On this day, November 24 in 1978, the Canberra Times ran a story “All coal plan to flood cities”, based on a UPI wire story about an American Physical Society meeting the day before in Florida where Dr Peter Fong called an all-coal energy policy “tantamount to suicide”
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1977 All coal plan to flood cities Canberra Times…p. 4.
[The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 334ppm. At time of writing it was 417ishppm- but for what it is now,well, see here for the latest.]
Why this matters.
By the late 1970s, carbon dioxide from coal and other fossil fuels was beginning to be publicly talked about as a SERIOUS long-term threat, around the world.
What happened next?
There was a late 1970s attempt to get international action. It failed. We went instead for a second Cold War, bleeding the Soviet Union to death and then rolling drunk on triumphalism into the 1990s… By which time the chance to take a different path was… well, you know the rest…
One reply on “November 24, 1977 – Canberra Times reports “all coal” plan would “flood US cities””
[…] (The Canberra Times, for example) would have been aware of the potential problem. See for example November 24, 1977 – Canberra Times reports “all coal” plan would “flood US cities” or September 15, 1980 – Australian scientists hold “Carbon Dioxide and Climate” symposium in […]