Thirty eight years ago, on this day, November 8th, 1988,
Greenhouse move
ADELAIDE: Australian Democrats’ legislation to help contain the “greenhouse effect” looks set to succeed in the South Australian Parliament with the support of the Liberal Opposition.
The Bill, first presented to Parliament last year, seeks to limit the use and release of chlorofluorocarbons, which are considered largely responsible for holes in the protective ozone layer.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 351ppm. 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 the South Australian parliament had been hearing warnings about carbon dioxide build up since 1971. These had increased in frequency through the late 70s, especially after the question of whether uranium could and should be exported began to heat up.
The specific context was that the Greenhouse 88 conferences had just happened. This was linked conferences linked by satellite around Australia and it’s hardly a surprise that legislation was being introduced.
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What I think we can learn from this is that it is now almost four decades since we began pretending to take action.
What happened next South Australia didn’t really do that much on climate, not for want of trying by the bureaucrats.
However, in the early 2000s once Mike Rann became premier, there was much more interest in climate, Rann created the “Thinker in Residence” programme with Stephen Schneider as one of the first thinkers, and more importantly, Rann also started incentivizing wind power generation with some good arbitrage around the federal schemes. South Australia now has a hell of a lot of renewable energy generation.
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On this topic, you might like these other posts on All Our Yesterdays
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References
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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:
November 8, 1989 – somebody suggests the polluters pay….
November 8, 1989 – Thatcher gives climate speech to UN General Assembly
November 8, 1989 – ALP Minister says environmentalism a “middle-class fad” – “greenies” respond…
November 8, 2011 – Australian polluters are going to have to pay (briefly)
November 8, 2013 – “One religion is enough” says John Howard