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.
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).
What is there to learn from reading the Daily Mail? “Not much” I hear the more polite among you say. Other, more Anglo-Saxon, phrases are possible, and I’d agree, knowing from personal experience that the wretched tabloid just makes shit up to suit its ‘angle.’
But nonetheless, we are in a climate emergency (or worse) and so it is worth looking at two articles appearing in the June 26, 2026 edition for what they tell us about how its writers think (or “think”, if you’re being arch) and what they expect readers to swallow.
It’s especially useful to name a few tactics that are used, since these crop up elsewhere.
The two articles are
Littlejohn, R. 2026. Why the net zero nut jobs want to make us Hotter and Poorer. Daily Mail, June 26, p.19
Stevens, C. 2026. Heatwave hysteria. Daily Mail, June 26, p.17
I’ll start with a very brief history of climate change and the responses to it (“the Beforetimes”), before discussing the articles in turn. I will then point to the similarities between them, close out with some further reading and ‘what is to be done?’ I am interested in what you think,and what you think I have missed or got wrong. Let me know. If you’re a denialist though, I am not gonna respond; the Fafocene has begun and our time is shorter than you think.
The Beforetimes
In May 1953, building on the work of John Tyndall (1), Svante Arrhenius and Guy Callendar, the Canadian physicist Gilbert Plass set a cat among the pigeons by declaring that “The large increase in industrial activity during the present century is discharging so much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere that the average temperature is rising at the rate of 1.5 degrees per century.”
This claim went around the world (but, curiously, received scant media attention in the UK). Through the 1950s, however, other scientists (American and Swedish, primarily) joined in. By the mid-1960s carbon dioxide was one of the many potential threats being described as industrial growth surged. By the late-1970s there was a consensus among climate scientists that there was trouble ahead. In 1979 the Daily Mail was capable, at this stage, of reporting on this without losing its “mind.”
Efforts were to get Thatcher and Reagan interested in the problem. Thatcher was incredulous – “you want me to worry about the weather?”. It wasn’t until 1988 that the physical problem became a political issue. The Americans were able to force the essential idea – of targets and timetables for emissions reductions by rich countries – off the agenda for the 1992 “United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.” Since then, globally emissions of greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide is the main one, but not the only one) have surged, and temperatures have surged too. To quote myself
“When Plass spoke out, the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide was at about 310 parts per million. Today, they’re [430] or so. Every year, as we burn more oil, coal and gas, the concentration climbs and more heat is trapped.”
Unfortunately, a well-funded and extremely determined campaign of denial, doubt, technosalvationism and (predatory) delay has been going on for decades. The Daily Mail has been a part of that. In 2013, for example you get this . People complain, but the toothless watchdogs usually say “nothing to see here.”
So, with that out the way, brace yourselves for…
The Articles
Article One – Littlejohn
For those lucky enough not to be familiar with him, first some context –
“Richard Littlejohn (born 18 January 1954) is an English author, broadcaster and opinion column writer, having started his career as a journalist. As of May 2023, he writes a twice-weekly column for the Daily Mail about British affairs.”
He is also a reliable source of spleen and invective – “Littlejohn has been criticised for insufficient fact-checking[4][5] and for alleged anti-gay bigotry.[6]”
The headline (nb not normally chosen by the writer) demonises and trivialises climate action advocates as “Net Zero nutjobs”.
Littlejohn goes in, as usual, studs and all
There is that knowing “skepticism” “we are informed officially” (pointy-headed venal experts’ and ‘comic hyperbole ‘since records began in 1066’ – a call back to the classic ‘1066 and all that’). Littlejohn wants you to remember the 1950s, even if you weren’t there.
There is the inevitable “council jobsworths’ and London Mayor “Genghis Khan” (a play on Sadiq Khan – geddit?)
After tiring himself out with being ‘fair’ by dissing the Conservatives, and showing he is above the fray by casting doubt on Reform, Litlejohn turns his attention to the Guardian.
