Twenty nine years ago, on this day, October 1st, 1997,
NBC covered one hundred television weather forecasters on October 1, 1997 who were invited to the White House for a briefing on global warming policy. By this action the Clinton administration appeared to be linking the greenhouse effect to today’s weather. (Sachsman, 2000:6)
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 363.4ppm. 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 successfully stopped targets and timetables for emissions reductions by rich countries being there in the text of the climate treaty to be signed at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992. And so countries interested in making something happen had got targets and timetables onto the agenda by the time of the first COP – “the Berlin mandate”, which called for rich nations to reduce their emissions, and to come to the third COP with plans for reducing their emissions.
An enormous lobbying effort against the US turning up at Kyoto with a reduction plan had been underway for a couple of years, and this had succeeded in that there was the Byrd Hagel resolution – adopted 95 to nil – that basically said the US would not sign anything that didn’t impose restrictions on countries like China, even though the US had signed up in 1992 to so-called “common but differentiated responsibilities.”
The specific context
So here we see the specific context is that Al Gore is going to be flying off to Kyoto in a couple of months, and we see the Clinton White House trying to stiffen spines, put arguments about why there needs to be action on climate change, etc. etc.
What I think we can learn from this is that we have been failing on climate change for a very long time. This was 29 years ago, and I don’t see why anyone thinks that we will not continue to fail on climate change.
What happened next Gore went to Kyoto. There was an agreement at Kyoto. Clinton didn’t try toratify it because he knew he didn’t have the numbers in the Senate, and then under the presidency of Dick Cheney via the sock puppet that was George H. W. Bush’s son, W, the US pulled out of Kyoto in March 2001.
Kyoto was eventually ratified/became law, because the Russians wanted membership in the WTO, and that was the quid pro quo.
And then Kyoto was not really replaced. There was a failed conference at Copenhagen, and now we have a version of the Parisian “Pledge and Review”, which everyone knew was a farce.
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On this topic, you might like these other posts on All Our Yesterdays
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References
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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:
October 1, 1957 – US Oil company ponders carbon dioxide build-up…
October 1, 1997 – Global greens gather in Melbourne, diss Australian #climate policy –
October 1, 1977 – Worldwatch on “Redefining National Security” – All Our Yesterdays