a time when the Kyoto Protocol has finally been ratified, and there was clearly going to be an international process to replace it with something “better”, and at a time when the Bush regime had lost all credibility because of both international factors such as the resistance to the occupation of Iraq, and its useless response to Hurricane Katrina. It was at this point, nine months since New Orleans…
What I think we can learn from this. that there have been think-pieces in chin-stroking liberal magazines for a long time. but the question is always, “who’s going to make something happen?”, which is then a question of “who is going to mobilise what resources and find new resources and intervene how in ‘the system’ (man)?”
What happened next. Everyone kept writing chin-stroking pieces. One of my favourites is the one about Australia in Rolling Stone by Jeff Goodell.
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:
May 2, 1989 – a DC forum about “Our Common Future” – All Our Yesterdays
May 2, 1990 – Nairobi Declaration on Climatic Change – All Our Yesterdays
May 2, 2009 – Australian Liberals warned of wipe-out if seen as “anti-climate action” #auspol
May 2, 2012 – CCS is gonna save us all. Oh yes.
May 2, 2019 – Committee on Climate change report on net zero by 2050