Author: drmarchudson

Categories
Australia Coal

 April 15, 1994 – Greenpeace sues to stop a coal-fired power station being built

Thirty one years ago, on this day, April 15th, 1994,

Greenpeace yesterday sought to test a new international treaty on global warming for the first time by filing a lawsuit to stop the construction of a $220 million New South Wales power station. The executive director of Greenpeace, Ms Lynette Thorstensen, said the action would test the force of the United Nations convention on climate change, which seeks to cut greenhouse gases.

1994 Kelly, H. 1994. Greenpeace Sues To Halt Building. The Age, 16 April, p.4.

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 361ppm. As of 2025 it is 427ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that Australia had signed up to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which talked about stabilising emissions at 1990 levels by 2000 and of course, Australia had nominally agreed to 20% cut by 2005 though this was totally hedged with caveats to make it meaningless.

Building new coal fired power stations was going to blow an enormous hole in all of that. Ironically, this was the day that the UNFCCC became international law, because 90 days had passed since enough nations had ratified it. 

What I think we can learn from this Is that government pronouncements and policy statements are not worth a bucket of warm spit unless there are vibrant, uncooptable and irrepressible social movements forcing them to keep at least some of their promises. They will promise you anything that you want to hear and worry about the consequences of being caught having broken promises later.

What happened next

Greenpeace lost that court case in, I think, November of 1994 and the coal fired power station got built. 

And the emissions kept climbing.

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.

Also on this day: 

April 15, 1965 – Murray Bookchin warns about carbon dioxide build-up

April 15, 1969-  Coventry lecture – Mellanby says Air Pollution could cause flood… – All Our Yesterdays

April 15, 1974 – war criminal Henry Kissinger gives climate danger speech

April 15, 1974 – Kissinger cites climate concerns

Categories
Australia Business Responses

April 14, 2009 – Penny Wong meets the Business Council of Australia, white flag in hand…

Sixteen years ago, on this day, April 14th, 2009,

It’s a clear autumn day in April and Penny Wong and her chief of staff, close friend Don Frater, are in a hire car on their way to Noosa. As the sun shines on the coastal playground and restaurant mecca, the politician and her staffer are far from relaxed. Wong and Frater have flown from Canberra to Maroochydore in the Government VIP, then picked up the hire car for a high-stakes game – navigating their way through the politics of the emissions trading scheme they have massaged and managed for months.

The trip is top secret. Four weeks earlier Wong had faced the uncomfortable truth: the scheme, the mainstay of Kevin Rudd’s green credentials, had become a political nightmare, backed neither by business nor by environmental lobbyists, let alone by any of the parties with the balance of power in the Senate.

Today – April 14 – in Noosa is about a strategic backdown. The target is the president of the Business Council of Australia, Greig Gailey, who is on holiday in the town. Today he opens the door to some very businesslike guests. They want to sound him out about exactly what it would take to win business over.

(Taylor, 2009)

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 390ppm. As of 2025 it is 427ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that in 2006-7 Australian politician Kevin Rudd had used the issue of climate change as a stick to beat Prime Minister John Howard with. Rudd was now enjoying watching the Liberals continue to tear themselves apart on whether or not to support an emissions trading scheme. This was all part of the game of politics. The CPRS legislation was about to be introduced into parliament, and everyone expected it would fall the first time. Which did come to pass. 

What I think we can learn from this is that we do not live in a democracy. We live in a corporate shell game with demonstration elections. And there are people willing to be the hawkers and the sidekicks to that, because the perks are nice. 

What happened next

 The CPRS legislation fell again in November-December, 2009 and Kevin Rudd initially thought this was great that Tony Abbott would tank. But then Copenhagen tanked, and then Rudd seems to have had some sort of breakdown and refused to call a double dissolution election, even though he was advised to. And then, when he pulled the plug on his CPRS (see April 11 post), his popularity plummeted very quickly, and he switched to trying to introduce a liberal resources tax. The rest is, as the podcast title goes, is history. 

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.

References

Taylor, L. 2009. The minister of cool. The Australian Magazine May 23.

