Thirty four years ago, on this day, August 24, 1989, Sydney councillors start to take note of citizen ideas for tackling “the greenhouse effect”. And use it to put the spotlight on the feds.
A concerned citizen’s letter has prompted Leichhardt Council to send three submissions to a Senate committee inquiring into ways of reducing the impact of the greenhouse effect.
The submissions, from Alderman Issy Wyner, as chairman of the council’s environment pollution control panel, Dr Ken Sullivan, president of the Clean Air Society of Australia and New Zealand, and Mr John Mara, council’s deputy chief health and building surveyor, were posted on Friday.
Mr N. G. Hyde, of Kingsgrove, had written to Leichhardt Council, expressing his concern about the greenhouse effect and depletion of the ozone layer.
“He probably wrote to every council but it stimulated a response from us,”Mr Mara said.
“We kept the matter on the agenda by writing to the Federal Environment Minister, Senator Richardson, and his NSW counterpart, Mr Moore, for advice, and picking up information from newspapers and journals.”
Bilic, J. 1989. Council officers greenhouse tips. Sydney Morning Herald, 24 August.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly xxxppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that everyone was running around with urgency and ideas for dealing with what was then called the greenhouse effect. People who understood it knew that early action was not only preferable but necessary because once it has got out of hand it wouldn’t just be “too expensive to do anything about” but “impossible ti do anything about.”
This was at a federal state and local level in Australia. (Of course we had had the Brundtland Report by now, which emphasised the importance of local action).
What I think we can learn from this is that all the rhetoric about responsive government, citizen engagement citizen participation have been with us for generations. And on whole, in most places, it has not taken. And even in the places where it has taken it needs persistent consistent effort because the culture of atomization of neoliberalization of techno-salvationism is very very strong.
What happened next – they gave us the language of Local Agenda 21, but local councils went back to doing what they do best – being secretive, flogging off state assets including publicly-owned land to developers in exchange for brown envelopes and acting as a career launch pad and finishing academy for ambitious young politicians wanting to be an MP, and general “snout in the trough” opportunities for others
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.