Twenty-nine years ago, on this day, August 23rd, 1997,
United States officials expect Australia’s maverick greenhouse position to be blown away in a “big bang” at the climate change convention in Kyoto, according to confidential reports by Australian diplomats obtained by the Herald…. The documents are confidential internal communications between the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade in Canberra and Australian embassies.
They detail Australia’s desperate globe-trotting efforts to undermine the push for international agreement on binding, uniform targets to reduce greenhouse emissions, initially for developed nations.
In June, for example, one senior Canberra official went to Seoul and promoted the economic benefits of a “free ride” to South Korea – a key developing nation – rather than it having to face the high cost of any future emissions control regime. [Compare Exxon doing the same thing with China]
Hogarth, M. 1997. Why Our Stand On Climate Change Is Doomed. Sydney Morning Herald, 23 August, p.1.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 364ppm. 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 the US under George H. W. Bush had succeeded in eliminating emissions reductions, targets and timetables for rich countries from the text of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Australia had gone along with that, probably quite happily. The administration under Democrat Bill Clinton had tried to take some energy efficiency conservation action with its BTU tax, and had been soundly defeated. Here we see Clinton at the beginning of his second term, after having given a speech in 1996 at the Great Barrier Reef, beginning to flex muscles ahead of COP 3, which was to be held in Kyoto.
The specific context was that the Australians were pursuing a particularly aggressive line against Australia having any discernible ambitious targets on emissions reductions. This was against the mood music that the Americans, especially under Senator Tim Wirth, as Clinton’s climate envoy were wanting to put forward, so the Clinton gang were talking about how Australia was isolated and would be more isolated and would suffer significant diplomatic consequences for its stance. And for whatever reason, the Sydney Morning Herald was going along with that wish casting.
What I think we can learn from this – occasionally the mood-music out of Washington is a better form of kayfabe (see, for example, Obama in 2014).
What happened next – Australia got an insanely generous deal at Kyoto, through exasperation and exhaustion at its intransigence.
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.
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Also on this day:
August 23, 1853 – first International Meteorological Conference
August 23, 1856 – Eunice Foote identifies carbon dioxide as greenhouse gas
August 23, 1971 – nuggets of ecological wisdom from Nugget Coombs.
August 23, 1971 – the Powell Memorandum
August 23, 1989 – Space Mirrors proposed to combat global warming. I am not making this up.