Thirty six years ago, on this day, June 19th, 1989 Senator George Brown gave a speech to Student Pugwash, and reminisced about his 1976 hearings.
“Faced with these conflicting predictions, in 1976, as Chairman of the House Subcommittee on the Environment and the Atmosphere, I convened the first congressional hearings ever to discuss the issue of climate research. Over the course of two weeks, our Subcommittee received testimony of relevance to a bill that some of my colleagues and I had introduced to coordinate and improve national climate research efforts. In large part as a result of those hearings, we succeeded in passing in 1977 the National Climate Program Act. Passage of that legislation was a classic example of how politicians tend to deal with scientific uncertainty: we initiate efforts to study the problem further.”
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 353ppm. As of 2025 it is 430ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The broader context was that the Greenhouse Effect had been “discovered” by the media and was omni-present. There were these sorts of “inter-generational” efforts going on…
What I think we can learn from this is that explaining the broad sweep, the patterns and the repetitions, is really hard, especially when we all want a simple victory narrative with us near the centre…
What happened next The wave of concern crested by 1992, and the defeat of the proposal for targets and timetables in the text of the UNFCCC was, in retrospect, the last nail in the coffin for our species and so so many others. Oh well.
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: