Thirty-four years ago, on this day, January 1, 1988, US President Ronald Reagan
“reluctantly signs the Global Climate Protection Act” (Agrawala and Anderson, 1999: 459)
A climate bill had been introduced in the Senate in 1986 by Joe Biden, but died in the Senate. According to Politifact “a version of Biden’s legislation survived as an amendment (29th January 1987) to a State Department funding bill.”
The bill
- Directs the President to establish a Task Force on the Global Climate to research, develop, and implement a coordinated national strategy on global climate. Requires such Task Force to transmit a United States Strategy on the Global Climate to the President within a year. Requires the President to then report to specified Members of Congress on such report.
- Directs the President to appoint an ambassador at large to coordinate Federal efforts in multilateral activities relating to global warming.
- Directs the Secretary of State to promote the early designation of an International Year of Global Climate Protection.
- Urges the President to give climate protection high priority on the agenda of U.S.-Soviet relations.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/100th-congress/senate-bill/420
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 350.5ppm. As of 2023 it is 417ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was
There had been a pivotal meeting of scientists in Villach in October 1985 [see AOY post October 15, 1985 – Villach meeting supercharges greenhouse concerns...] It had been sponsored by WMO, UNEP and ICSU. After it, US Senators (both Republican and Democratic) had held hearings, including with Carl Sagan as a witness in December 1985 [see AOy post December 10, 1985 – Carl Sagan testified to US Senators on #climate danger]. Biden’s proposed legislation was one result, and was not exactly the first bite at this cherry – see George Brown on January 4 1977 (if you wait three days, you can learn about it on this very site).
What I think we can learn from this
That it’s hard work to get politicians to actually listen to scientists, but it can, eventually be done.
That the narrative of “nobody knew anything/was doing anything until summer 1988” is so vacuous to be “not even wrong.”
That (see below) – liars will rewrite history to try to make their (senile-by-then) hero look good; this is the incumbent’s advantage – anything they were forced to do can later be retconned as part of their farsightedness/largesse. This #CreditClaiming is part of the erasure of history that keeps us perpetually confused and placated. So it goes…
What happened next
The climate issue finally exploded that summer. Four years of brinksmanship and incumbent bastardry followed, resulting in the too weak “United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change” in June 1992.
More recently, Reagan fanbois have tried to rewrite the history, of course; https://climateconservative dot org forward slash /americas-original-climate-hero/ (no, I am not going to link to those idiots).
For more on the Reagan administration versus everything environmental, see McCright and Dunlap (2010)
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Do comment on this post.
References
Agrawala,S. and Andresen, S. (1999) Indispensability and Indefensibility? The United States in the Climate Treaty Negotiations. Global Governance, Vol. 5, No. 4 pp. 457-482
McCright, A. and Dunlap R. (2010). Anti-reflexivity. Theory, Culture & Society. Volume 27, Issue 2-3 https://doi.org/10.1177/02632764093560