Twenty four years ago, on this day, November 7th, 2001, ACF tries to say the rest of the world is raring to go…
“What is clear is that the rest of the world is not waiting around for the US and is getting on with the changes to their economies that are necessary to cut greenhouse pollution. Unless Australia ratifies we will not be able to benefit from international markets emerging in environmental technologies and greenhouse pollution reduction. Australia must get on with the job and join other nations committing to ratify the protocol.”
Australian Conservation Foundation, Media Release, Australia loses out as world moves closer to Kyoto, 7 November 2001.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 371ppm. 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 been asshole-ish on climate from 1991 to 1995, but that ramped up once the Liberal National Party government of John Howard came along in March 1996. They’d managed to extort a fantastically generous deal at the third COP, in Kyoto, in December of 1997, which meant Australia could increase its emissions. But still Howard was refusing to ratify.
The specific context was that in March 2001 President George W Bush, gifted the presidency by his dad’s Supreme Court picks, had pulled the US out of Kyoto, despite having said on the campaign trail the previous year that C02 from power plants would need regulating.
What I think we can learn from this – Conservation/Environment groups are forced to use the language of economic growth and “more technology” in order to seem responsible and have any chance to exert even the tiniest of pressures.
What happened next – it would be 2007 before Australia ratified Kyoto, under Labor Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.
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.
References and further reading
Also on this day:
November 7, 1973 – Energy security avant la Ukraine: Nixon announces “Project Independence”
November 7, 1997 – Australian governments bang heads in pre-Kyoto bash
November 7, 2000 – Australian “The Heat is on” report released