Fifty six years ago, on this day, October 22nd, 1970, Lord Rothschild gives the fourth Royal Society Technology Lecture and studiously avoids mentioning carbon dioxide build-up, something he was very well aware of (having told James Lovelock to not talk about it).
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 325ppm. 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 Rothschild, as chief scientific officer for Shell, had commissioned James Lovelock in 1966 to write a report about atmospheric futures, and then had told Lovelock to keep schtum about it.
The other broader context is that the UK had between 1967 and 1970 really woken up to environmental problems. You’d had, for example, the Torrey Canyon in ‘67 you’d had various disasters involving pesticides and dead sea birds and all the rest of it in the intervening years. In late ‘69 you’d had Frank Fraser Darling’s Reith lectures, and the Wilson government had promised action in the form of the Department of Environment and a Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, which duly happened. But the Heath Conservative Party had narrowly won and unexpectedly won the 1970 election. You’d also had Frank Ireland of the Alkali Inspectorate going off on one in August 1970 about greenhouse ‘doom-mongering’ etc.
What we learn is that environmental concerns have been something that elites have been wringing their hands about and clutching their pearls about for a long time without seriously wanting to change anything.
What happened next Rothschild became the first head of the CPRS, the Central Policy Research Staff. Rothschild then said, as he was leaving that gig, that he wished he’d done more on the environment.
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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:
October 22, 1969 – Edmund Muskie mentions CO2 build up
October 22, 1991 – Denialist says “no more than 1 degree of warming by end of 21st century”. Turd.
October 22, 1997 – US and Australian enemies of #climate action plot and gloat
October 22, 2004 – Russian Duma votes for Kyoto ratification