Note, Littlejohn does NOT ascribe the view that these temperatures (“The sun has got his hat on”) are going to be normal and in all probability surpassed, to scientists at the Met Office or elsewhere. That would make his ‘argument’ awkward. So he has to (only) shoot the Messenger, those hated lefties at the Guardian.
After more jabs at the congestion charge (no mention of the radical reduction in hospital emissions), Littlejohn comes to the crux – those warning about heatwaves and worse are “climate hysterics”. We will come back to this.
There is, inevitably, the invocation of “plucky” Brits (tied up with the whole Keep Calm and Carry On thing).
“With an unfailing ability to pinpoint the details that define a story, combined with a readiness to write about his own deep personal experiences, Christopher Stevens is arguably the most wide-ranging feature writer in British newspapers.”
Stevens’ basic argument, if you want to call it that, is that there is nothing new under the sun, that the heatwave in 1957 (in the UK) is no different from what is going on now.
Before we dive into this one, what is fascinating (to me at least, but I am odd) is that 1957 was a very important year. The International Geophysical Year began and among the many many measurements being taken around the world by many scientists of many nations was… carbon dioxide. Stevens, like Littlejohn, is eerily silent on carbon dioxide.
Stevens is similarly dismissive of the danger to the poor, the sick, the elderly – the fall of the temperature record was “met with much wailing and gnashing of teeth, and hailed as proof that our planet will soon be uninhabitable because of global warming.”
Stevens claims that “on that roasting Saturday there was no hysteria, [that word again], no climate scientists predicting the end of the world.” (This is wrong, insofar as the fact that climate scientists WERE already predicting that there would be serious consequences if we kept on burning fossil fuels. See, for example, these)
Stevens then writes about El Nino as a factor, withOUT mentioning the build up of CO2. He mentions a “heatdome” over Europe. Anything to avoid mentioning carbon dioxide build-up. He then pivots to more nostalgia for the 1950s – “A plummy BBC reporter, shirt collar buttoned with a smart striped tie, ventured with his camera crew into the East End to discover how families in the capital’s poorest streets were coping…”
Stevens watched this clip here, surely, but, failing to mention this totally accidentally gives the impression this is all personal reminiscence.
So, the narrative, as with Littlejohn, is of “plucky” Brits, no-nonsense, ‘keep calm and carry on time’”. Inevitably, Winston Churchill gets a cameo –
“Aged 73 he joined Queen Eizabeth for the Garter ceremony in full regalia at St George’s chapel, Windsor.”
So, you see, the two situations are entirely comparable. And then, of course –
“Now amid similar temperatures we have seen a mood of doom-mongering from Left-wingers and climate campaigners.”
Inevitably, the Guardian is derided, and El Nino is invoked as a “natural phenomenon”.
The word natural here is interesting and telling.. Cobra venom is natural. Bubonic plague is natural. Stevens is, however, using natural in the sense of ‘benevolent and/or inevitable’.
Grasping at straws Stevens invokes some experts who he can quotemine to agree with his thesis. Without pointing out the decades of warnings by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) , Stevens says “In other words, El Nino is always unpredictable, often disruptive and now is as good a time to panic as any.”
To fill out space, and hammer home the 1950s point, Stevens again returns to the 1950s (when, as he well knows, many of his readers were young and carefree) “Or we could fall back on the amiable, understated attitudes of our forebears in 1957. They just rolled up their trouser-legs and had an ice-cream. But such insouciance is frowned on now.”
So what do we learn?
In both cases, there is a resolute silence on the fact of carbon dioxide build-up. Neither can bring themselves to mention the basic facts that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas and that levels of it in the atmosphere have risen very sharply. Stevens is a little more sophisticated (it’s a low bar), and focuses on the El Nino as a way of NOT talking about carbon dioxide.
Both invoke weak-willed people, coddled for too long by an incompetent and intrusive Nanny State – the same old playbook.
Both, to no feminist’s surprise, reach for the adjective ‘hysterical’ to nail home their point.
In both there is an invocation of “plucky” British resilience and a harkening back to a simpler, bucolic past.
