Fifty nine years ago, on this day, May 19th, 1967,
Debate on Environmental Pollution, Rockefeller University, New York, Barry Commoner, Rene Dubois, Athlene Spilhaus.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 322ppm. As of 2026 it is 430ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The broader context was that the pollution issue is beginning to break through beyond simply air pollution in cities. People are beginning to think about the long term, longer term implications. This is partly due to the fact that you’ve had books like Silent Spring published in 1963 based on the 1962 New Yorker articles and a flurry of other books. So you have three interesting people here talking at Rockefeller University in New York, and one of them is Spilhaus, who had studied under Roger Revelle, and whose cartoons about science had appeared in newspapers around the United States, including the greenhouse cartoon in 1958 Spilhaus was well aware of the dangers of carbon dioxide buildup. Commoner’s book Science and Survival had come out the previous year and it had also had a section on carbon dioxide build-up…
The specific context was that the Vietnam War was raging, the ‘hippies’ were protesting etc.
What I think we can learn from this intellectuals had been saying what was at stake for a very long time. The problem with intellectuals, well, there are many, but one of them is they’re not very good at helping social movements think through the implications of those social movements’ current strategies for maintaining hope or momentum or whatever, and how those strategies might hinder the growth and expansion of the social movement framing.
No one particularly is; I could give it a go, but I’m too idle and dispirited.
What happened next. Commoner ran for President in 1980.
The emissions kept climbing.
Btw, if you’re reading this in the US and can get hold of a recording and transcript, that’d be ace – would be fascinating to know if carbon dioxide build-up came up…
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:
May 19, 1937 – Guy Callendar’s carbon dioxide warning lands on someone’s desk
May 19, 1957 – LA Times asks “Is your smoke helping to melt polar icecaps?” – All Our Yesterdays
May 19, 1982 – House of Lords debate on “Coal and the Environment”
May 19, 1993 – President Clinton begins to lose the BTU battle…
May 19, 1997 – an oil company defects from the denialists. Sort of.