Nineteen years ago, on this day, June 30th, 2007
Excerpts of Guy Pearse’s book High and Dry in “Good Weekend” newspaper supplement
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 384ppm. 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 that Guy Pearse was a nice young capital-L Liberal activist who, in 1988 had gone to the United States on a kind of exchange to work with a Republican, and then quickly realised that the Republican wasn’t interested in the same stuff that he was, and had ended up working briefly for Al Gore’s failed Democratic presidential nomination bid. He had further switched on to environment, and especially greenhouse. He had tried to offer his services back in Australia. This had not really worked, because while the ACF was up for it, the Liberals were not – they felt they had been ‘stabbed in the back’ by the greenies.
He had then done a PhD, part time at Australian National University. It is a brilliant PhD, in my opinion, it is based on extensive interviews with people who were his mates in lobbying for various different industries against any greenhouse regulation. They called themselves the “greenhouse mafia”, which was distinct, of course, from the AIGN.
Anyway, his PhD thesis formed the inspiration/basis for a Four Corners documentary on ABC television in 2006. And he wrote a big fat book that was an expansion and extension of his thesis. Well, it’s actually different. It’s up, but it’s on the same topic about John Howard and Howard’s resistance to climate policy. Very good book, in my opinion.
The specific context was that by mid-2007 you couldn’t move but for articles about climate change, almost 20 years after the first wave.
What I think we can learn is this: that newspapers have acres of space to fill, and they also need to give their readers the sense or pretence that their finger is on the pulse. And so you’ll see newspapers publishing stuff that might not be a close enough ideological fit for their owners (but in any case, usually the control is a little less heavy-handed than that sentence would imply, at least in parts of the West).
What happened next: Pearse kept being active on climate stuff for a few years, but ultimately withdrew because it was obvious that we as a species we’re fucking doomed. Guy Pearse did more than most, and deserves all the credit for that, in my opinion.
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.
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Also on this day:
June 30, 1988 – Toronto conference on “Our Changing Atmosphere” ends
June 30, 2006 – Australian CCS inquiry launched
June 30, 2008 – Judge stops a coal-burning power plant getting built.