Also on this day: 

April 14, 1964 – RIP Rachel Carson

 April 14, 1980 – Carter’s scientist, Frank Press, pushes back against CEQ report – All Our Yesterdays

April 14th, 1989 – 24 US senators call for immediate unilateral climate action

Categories
Australia Energy

April 13, 2007 – smart meters are gonna save us…

Sixteen years ago, on this day, April 13th, 2007, Australian governments said smart-metering was just round the corner,

By April 2007 there was formal agreement by COAG to a national mandated rollout of electricity smart meters to begin by the end of 2008, in locations where an economic case could be made, as summarised in the 13th April 2007 COAG Meeting Communique:

‘‘COAG. . . endorsed a staged approach for the national mandated roll out of electricity smart meters to areas where benefits outweigh costs, as indicated by the results of the cost-benefit analysis which will be completed by the end of 2007.” [COAG (2007): 1]

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 387ppm. As of 2025 it is 427ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was everyone in Australia (okay, some people, but a little hyperbole is okay) was running around either actually caring or – more commonly – pretending to care about Saving The World.  In late 2006, as if a switch had been flicked, the issue had broken through, and by December even arch-blocker Prime Minister John Howard had been forced into a U-turn. So here we have various government types having to say they’re going to act. And “smart meters” are part of that whole neo-liberal efficiency discourse, that sorta sounds okay until you think how it comes up against Jevons Paradox, techno-failure and the use of technology to surveil populations.

What I think we can learn from this

Policies can be announced. Doesn’t mean they’re gonna get implemented.

What happened next

Fast forward to November 2024-

The Australian Energy Market Commission (AEMC) has announced a final rule requiring smart meters to be deployed across the National Electricity Market (NEM) by 2030.  

This reform aims to modernise Australia’s energy system and accelerate the transition to renewable energy. 

Smart meters are essential for enabling a connected, efficient energy system and achieving net zero targets. 

The reforms include: 

  • faster smart meter deployment to help households and businesses access savings and energy benefits sooner 
  • improving network access to important power quality data for better network management, reduced costs and improved safety. 

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.

References

(Lovell, 2017:103) Lovell, H. 2017. Mobile policies and policy streams: The case of smart metering policy in Australia. Geoforum, 81, pp.100-108.

Also on this day: 

April 13, 1968 – the New Yorker glosses air pollution, mentions carbon dioxide

April 13, 1992 – Denialist tosh – “The origins of the alleged scientific consensus”

April 13, 2011 – GE and others say Gillard is on right track

Categories
Carbon Dioxide Removal technosalvationism United States of America

April 12, 2022 – Big beasts put money into carbon removal

Three years ago, on this day, April 12th, 2022,

“an alliance of prominent Silicon Valley companies—including Google, Meta, Shopify, and the payment company Stripe—announced that it is purchasing $925 million in carbon removal over the next eight years. In a world awash in overhyped corporate climate commitments, this is actually a big deal”  https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2022/04/big-tech-investment-carbon-removal/629545/

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 418ppm. As of 2025 it is 427ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was having actively opposed any carbon mitigation, or sat around while the fossil interests opposed it (amounts to the same thing) for thirty plus years, now “good” corporates were realising that it was very late in the day for everything, including their reputations. So, promising to invest in unicorn technologies like carbon removals was a think.

What I think we can learn from this

Only unicorn technologies can save us.

What happened next

MARC TO CHECK OUT WHERE THESE ARE UP TO

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.

Also on this day: 

April 12, 1955 – Coventry Evening Telegraph – “Melting Ice Could Menace the World” – All Our Yesterdays

April 12, 1992 – seminar asks “How sustainable is Australian Energy?” (proposes switch to gas)

April 12, 1993 – “environmental economics” gets a puff piece

Categories
Australia

April 11, 2010- Rudd fails to make a decision about the CPRS

Fifteen years ago, on this day, April 11th, 2010, Kevin Rudd’s collegial personality and organisation are on full display

The confusion was so overwhelming that some central participants genuinely cannot agree on when a formal decision to dump the [CPRS] scheme was made. A majority recall that it happened at a meeting of the Gang of Four in Brisbane on 11 April 2010.” 

