On this day 36 years ago, April 18, 1990 President Bush’s conference finishes,
Shortly thereafter President Bush invited representatives of the 20 most influential countries in the world to a White House conference on science an economics research related to global change (17-18 April, 1990, in Washington). Even though the FAR would soon be completed and was intended to serve as the basis for negotiating a climate convention, no invitation to attend the conference was extended to the IPCC. I was surprised and sought an explanation through my contact in the USA (Dr Robert Corell) and I was soon thereafter invited to attend. For the first time I sensed that the IPCC messages might be disturbing the formulation of a US policy about these matters.
(Bolin, 2007: 59-60)
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 354ppm. As of 2026 it is 428ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The broader context was that Republican politicians, presidents and vice presidents, – looking at you, Reagan and Bush – had been ignoring carbon dioxide build up. There had been a real warning and a real opportunity to do something meaningful back when it was still possible in 1977-81. That opportunity was ignored.
The specific context was that in 1988 George Bush, running for president and vulnerable on environment matters because he hadn’t done anything, (his Democratic opponent, Michael Dukakis, who kind of sort of had), announced that people who were worried about the greenhouse effect were forgetting about the “White House effect”, and that if he were to be president, he (Bush) would in his first year in office, convene an International Meeting on what to do about it. Well, Bush had won the 1988 election handily, and then guess what, did not hold the International Conference.
And when he did finally hold the international conference, he somehow, his people somehow “forgot” to invite the chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Swedish scientist Bert Bolin. Funny that.
What I think we can learn from this is that people like George Bush are hopefully rotting in hell for many reasons, climate change denial and obstruction being near the top of the list.
What happened next: Bolin died in 2007 having lived long enough to see the IPCC get the Nobel Peace Prize, and to have the hope that, who knows, maybe, in Copenhagen, in two years time, there would be a meaningful global deal, and there wasn’t.
See also
Also on this day
April 18, 1970 – Harold Wilson in York, bigging up UN, rights/obligations
April 18, 1989 – begging letter to world leaders sent
April 18, 2013, Liberal Party bullshit about “soil carbon” revealed to be bullshit