Thirty seven years ago, on this day, September 8th, 1989,
John Kerin (Deputy PM, Industry) gives a speech to CEDA on environment and economics (he cites it in his Nov 1, 1989 speech)
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 353ppm. 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 after almost two decades of warning about the greenhouse effect to Australian political elite, they were finally having to start talking about it very much in public.
In late 1988 and for the first few months of 1989, the opponents of action seemed quite flat footed, presumably simply waiting for it to burn itself out.
The specific context was And here we see Deputy Prime Minister John Kerin giving a speech on environment and economics, just as the penny is beginning to drop for the opponents of action that they’re gonna have to enter the fray that they can’t wait for this wave to die down.
What I think we can learn from this is that you should never take any event out of its context.
What happened next The Labor government decided to rat fuck environmentalism and environmentalists, and to side with the big end of town. By the mid 90s they were basically indistinguishable from the Liberals. The Liberals went off the deep end. Labor used the climate issue as a way to get back into power in 2007, then comprehensively fucked up the response, and has basically been running scared ever since, and under the thumb of big business,
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.
If you want to get involved, let me know.
If you want to invite me on your podcast, that would boost my ego and probably improve the currently pitiful hit-rate on this site (the two are not-unrelated).
Also on this day:
September 8, 1972 – Green activist vanishes off face of Earth…
September 8, 1990 – Australian #climate denialist spouting his nonsense…
September 8, 2000 – “Minchin’s Quiet Win”
September 8, 2014 – Lobster boat blockaders have charges dropped.