In both there is a focus on the messengers – specifically the Guardian – rather than the sources of the message themselves – various scientific bodies (IPCC, Met Office, Royal Society etc), because this would complicate/undermine the ‘nothing to see here’ message.
For both, there is an insistence that we must focus on individual solutions (put aircon in your house, with or without planning permission) and don’t think about (because otherwise you might have to worry about) collective solutions and the problems of equity. (Life doesn’t HAVE to be a shit sandwich, you know.)
What is to be done?
We need a typology of Daily Mail style tactics. These include (but are not limited to) –
Nanny States
Corrupt (grant-hungry) Scientists
Control-freak lefties (and local government bureaucrats)
Hysterical men/women who hate progress
British pluck and resolve
The 1950s!
If at all possible, avoiding mentioning the basic physical facts of carbon dioxide build-up. Under no circumstances show a Keeling Curve more than, say, once a year (see this, June 6 2025 and this May 9, 2022)
Maybe a typology already exists and I am wasting my time? If so, please point me to it.
We need not only a typology, but also bingo cards, cartoons, and little videos that show how these propaganda tactics are deployed, why and when they are effective and how they can be combatted.
Most of all though, we need functioning social movement organisations that don’t go up like a rocket and come tumbling down like a stick.
That last one is something most advocates of climate action don’t even address. Their implicit theory of change seems to be that if we just name and shame the oil companies enough, and deride the ‘doomers’ as ignorant or unwitting dupes of said oil companies, then somehow the new Jerusalem (hopefully with lots of shade trees) will be builded here.
(June 23, 2026) “Why the heatwave hysteria won’t change how I run my school” in the Spectator
I haven’t read these but they look good
Clarke, I. (2024). The discourses of climate change denialism across conspiracy and pseudoscience websites. In The Routledge handbook of discourse and disinformation. Taylor & Francis.
Forchtner, B., & Özvatan, Ö. (2022). De/legitimising EUrope through the performance of crises: The far-right Alternative for Germany on “climate hysteria” and “corona hysteria”. Journal of Language and Politics, 21(2), 208-232.
See also the way that the denialists figured out how to use journalistic norms of ‘balance’ to force journalists to keep saying there was a ‘debate’ on the science.
Maxwell T Boykoff, Jules M Boykoff, 2004. Balance as bias: global warming and the US prestige press, Global Environmental Change, Volume 14, Issue 2, Pages 125-136,
Did John Tyndall rip off the work of Eunice Foote? Possibly, but there’s no smoking gun or any other whispers besides chronology, at least as far as I have seen.
Twenty two years ago, on this day, June 29th, 2004.
On 29 and 30 June 2004, Global Access Partners (GAP) brought together a number of business entrepreneurs, utilities representatives, architects, planners, infrastructure investors, scientists and regulators in the environmental arena and building industry, to address future directions and emerging opportunities in the core area of the ‘Sustainable Built Environment’. Supported by Australian Government and Business, the GAP Forum on Ecological Sustainability 2004 launched a practical ‘Year of the Built Environment’ initiative -The Formation Of an Australian National Committee on Business Building Sustainable Cities
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 377ppm. 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 the third IPCC report has come out. People are getting more concerned about CO2 build up in general, the international negotiations seem hopelessly clogged. At times like this, people become more interested in what they can do in their own back yard.
What I think we can learn is this: We are so doomed.
What happened next: More technocratic approaches, more soothing lullabies that everything can continue. More or less is the same, more emissions, higher concentrations, etc.
You need to cut and paste the list of phrases and links into the top of these pages. I do you wait aquatic guys?
On this topic, you might like these other posts on All Our Yesterdays
References
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).
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 427ppm. As of 2026, when this post was published, it is 432ppm. 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 we have been warned – at first quietly and speculatively, sort of – and then with increasing further since 1988 about extreme weather events. And we had them in 2003 for example, with the European heat wave that killed 1000s. But we persisted.
The specific context was that – well, this was a year ago. Your short term memory should be able to fill in the blanks.
