Twenty five years ago, on this day, May 3rd, 2001,
The executive director of the GCP said in a Senate estimates hearing on May 3, 2001 that only one in 10 companies had met their emission reduction targets. (See also Report of the Senate Environment, Communications, Information Technology and the Arts References Committee, “The Heat Is On: Australia’s Greenhouse Future”, chapter 8.)
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 Australian political elites had been made aware of climate change as a threat in the 1970s; you had the Australian Academy for the Advancement of Science, Australian Academy of Science Symposium in September of 1980 you had the monograph that came out of that on the CO2 problem. You had the Office of National Assessments report. And, of course, from 1987 onwards, you had the CSIRO etc, banging the drum. Oh, you’d also had the Australian Environment Council, in 1986
Business had defeated a couple of proposals to put a price on carbon dioxide, (which is the only language they understand), first during the ESD ecologically sustainable development process, and then in 1994-95 they had defeated the carbon tax, and instead the Keating government had created a worse-than-useless “greenhouse challenge” voluntary scheme.
The specific context was that the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had come out, and George W Bush had pulled the US out of negotiating the Kyoto Protocol. It was pretty clear that if Howard were to win the upcoming election, he would do the same, whereas Labor would ratify.
What I think we can learn from this. This talk of “waking up” or “being woken up” has been going on for so long, and we prefer to be asleep.. And here we learn that, of the companies that had set emissions reductions targets, which was not all of them, by any means, only one in 10 were hitting those targets. So an adult government that gave a shit about more than its own comfort and power would change course. It would say, “we’ve tried the voluntary approach, it didn’t work,” and would legislate. That is, of course, reader, not what happened, and John Howard and his gang of fuckwits have condemned us all to hell.
What happened next. The Greenhouse Challenge was rebooted with very similar effects and finally basically ignored. There was a fierce battle over a carbon price between 2006 and 2012 and then in 2014 the carbon price was abolished by Tony Abbott, the thug disguised as a prime minister.
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:
May 3, 1978 – First and last “Sun Day”
May 3, 1989 “Exploration Access and Political Power” speech by Hugh Morgan – All Our Yesterdays
May 3, 1990 – From Washington to Canberra, the “greenhouse effect” has elites promising…
May 3, 2024 – Friends of the Earth and Client Earth win a court case – All Our Yesterdays