On this day, December 17 in 1989, a big conference on climate change began in Egypt.
“During 17-21 December, the World Conference on Preparing for Climate Change was held in Cairo, Egypt. At the opening address, Suzanne Mubarak from Egypt referred to the ‘grim irony’ of the fact that, while the ‘primary responsibility’ for global warming lay with the industrialised countries, the effects would be experienced ‘mostly in the countries of the South, where the capacity to cope [was] weaker.’”
Paterson, M (1996) p.38
Also http://www.climate.org/about/archives/Cairo%20Climate%20Conference%201989.pdf
[The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 353ppm. At time of writing it was 419ishppm- but for what it is now,well, see here for the latest.]
The context was this –
Everyone was running around holding conferences back then. Each one was going to be the one that history remembered as The Moment It All Started To Go Right. Not a single one of them was…
Funny how nobody (that I saw) brought this up during the recent COP27 nonsense. Presumably would raise too many awkward questions about how little has been achieved…?
Why this matters.
It doesn’t, I guess. But good to remember, as we circle the drain, that there was a time when we tried to sort ourselves out. Or gave the impression of trying to, in any case…
What happened next?
More meetings in 1990 and then, finally, the negotiations for a climate treaty began in early 1991. And the US, predictably, did everything it could to slow down/stop progress, with considerable success…