(Chubb, 2014: 106)

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 390ppm. As of 2025 it is 427ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd grand plan  for getting the carbon pollution reduction scheme through Parliament had failed when the Liberals axed Malcolm Turnbull and Tony Abbott took charge. 

But the initial response to Turnbull’s toppling was of delight, because the perception was that Abbott would destroy the Liberals, and that people were ready to vote on climate. However, then the Copenhagen conference was a failure, and Rudd, by all accounts had some sort of breakdown. Always chaotic, he was never able to advance a discussion in a collegial manner. And there was a chaotic meeting on this day in 2010 according to the various accounts compiled by Paul Kelly. Philip Chubb and others, where it was somehow agreed that the CPRS would be dumped, but the “optics” of it, were never considered.

This would come back to bite Rudd, very firmly on the arse, not very much longer later.

What we learn is that the people “running the show” are often unable to run themselves and to run an effective decision making process. 

What happened next? Rudd pivoted to a minerals tax, which faced enormous opposition from Rio Tinto and others. But that wasn’t what did for Rudd. What did for Rudd was that his henchman briefed a journalist about the loyalty of his deputy, Julia Gillard. And that set off an absolutely monumental chain of events.

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.

Also on this day: 

April 11th, 1987 – A matter of… Primo Levi’s death

 April 11, 1989 – “Ark” sinks its cred

April 11 – Interview with Sophie Gabrielle about memes vs Armageddon….

April 11, 2014 – Greenpeace China releases coal report – All Our Yesterdays

Categories
United States of America

April 10, 1969 – Nixon tries to go green to North Atlantic Council

On this day, 56 years ago, US President Richard Milhous Nixon gave a speech at the North Atlantic Council where he bemoans the “gathering torments of a rapidly advancing industrial technology.”

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 324ppm. As of 2025 it is 427ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that in the 1968 presidential election, there had been some fleeting talk of environmental issues ( It would have been more if Bobby Kennedy hadn’t gotten whacked, but there you are) and Nixon had mouthed the right pieties.

But there’s various other contexts. First, days after his inauguration in January 1969 Nixon had to go out to Santa Barbara and look glum and competent when the Santa Barbara oil spill happened and everyone was starting to be worried about where more oil spills might come from, etc. Secondly, Nixon had the problem of the atrocities that the US military, with help from Australia and South Korean mercenaries, were committing in Indochina, and was keen to have a change of subject. So the idea of using NATO to tackle the “challenges of modern society” wasn’t as outlandish as it may seem, in retrospect. 

What I think we can learn from this is that politicians will say whatever they think their marks want to hear – this is surely not controversial. 

What happened next Well, within a few months, “Earth Day” was announced. Weirdly though, a good emote wasn’t enough – the environmental problems kept on coming, and the pressures to legislate kept on coming, so you had the National Environmental Protection Act signed into law, and then in a few months after that, you had the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency, which will possibly not last much longer, and may, in fact, be killed off between me recording this on the third of March, and you reading it on the 10th of April.

You also had the Council on Environmental Quality, releasing a report in August 1970 that has an entire chapter about the atmospheric implications of carbon dioxide build up, written by Gordon MacDonald.

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.

Also on this day: 

April 10, 2006 – “Business warms to change” (Westpac, Immelt) – All Our Yesterdays

April 10th, 2010 – activists hold “party at the pumps”

April 10, 2013 – US companies pretend they care, make “Climate Declaration”

Categories
Uncategorized

April 9, 1991 – another dummy-spit by tired old man

34 years ago today, former Finance Minister Peter Walsh was spitting the dummy again. 

The former Minister for Finance, Peter Walsh, attacked Australia’s major conservation groups yesterday saying he hoped Australia’s largest company, BHP, would use common law to bankrupt Greenpeace for interfering with seismic testing.

Senator Walsh said the major environmental groups were trying to subvert economic development — an objective they had pursued with some success.

Launching a book which emphasised market solutions to environmental problems, Senator Walsh said extreme elements of the conservation movement were more concerned with “destroying” industrial capitalism than protecting the environment.

