Forty four years ago, on this day, January 15th, 1981,
The Carter Administration called today for a major, sustained national and international effort to cope with what it said were ”increasingly critical global resource, environmental and population problems.”
A report prepared jointly for the President by the State Department and the Council on Environmental Quality warned that excessive world population growth, dwindling resources and environmental degradation represent serious threats to the political and economic security of the United States.
Shabecoff, Philip (1981). “U.S. Calls for Efforts To Combat Global Environmental Problems.” New York Times, January 15
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 340ppm. As of 2025 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the people with a green tinge in Carter’s administration, mostly, but not entirely, huddled in the Council for Economic Quality, had tried to get environmental issues for the fall, despite being told by Carter’s Chief Scientific Advisor, Frank Press to ignore the carbon dioxide issue.
Carter had lost the November, 1980 election comprehensively. Everyone knew that Reagan was not a fan of environmental issues. He wasn’t even aware of the Global 2000 report, and therefore this was a desperate last effort, perhaps to say to other nations “hold on. We’ll be back in hopefully four years.” It would, of course, be a bit longer than that.
What I think we can learn from this is that policy entrepreneurs within these systems have to try to save the furniture, that you can never look at an individual news item without thinking about the broader context.
What happened next
Reagan’s goons went too hard too fast, and there was pushback against them, so people like James Watt and Gail and Gorsuch became hate figures and had to be removed, and as per McCright and Dunlap, what the right have largely learned is to keep the edifice and maybe even some of the rhetoric, if you like, but to gut everything from the inside in terms of funding. I. And powers and so forth and so it continues down unto this day you.
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.
Also on this day: