Twenty-nine years ago, on this day, August 26th, 1997,
The “holier-than-thou” Germans became “very angry” over Australia’s controversial proposals on how the world should fight climate change, according to confidential Federal Government “greenhouse papers” obtained by the Herald.
Hogarth, M. 1997. Germany ‘angry’ On Clean Air Target. Sydney Morning Herald, 26 August, p.7.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 364ppm. As of 2026, when this post was published, it is 430ppm. This matters because the more carbon dioxide in the air, the more heat gets trapped. The more heat, the more extreme weather events. You can make it more complicated than that if you want, but really, it’s not. Fwiw, I have a tattoo of the Keeling Curve on my left forearm.
The broader context was that Australia had slipped from being a responsible middle power 1988 to 1990 to an active, very active opponent of climate action.
The specific context was here we see in the run up to the Kyoto Climate Conference, at which rich nations were supposed to bring their plans for significant emissions reductions, as per the Berlin mandate, and the Germans pointing out the facts, which is that the Australians were behaving like utter assholes. Criminal stock indeed.
What I think we can learn from this is that Australian governments since the very early 90s have been criminal. They have disregarded the rights of future generations of humans and other species to anything approaching a habitable planet, and they have done this because they are basically the meat puppets for a bunch of extractivist goons. And you can dress it up however you like, and you can make good money and/or good career in dressing it up, but ultimately you’re dressing it up.
What happened next Australia extorted an extremely generous deal at the Kyoto conference, and then refused to ratify. By the time Australia did ratify the Kyoto Protocol in 2008 it was a dead letter. The balance sheet kept breaking up the sky.
On this topic, you might like these other posts on All Our Yesterdays
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You can see the chronological list of All Our Yesterdays “on this day” posts here.
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.
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Also on this day:
August 26, 1970 The Alkali Inspector’s report
August 26, 1973 – Sir Kingsley Dunham points out the C02 problem
August 26, 1991- We cannot delay says Brundtland