On this day, June 24 in 1986, A New York television channel showed a documentary with the does-what-it-says-on-the-tin title of “The Climate Crisis”-
“PICKING up where a high-school chemistry class might end, ”Nova,” the public-broadcasting science series, offers the nonmatriculating viewer an advanced course in worrying. The cause of the concern is all the carbon dioxide that’s being pumped into the industrialized and motorized air. The hour-long broadcast is called ”The Climate Crisis: The Greenhouse Effect,” at 9 tonight on Channel 13.
“The conclusion, conveyed with great authority by several big-league climatologists from government and private research organizations, is terrible: by the year 2000, the atmosphere and weather will grow warmer by several degrees and life – animal, plant, human – will be threatened. The experts say that melting ice caps, flooded cities, droughts in the corn belt and famine in the third world could result if the earth’s mean temperature rises by a mere two or three degrees.”
Mitgang, H. 1986. Earth’s Climatic Crisis Examined by ‘Nova’. New York Times, 24 June.
Why this matters.
Good to remember that serious efforts were being made. It’s too easy to tell stories about “then this politician did this, then this CEO did that”, and therefore public opinion changed to “x”.
It is an easy narrative device, and it is a career-helper AND it helps with this idea (comforting) that there is a bridge to storm to save the Titanic by grabbing the wheel and yanking.
Yeah, no.
What happened next?
Public education efforts continued. Two years later, eight years after she was first given credible warnings, Thatcher started saying the “right” words, as did George Bush. That went well, didn’t it?