Thirty years ago, on this day, September 26th, 1995,
Senator Cook opens CRC that “will help maintain Australia’s export coal trade in an increasingly competitive and environmentally sensitive international market”
Cook, P. 1995 Black coal goes green at new Cooperative Research Centre.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 361ppm. As of 2025, when this post was published, it is 430ppm. This matters because the more carbon dioxide in the air, the more heat gets trapped. The more heat, the more extreme weather events. You can make it more complicated than that if you want, but really, it’s not. Fwiw, I have a tattoo of the Keeling Curve on my left forearm.
The broader context was that Australia had become the world’s biggest coal exporter in 1984, and Australian politicians had been trying to “square the circle” with environment concerns since the late 1980s. See for example Bob Hawke in January 1989.
The specific context was that there were various research institutions happy to relieve the taxpayer of cash – god forbid industry fund research and development in a meaningful way…
What I think we can learn from this is that the taxpayer is always on the hook.
What happened next “Clean Coal”? Yeah, like dry water.
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:
September 25, 1980 -Reagan turns out to be an ignorant fool. Who knew?
September 25, 1991- European Commission proposes a carbon tax…
September 25, 2003 – Bob Carr “strikes greenhouse deal” with European investors