Twenty one years ago, on this day, October 19, 2002, another civil society organisation – Doctors for the Environment – joined the fray.
“David Shearman with his amazing persistence undertook to complete the necessary paperwork and on the 19th October 2002 “Doctors for the Environment, Australia” was well on its way to becoming a fully constituted environmental entity at the Mornington meeting”.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 373ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that it was clear that at the federal level, the Howard Government was determined to avoid doing anything about climate change. It had already said no to even an emissions trading scheme, and a few months earlier John Howard had taken delight in saying that Australia would not ratify the Kyoto Protocol. This despite having extracted a fantastically generous deal. The other context is that public health academics had been worrying about climate impacts for a while, and probably felt there needed to be a specific organisation.
What I think we can learn from this
Groups form. But my goodness it’s hard to keep them going, especially when it’s clear that the government is determined to do nothing, or only lip service…
What happened next
What happened next? Well, doctors for the environment is still going 20 years 21 years later.
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.