What I think we can learn is this: that it’s going to be the vulnerable who get hit first. Life is a shit sandwich: the more bread you have, the less shit you have to eat. The vulnerable being the people who do manual labour in hot conditions without air conditioning at home, who have poor diets, unmet health needs, etc, basically disposable people. And so it came to pass.
What will happen next? Those rich white people who think that their money will protect them are in for sooner or later, a rude awakening. But in the meantime, countless billions of living things will be destroyed on the altar of their greed and stupidity.
On this topic, you might like these other posts on All Our Yesterdays
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).
BRISBANE, June 27, AAP – A new national coal research centre will be based in Queensland, Mines Minister Stephen Robertson said today.
The Cooperative Research Centre for Coal in Sustainable Development would facilitate research to assist the Australian industry produce coal in the most efficient and environmentally responsible manner, he said.
Mr Robertson said Queensland had provided $250,000 towards the setup costs.
He said the centre would explore ways to improve the environmental performance of existing coal technologies and promote the adoption of emerging clean coal techniques.
The centre would also maximise the economic and social value of Australian coal reserves.
“Many of Queensland’s export markets including Japan and Europe are becoming concerned with issues of efficiency and environmental performance,” Mr Robertson said.
AAP, 2001. QLD – New coal research centre. Australian Associated Press, 27 June.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 371ppm. 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 again, Australian political and economic elites had been warned about climate change through the 70s and into the 80s. In 1988 the problem became an issue, became unavoidable, if not undeniable. One of the reactive pieces of rhetoric is around “clean coal”.
The specific context was that by 2001 the Millennium drought was well underway. The third IPCC report had come out. There was ongoing efforts to get an emissions trading scheme going, either nationally or federally or from the states.
Meanwhile, the coal industry is always interested in handouts from the taxpayer for “research.” It keeps academics employed and it gives the politician something to announce what are called, or were called under Rudd, announceables.
And that’s how this sort of thing should be seen. I’m not a Luddite. I’m not saying there shouldn’t be any research into cleaner coal and cleaner everything, depending on your definition and explanation of clean. It is, after all, a finite planet, and there’s no such thing as away (as per Barry Commoner). But I’m also fearful that these sorts of announcements act as a kind of mitigation deterrence. They allow everyone to go back to sleep and to assume that the system is managing the problems.
What I think we can learn is this: We have been telling ourselves soothing lullabies for a very long time. Time to wake up and start screaming.
What happened next: More announcements of more research, but also, of course, more emissions, higher atmospheric concentrations and more impacts.
On this topic, you might like these other posts on All Our Yesterdays
References
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).
The Inside Sunday edition of the CBS Evening News for June 26, 1988 featured a very unusual eight-minute environmental story that led with the greenhouse effect, linking it to the high temperatures of the 1980s. The Goddard Institute’s David Rind and climatologist Thomas Karl warned of future warming and discussed the need to decrease the production of carbon dioxide.
(Sachsman, 2000: 5)
starts at 14m45secs
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 351ppm. As of 2026, when this post was published, it is 432ppm. 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 various news networks, especially CBS, had been broadcasting clips on the greenhouse effect repeatedly. There was one in 1980 and then in response to various congressional hearings, especially in 1982-1983. This was nothing particularly new, except in the length of it (8 minutes is a long time in TV-land).
The specific context was that three days earlier, in the midst of a heat wave and a drought, James Hansen had said to journalists after a meeting, after giving evidence to the Senate inquiry, that “it was time to stop waffling and say that the greenhouse effect was here.” This had been broadcast around the world.
What I think we can learn is this: the media has. Indeed tried to alert us. It’s the rain falling on hard surfaces and just running away.
What happened next: The media continued to cover the story with more or less accuracy and ethics over the coming years. An important one to remember is the September l88 incident where Stephen Schneider is not invited on because they want someone who’s going to make even more “alarmist.” And you’ve also got Australian science journalist Robyn Williams talking about how they’ll have to be the backlash stories. But that’s science is not a matter of opinion like this, you fucking muppets. And then, crucially, the denialists learn to exploit journalistic norms for their own purposes – “Balance as Bias”, as Boykoff and Boykoff put it.
