Thirty six years ago, on this day, July 11st, 1988,
CLIMATE
The greenhouse effect took priority when representatives of Australia’s Federal, State and Territory governments met yesterday at World Expo ’88 to discuss water resources.
Although the Australian Water Resources Council decided only to “maintain a watching brief”, the educative process among political and administrative leaders is nevertheless gathering pace.
The Queensland Premier, Mr Ahern, has now established a government departmental committee in an attempt to identify the issues of the global warm-up.
Massey, M. 1988. Government officials start to feel the climate of change. Australian Financial Review, July 27.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was xxxppm. 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 was that there had been warnings (ignored) all through the 1970s and 1980s about what was coming. Finally, after the Villach meeting in 1985, the pressure had built until, in 1988 the issue began to break through. There had been a drought in the US, James Hansen’s testimony and then the Changing Atmosphere conference in Toronto.
The specific context was the Australian government was being kept informed, thanks in part to the work of Barry Jones, Science Minister.
What I think we can learn from this – this was the very small window of ‘we will take positive action’ before, from 1990 or so, the shutters came down.
What happened next The Liberal Party went to the 1990 Federal election with a more ambitious emissions target than Labor, but lost the election and blamed the big green organisations (especially the Australian Conservation Foundation) for ‘betraying’ them. Climate change became part of the culture wars, and Labor then completely bollocksed it all up from 2007 to 2010. The well has been poisoned ever since, not that they give a rat’s arse, clearly.
On this topic, you might like these other posts on All Our Yesterdays
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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:
July 26, 1967 – Allen Ginsberg tells Gary Snyder it’s “a general lemming situation”
July 26, 1977 – Australians warned about cities being flooded #CanberraTimes
July 26, 1988, – Australian uranium sellers foresee boom times…
July 26, 2006 – Costello versus wind farms
July 26, 2008 – Reggae festival for climate protection in New York