On this day, June 6th, greenies, business and trades unions hold hands…
“Weather forecast for the world of our children”.
Address to the joint Australian Conservation Foundation/ Business Council of Australia/ Australian Council of Trade Unions forum on sustainable development in Melbourne on 6 June 1990
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 354ppm. As of 2026, 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 for this was that there had been periodic flashes of warning about carbon dioxide build up through the 70s and early 80s, but the issue had really exploded in 1988 especially in Australia, (related to ozone depletion and so forth). And what you saw was a whole bunch of organisations scrambling to catch up.
The specific context was that here you see we’re still in the “hold hands and sing Kumbaya and have a collective response” phase, while the Business Council of Australia, was beginning to flex its muscles on counting the perceived costs it hadn’t yet publicly broken bad. Meanwhile, the ACTU had released a couple of nice sounding reports and. But the ACTU problem was that they allowed the CFMEU (not called that yet) to dominate the Union response. So, the mining union, in bed with the owners of the mines, decided that coal exports and coal mining were more important than well anything else
Meanwhile, the Australian Conservation Foundation was having a good time of it, with loads of Members, loads of money, loads of publicity, looking sexy. That went well.
What I think we can learn is this: there is always, there’s often a brief period within a policy window, or part of the issue attention cycle, when organisations who were enemies and will be enemies again, stand on a stage and say the nice stuff. And at the moment, maybe they even believe that nice stuff (or they hope it will become true anyway).
What happened next: The BCA started pushing harder and harder against any climate responses. The ACTU continued to allow the coal miners union to dominate its response. The ACF went along with the Ecologically Sustainable Development policy process, all the while knowing that it would probably end in tears. And yes, indeed, it did, in fact, end in tears.
On this topic, you might like these other posts on All Our Yesterdays
References
You can see the chronological list of All Our Yesterdays “on this day” posts here.
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.
If you want to get involved, let me know.
If you want to invite me on your podcast, that would boost my ego and probably improve the currently pitiful hit-rate on this site (the two are not-unrelated).
Also on this day:
June 6, 1978 – Exxon presentation about carbon dioxide build-up