Thirty seven years ago, on this day, June 2, 1986, US Senators got going…
The year of 1986 was significant in terms of congressional interest. Influential congressional leaders asserted that the issue of greenhouse warming was no longer only a science issue; policy options had to be considered. 19 in Congress, the likes of Senators Chafee, Stafford, Bentsen, Durenberger, Mitchell, Baucus, Leahy and Gore, began to pressure the White House to take action on climate change.
These Senators signed a letter to Dr. Frank Press, President of NAS on June 2, 1986, requesting the NAS to review the scientific issues. These senators were ‘deeply disturbed’ by the implications of published reports on CO2 induced climate change.
(Hecht and Tirpak 1995)
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 350ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that various US Senators had been getting well informed about the risks of climate change by various National Academy of Science reports. And scientists such as Jim Hansen, and David Burns, and so on. In October 1985, there had been a meeting at Villach in Austria, which had really concentrated everyone’s minds. Carl Sagan had given testimony to Seators in December of 1985. LINK
Joe Biden introduced a climate bill, in 1987, and this letter by various senators, is part of the run-up to that. And we should remember that Frank Press was previously Jimmy Carter’s Chief Scientific Adviser. And he would have been very well aware of the carbon dioxide issue, having been lobbied on it and having taken action on it before (and in April 1980 having pushed back against a report advocating a policy response).
What I think we can learn from this is that before the breakout in 1988, there were lots of people in the policy stream and politics stream and the problem stream to make stuff happen, and to couple the streams. There are always efforts to couple streams before they are successfully coupled.
What happened next
Biden introduced legislation. The following year (1987) it was reintroduced and became the Global Climate Protection Act, reluctantly signed by Reagan on January 1 1988.
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.