“One wonders how long a country which is unquestionably some distance down the Argentinian road will continue to allow organisations like the Australian Conservation Foundation to subvert economic growth, and particularly the growth in the traded goods sector, to the extent that they do,” he said.

A long-time critic of the conservation movement, Senator Walsh fired a broad side at Greenpeace over its recent campaign to stop BHP’s oil exploration in Bass Strait. The organisation argued that the seismic tests would disturb whales which breed in the area.

He accused Greenpeace of hypocrisy in trying to stop oil exploration using petrol-powered rubber dinghies and a diesel-powered mother-ship.

“I hope that BHP sues Greenpeace under the common law and collects damages large enough to bankrupt the organisation.”

The book, Markets, Resources and the Environment, was produced by the Tasman Institute which Senator Walsh acknowledged many in the Labor Party considered “only marginally less obnoxious” than the League of Rights, or the Queensland National Party.

Lamberton, H. 1991. Walsh attacks greenies. Canberra Times, 10 April, p.3.

https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/122355943

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 355ppm. As of 2025 it is 427ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that Walsh from Western Australia (that’s not insignificant) absolutely loathed “greenies,” as per his comments in March 1990 on the eve of the federal election victory that was handed by to Labor by small g-green voters.

Walsh, as a columnist in the Financial Review, would bang on this drum repeatedly. 

What I think we can learn from this is that the Australian Labor Party has always had a faction that has absolutely loathed greenies and resented having to compete for small g green votes because they are wedded to one particular vision of prosperity (pave the planet, redistribute the crumbs from the developers’ pockets and call it social justice). They also don’t like having to engage in debate with people who don’t have precisely the same world view as them because they are brittle af.

What happened next

Walsh kept on being a prick and was a leading light in the Lavoisier Group of climate denialist pricks. 

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.

Also on this day: 

 April 9, 1990 – Australian business launches “we’re green!” campaign

April 9, 1991 – Peter Walsh goes nuts, urges BHP to sue Greenpeace – All Our Yesterdays

April 9, 2008 – US school student vs dodgy (lying) text books

April 9, 2019- brutal book review “a script for a West Wing episode about climate change, only with less repartee.”

Categories
anti-reflexivity Australia Denial United States of America

“Snowballs and morons and coal lumps, oh my”: on the hysterical materiality of old white men

Today some moronic Republican senator [Redundant adjective? Ed] brandished a lump of coal in the US Senate (thanks to Aaron for alerting me)

Via this Bluesky

This takes me back almost 20 years to the GE ‘clean coal’ advert (warning – utterly delirious).

And it takes me back to another cognitively-challenged Republican Senator [?? Ed], the late and unlamented James Inhofe who threw a snowball on the Senate Floor to ‘disprove’ global warming and rile the snowflake liberals, back in 2015.

A couple of years later, in the quarry-with-a-state-attached some people persist in calling “Australia”, the then-Treasurer (who would become Prime Minister), Scotty Morrison brandished a lump of coal in Parliament.  Some points to note: It was in the middle of a heatwave. He handed it on to one of the most absurd politicians of all time, Barnaby Joyce, who mimicked (?) wide-eyed joy at the gift.  The lump of dead matter (the coal, I mean) was provided by the Minerals Council of Australia, the industry lobby group that has done probably more than any other to stop meaningful climate action in Australia.  The lump was lacquered, so it wouldn’t smudge anyone’s hands – that’s the cleanest coal ever gets.

What’s going on here?  This isn’t just trolling, an effort to “own the libs,” and maintain the morale of Good Red Blooded Americans/Australians.  This is also, I suspect, some sort of desperate attempt to convince themselves of what they fear is a delusion, by having something material to hand.  The Marxists talk about (or used to – I don’t keep up with the jabber so much anymore) historical materialism.  This is more hysterical (2)  materiality.

Where will it all end? More of these stunts. More performative anti-nature nihilism. More asshole ambit claims.  O temperature, o mores.

See also

This blog post that I completely forgot I had written but says pretty much what I have said above.