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).
Thirty years ago, on this day, June 26th, 1996 another GCC flak letter (see also 30 May).
This controversial issue also resulted in two letters (dated 30 May and 26 June), being sent to me, one from the Global Climate Coalition (John Schlaes) and the other from The Climate Council (Donald Pearlman). Copies of these were also sent to ten key members of the US Congress as well as the Advisor for Science and Technology and Assistant to the US President (John Gibson), and the Assistant Secretary of State (Eileen Clausen).”
Bolin 2007, page 130
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 362ppm. 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 industries that feel threatened by potential or actual regulation by states, local, federal, national, whatever, will usually fight back by supporting or inventing politicians who will fight their corner. And they will flood the public domain, newspapers and then later, radio, television and the internet, with arguments against regulation. It’s been explained and exposed many times.
One particularly good exposure, in my opinion, is Nancy Oreskes and Stephen Conway’s, Merchants of Doubt. You’ve also got on climate, two books by Ross Gelbspan, “The Heat Is On” and “Boiling Point.”
And so it came to pass with climate in 1989 something called the Global Climate Coalition was created. Sounds cuddly, doesn’t it? But it is actually opposition to national and international action on climate change via the usual mechanisms of group public letters signed by the CEOs of a bunch of companies, incredibly dodgy economic modelling that “proves” the sky will fall, divisive rhetoric, targeting of vulnerable politicians who have elections coming up, threats of funding their opponents, classic carrot and stick.
The specific context was that by this time, the attacks had moved to the scientists with the IPCC second assessment report. And they wheeled out a bunch of decrepit Relevance Deprivation Syndrome suffering physicists to try and create confusion. It worked.
What I think we can learn is this: is that evil organisations doing evil things have to contend with people who have slivers of morality.
What happened next: the Global Climate Coalition also attacked, of course, the Kyoto Protocol. Then in 2002 it splintered even further and lost more members, especially Ford; the gig was up. And in any case, the Global Climate Coalition was able to declare victory. They had stopped there being any robust international or national response to climate and secured their profits for another few decades.
You’d compare it with the greenhouse mafia in Australia, but it was wider, better funded, more organised.
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).
Its advice mostly focussed on ‘holding good public meetings’. There is SO MUCH more to ‘growing a movement’ than this, but bad public meetings (and most of them are, in my extensive experience) is one way activists try to hit the accelerator with their whole body-weight unwittingly mashing down on the break. It’s heart-braking.
So, this below is a mix of questions, provocations and the customary unsolicited advice for anyone thinking about holding a meeting once this wretched heatwave ends and before the next one starts (and remember, this is one of the coolest summers of the rest of your life)
First question
Why are you holding this meeting?
Usually the answer is “to give people the facts” (and to be the person giving the people the facts)
That is not good enough – people can get the facts from the internet, newspapers etc. If you want people to have the facts, a decent video would do better. Are you sure you aren’t holding this meeting to pump some prestige/’momentum’ back into a grassroots group/NGO offshoot that had a sheen a year ago but is now looking a bit tired? Are you sure you’re not suffering from a little bit of Relevance Deprivation Syndrome? You wouldn’t be human if you didn’t, and suffering RDS doesn’t make you a bad/worthless person, but it DOES make you susceptible to perpetrating one of the many fatal errors in social movement organising/agitating.
Second question What would success look like for this meeting?
The usual answer is ‘lots of people come’ and ‘lots of people feel like/tell me they learned a lot.’
Okay, but then, so what? People are more informed (coulda been done more efficiently online, btw). How does a few more people knowing a few more facts (most of which they will forget quite quickly) translate into pressure for change at a local/national/international level? How?
Did those people form any new links with other people, or was all the time and all the attention devoted to the Big People at the Front Of the Room? Was the Q and A dominated by the usual suspects? Did people slump out, shoulders slinked before the close of the meeting, which seemed to have no clear end in sight? Did they? I bet they did, but you chose not to see it, or to explain it away, to blame the victim of your own malpractice for failing to design and execute a meeting well.
