Twenty-nine years ago, on this day, December 1st, 1995, bullshit “ABARE” climate modelling put out by Australian government, as part of its push for special treatment internationally.
1995 Release of “Global Climate Change” report by Keating Government, based on ABARE AND DFAT “modelling”.
This was hardly a surprise. At the beginning of the year a front page story on The Australian (back when it was still almost a newspaper) had said as much. From January 18, 1995.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 361ppm. As of 2024 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the first Conference of the Parties (COP1) had happened in Berlin in March. Australia was one of the nations that, thanks to the Berlin Mandate, was expected to turn up a couple of years later, with a plan for emissions reductions. But Australia had already comprehensively failed to take any action towards its first proposed target, the Interim Planning Target of October 1990. And so it was going to need other ways of responding to the challenge, as in denying the challenge and trying to push it on to other people. ABARE had already done some idiotic plant modelling and now the Department for Foreign Affairs and Trade were happy to take ABARE’s modelling and create an argument that said Australia shouldn’t have to x. In essence, this was not under that wicked, wicked man, Liberal John Howard. It was under St. Paul Keating.
What we learn is that the Australian political elites’ mendacious and rapacious hostility towards climate ambition is essentially bi-partisan and has been going on for 30 however many years and here we are,
What happened next? Keating lost office in March of 1996. Howard simply turbo-charged the hostility to all things environmental and especially climate.
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.
References
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Also on this day:
December 1, 1976 – Met Office boss still saying carbon dioxide build-up a non-issue
December 1, 2005 – David Cameron says “low carbon living should not be a weird or worthy obligation”
December 1, 2008 – Climate Change Committee fanboys carbon capture