Wind beneath their contempt

Petromasculinity 

Anti-reflexivity – see video

Footnotes

  1. David Brooks – the posterchild for overpromoted well-educated idiots – has written an entire kinda sorta mea culpa (but not really, because it is STILL the left’s fault) about ‘Where We Go From Here’ that manages to say not a single word about the climate (and ecological) debacle. Maybe if we pretend it isn’t there, or if we put our hands over our eyes, it isn’t there.  See also Dave Vetter’s review of the prosperity gospel for atheists book by Ezra Klein.
  2. I am alive to both the gendered and Fraudian aspects here, but idgaf for present purposes
Categories
Australia

April 8, 2015 – Australian Energy White Paper “devoid of vision”

Exactly 10 years ago today, April 8 2015, the coalition government of Australia released an energy white paper that even the craven/supine ABC called “devoid of vision.” 

The White Paper promotes increasing competition and production of energy, while reducing the cost of electricity.

Renewable energy was described as “important” in the Energy White Paper, but existing policies to support it are due to be dismantled.

Phillips, S. 2015. Energy White Paper: short on vision. ABC Environment, 10 April.
http://www.abc.net.au/environment/articles/2015/04/10/4213491.htm [Dead link – make of that what you will….]

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 401ppm. As of 2025 it is 427ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that the Liberal Party had gone to the 1990 federal election with a more ambitious emissions reduction target than the governing Australian Labor Party, but had reaped no significant environmental electoral benefit from this.

By 1992 it was clear that the Liberals – who felt stabbed in the back – were going to “cut the green crap”, as they did (the Nationals had never been on board).

Since then, whether in government, the Coalition had been rampantly hostile to any significant or actual limits on carbon dioxide emissions growth domestically or internationally. There was a brief period from 2006 to 2009 where they had to pretend, but with the coming of Tony Abbott, in late 2009 as leader of the opposition and then Prime Minister, it was clear that nothing would get done on climate.

The Energy White Paper was a reflection of that. 

What I think we can learn from this side bar. You’re never more than two or three years away from an Energy White Paper. None of them actually matters much. Very occasionally, one does. 

What happened next Abbott was so fantastically incompetent as Prime Minister – he was kind of like somewhere between Liz Truss and Donald Trump that he got turfed by his own party. Then again, Malcolm Turnbull wasn’t much better, and he got turfed in turn, and the puppet show continues. Wow. And the emissions keep climbing, and the atmospheric concentrations surge. And the consequences are arriving for even the ‘civilised’ (read rich) people. What times.

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.

Also on this day: 

April 8, 1970 – Australian National University students told about C02 build-up…

April 8, 1980 – UK civil servant Crispin Tickell warns Times readers…

April 8, 1995 – Australian environment minister says happy with “Berlin Mandate”

April 8, 1995 – Journo points out the gamble on climate – All Our Yesterdays

April 8, 2013 – Margaret Thatcher died

Categories
Carbon Capture and Storage

April 7, 2011 – More empty CCS pledges…

Fourteen years ago today, governments make their usual big empty promises…

At today’s [7 April] meeting in the United Arab Emirates, Ministers at the Clean Energy Ministerial endorsed recommendations from the Carbon Capture, Use and Storage Action Group chaired by Australia and the UK  https://www.freshbusinessthinking.com/purpose/carbon-capture-and-storage-tantalisingly-close/21533.article

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 392ppm. As of 2025 it is 427ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that CCS had fallen over in both these countries (the fizzling out of the first competition in the UK, “Zerogen” dying in Australia. Meanwhile, the international process was still in pieces after the fiasco in Copenhagen.  Still, it doesn’t hurt to make promises you will never be held to, does it?

What I think we can learn from this is that the CCS promises never end.

What happened next  CCS got put back together, as a promise, in the UK, in the following years. Then, in 2015 George Osborne (Chancellor) pulled the plug, which lead to the “Kipling Manoeuvre”, as some genius called it.

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.

Also on this day: 

April 7, 1980 – C02 problem is most important issue…”another decade will slip by” warns Wally Broecker to Senator Tsongas

April 7, 1995 – First “COP” meeting ends with industrialised nations making promises…

April 7, 2010 – Ziggie tries to sprinkle Stardust – 50 nuclear reactors by 2050 – All Our Yesterdays