Thirty years ago, on this day, May 19, 1993
Senator David Boren comes out against BTU tax, after Burson Marstellar astroturf campaign (see Agrawala and Andressen, 1999: 470)
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly xxxppm. As of 2023 it is 420ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was
There had been enormous – and ultimately successful – local lobbying efforts. Boren had been picked off, in a kind of Serengeti strategy thing, but in the political sphere rather than the scientific. And this really spells the end for Clinton’s BTU.
What I think we can learn from this is that the opponents of climate action, smart, determined, strategic and well funded. These characteristics do not necessarily apply to the proponents of action, unfortunately.
What happened next
Clinton had to kill the BTU energy tax. And that was basically it for Clinton and domestic climate action (imo). It also meant that the opponents of action really had good proof of concept, and presumably, the Australians were looking at this and saying, “that’s how it’s done.”
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.