Thirty five years ago, on this day, February 12, 1991 a report about
“Reducing the Impact of the Greenhouse Effect.” by the Senate Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology (CA 6703).
See the committee details, contents of the report, terms of reference and Chapter 1 overview here.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 355ppm. As of 2026 it is 428ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The broader context was that various Australian parliamentarians (the smarter ones) had been warning about carbon dioxide build-up since the 1970s. In the late 1980s the issue finally hit the headlines, and the obvious question was “well, what do we DO about it?”
The specific context was that the Senate report was trying to add to the pressure to actually get something done. However, it was released, inevitably, after the military effort to push Iraq’s armed forces out of Kuwait was underway, and anyway, the Greenhouse issue was booooring by then.
What I think we can learn from this is that detailed reports take time, and by then something else has come along and distracted everyone. I don’t know what to do about this, beyond having really resilient social movement organisations that understand the dynamics of issue-attention cycles.
What happened next: The issue went away, and then got reduced to “ratify Kyoto or not”? It finally returned in 2006, twenty long long years ago. Meanwhile, the emissions kept climbing and the concentrations kept climbing. Fafocene.
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.
