Eighty years ago, on this day, January 24th, 1946,
The United Nations General Assembly passes its first resolution to establish the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 310ppm. As of 2026 it is 428ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that only one nation at that time had actual working nuclear weapons. Though, thanks to Russian scientists and Russian spies the Soviet Union would change that within a few years – “first we got the bomb, and that was good, because we love peace and motherhood.”
What I think we can learn from this is that the roots of atomic energy are in all sorts of soil.
And if you can’t face the horror of nuclear weapons, I suppose what you do is you gravitate towards the idea of “electricity too cheap to meter.” And atomic energy allows us to think of ourselves as being incredibly ingenious, being masters of all we survey, cracking open the secrets of the universe. Blah blah.
Solar and wind are about vulnerability and about begging and taking what’s on offer… but I have digressed.
What happened next
Commercial nuclear reactors, Windscale, various Soviet disasters, Three Mile Island, battles between nuclear and coal over who would have the power to power houses. And interestingly, by the mid late 1960s nuclear advocates were pointing to carbon dioxide emissions as an argument for rapid massive expansion of nuclear power.
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:
January 24, 1984 – Canadian TV documentary and discussion about #climate