On May 17, 54 years ago, a US government bureaucrat alluded to the danger of carbon dioxide build-up, in comments to a conservation group. We know this because they were read into the Congressional Record (akin to Hansard) a month later by a New York congressman called Richard Ottinger.
We forget that in the mid-60s people were beginning to join the dots (and of course some of the wrong dots) about what was coming. There had been some film and print publications in the late 50s (mostly tied to the International Geophysical Year) around the possibility of carbon dioxide build-up causing the icecaps to melt and sea-levels to rise. Those fears were still “in the air”
REMARKS BY MAX N. EDWARDS, ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF THE INTERIOR FOR WATER POLLUTION CONTROL, BEFORE THE FONTANA CONSERVATION ROUNDUP, FONTANA DAM, NORTH CAROLINA, MAY 17, 1968
“A great number of articles are being written these days and a lot is being said about the gradual erosion of the kind of environment man must have to sustain life on this planet. Many Geologists paint a very gloomy picture of life in the next century. Some tell us that continued destruction of our forests, plant life and estuaries, coupled with the earth’s increased emission of carbon dioxide and sulfur oxide, will reduce the oxygen in the atmosphere to catastrophic, low levels. Some prophets of darkness warn us of another ice age slowly eroding the Great Plains or polar ice caps melting and submerging every coastal city in the world lying less than 300 feet above sea level.”