Who did you invite to speak at your meeting?
I bet it’s a natural scientist and some politician/celebrity.
Of course, you need a “name” to get people in the door. I understand that. People are more likely to come if they know that the Executive Member for the Environment, some scientist from the nearest university, some person off the telly is going to be there.
But look, all these people come with baggage, with problems
The Executive Member for the Environment will probably be some brittle egomaniac who throws out half an hour of verbiage to try to disguise the fact that her local authority is far more interested in building skyscrapers and raking in cash from the airport than in doing anything meaningful about climate change. They will bludgeon the audience with factoids and boasts about their Strategies and Implementation Protocols, until everyone has lost the will to live. If anyone points out their long record of failure they will, as per media training come out with “well, I’m focussed on the future and what we do next, not on the past.” Rinse and repeat.
Your scientist
May not be a very good public speaker at all. This will be bad.
Or they may be a very good public speaker but without a strict (agreed beforehand and then gently enforced) time limit, will go on and on and on.
They may get involved in long detailed discussions about obscure/confusing (to Joe and Jane Public)
The scientist won’t necessarily know much about what is(n’t) being done locally, and in any case will fear tarnishing their reputation for high-minded neutrality by having an opinion about a local issue (it’s fine to bash the usual suspects). [The whole question of why we continue to fetishise natural scientists about what is a social problem is for another day].
All three, unless kept to time, will talk too long, too vaguely.
This will eat into time for the Q and A.
The Q and A will almost certainly be dominated by a few people (usually over-educated middle class white men, young, middle-aged, and old). They will engage in point-scoring or ‘look at me for asking an obscure question’ or give speeches thinly disguised as questions (some may be butt-hurt that they were not invited to be a panellist).
The energy will be leaking from the room by now, and the chair will either be sad about it or ignore it and plough on. The meeting will dribble to an inconclusive conclusion, with those people not reliant on public transport and who don’t have to get home to the baby-sitter or get up early in the morning sticking around and regurgitating their talking points.
Other people, who came and were talked at, who hoped to meet people and start thinking about DOING things, will go away, thinking the problem is them, and that they simply aren’t dedicated enough to be involved.
A few months later, another meeting, same format, same usual suspects, new ego-fodder. Rinse and repeat repeat repeat.
So, when you hold your meeting, I BEG you, have answers to the following questions.
Have you looked at this meeting through the eyes of someone who is coming who doesn’t know anyone else? How will you make them feel welcome, how will you make it easier for them to make loose connections, chatting to people who are strangers?
What is the meeting FOR? Are you hoping to start/revive a group that will take action? Have you thought about what skills are needed? Have you got a well-written information sheet (2 sides of A4 at absolute most) to give out to everyone
Have you agreed with the speakers how long they will speak for and about what, making clear that you WILL keep them to time?
Have you got a plan for how make sure that the Q&A is not the usual sausage-fest?
Have you got a way to finish the meeting ON TIME, with an up-beat feel
Most of all. MOST OF ALL. Have you got a way for QUICKLY communicating the content and the outcome of the meeting to all those people who would be interested in what you are doing but couldn’t come because of finances, work commitments, child-care, illness, agoraphobia etc etc? If there isn’t a blog up on your website (you do have a website, don’t you? I mean, you’re not a captive of Meta, are you?) within a couple of days of the meeting, then, guess what champion, you’ve failed.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 322ppm. 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 television had been invented in 1927 and there had been a certain amount of TV before World War Two, but then it had been stopped for the duration of the war. And after the war for 10 years, there was only the BBC, but then Independent Television started in the mid late 50s, and at the same time, in 1957 the BBC ran a live-from-the-studio presentation called The Restless Sphere. This was a triumph for the science unit under Aubrey Singer, and here we see Singer’s next big leap, a satellite broadcast just before colour television got going.
What I think we can learn is this: the idiot’s lantern has a global reach.
What happened next: A lot more television! On 1988 there was an Australian satellite link up for “Greenhouse 88”.
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).
