Thirty five years ago, on this day, June 8th, 1990, Business Review Weekly reminded subscribers who the enemy was…
In the battle for hearts and minds, the environmentalists have it all over companies. The business sector’s difficulty in grappling with the environment issue will result, sooner or later, in a company director finding himself in the dock facing charges over pollution. Both NSW and Victoria now have legislation that can render executives and directors personally liable for environment protection offences. Many within the environment movement are looking for a test case of this legislation.
In this week’s cover story BRW writer Matthew Stevens examines the challenge that Greenpeace is throwing out to Australian companies. As Stevens reports, the local branch of the international Greenpeace organisation has thoroughly reorganised itself and is armed with the latest techniques developed in the US for direct action against companies. Greenpeace is out to achieve the greatest public humiliation of those it chooses to expose.
Uren, D. 1990. Editor’s note. BRW, 8 June.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 356ppm. As of 2025 it is 430ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The broader context was that climate change had finally “broken through” in 1988, almost 10 years later than it might have (You can write a plausible alternative history that has it all kicking off in 1979-1980).
The specific context was that the Australian mining and more-general-capitalist interests had assumed the “fad” about the Greenhouse would blow itself out. By the end of 1989 it was clear it wasn’t going to, and so the fight back began in earnest…
What I think we can learn from this
As human beings is that people with money and power like things the way they are, more or less (while always thinking about how it would be nice to have MORE money and MORE power).
As “active citizens” that there may be a delay between an issue breaking through and the response – though this is perhaps less the case now with instantaneous comms and vast networks of tooled-up, cashed-up junk tanks…
Academics might like to ponder why they rarely warn the punters about this. Could it be they are too dim to even see the pattern?
What happened next The fossil interests fought the greenies to a standstill – not intellectually, they lost all the arguments – but by tapping their friends in the Federal bureaucracy on the shoulder. The “Ecologically Sustainable Development” policy process ended in farce in 1992. The “National Greenhouse Response Strategy” was none of those things. The emissions climbed, the concentrations climbed and the consequences, eventually, arrived. We are in the Fafocene.
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.
You can see the chronological list of All Our Yesterdays “on this day” posts here.
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.
If you want to get involved, let me know.
If you want to invite me on your podcast, that would boost my ego and probably improve the currently pitiful hit-rate on this site (the two are not-unrelated).
Also on this day:
June 8, 1997 – US oil and gas versus Kyoto Protocol, planet – All Our Yesterdays