Thirty one years ago, on this day, January 18th, 1995
FEDERAL Cabinet is considering a series of controversial measures to cut greenhouse emissions, including a carbon tax of up to $20 a tonne, which would raise $13 billion over three years, and an extra 10c/litre fuel excise.
The proposals – detailed in a Cabinet document obtained by The Australian Financial Review – are set to generate massive industry hostility, and to switch the environmental spotlight from Mr Beddall, the minister responsible for the woodchip controversy, to the Minister for the Environment, Senator Faulkner, and his departmental deputy secretary, Mr Phillip Toyne, who is masterminding the greenhouse strategy.
Callick, R. 1995. Revealed: Green tax shock *$13bn grab *$20/tonne carbon tax *New 10c/litre fuel levy. Australian Financial Review, 18 January, p.1.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 361ppm. As of 2026 it is 428ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The broader context was that the idea of taxing “bads” is hardly new (Pigou, much?) and had been suggested for carbon dioxide not merely in the late 1980s, but all the way back to 1970.
The specific context was that industry had already seen off a previous tax proposal (or the idea of one) in 1990-1, and had been prepping for another battle for a while, since it was obvious that those wanting climate action would try again.
What I think we can learn from this is industry mostly gets what it wants. We are screwed.
What happened next – those wanting a price on carbon switched to an emissions trading scheme. This makes bankers and consultants happy, and offers enormous opportunities for loophole finding and patronage which turns into post-election-defeat jobs. Even that was resisted, successfully, for ages.
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.
On March 7, 1960, the American aircraft carrier Kearsarge saved Soviet soldiers who had drifted in the ocean for 49 days without food or water. This incident became world famous and eclipsed most of the political news of the time.
In January 1960, the self-propelled barge T-36 filled the role of a floating transshipment point near the island of Iturup on the South Kurile ridge. This vessel operated at a maximum speed of 9 knots per hour, and would sail up to nearly 1,000 feet away from the coast in order to deliver ammunition and food to large ships that could not approach the island’s rocky shore.
On the night of January 17, 1960, a hurricane arose, which broke T-36‘s anchorage and carried the barge out to sea. The crew had been neither warned about the approaching storm nor provided with the requisite 10-day rations. There were four soldiers aboard: junior sergeant Askhat Ziganshin, and rank and file Philip Poplavsky, Anatoly Kryuchkovsky and Ivan Fedotov.
The context was oh, sailors are always going adrift. It’s a big ocean. This though, during the Cold War will have offered the US some embarrassment material. Or at least a distraction from the lie Eisenhower got caught in over Gary Powers.
Why care?
I’m a geek with probably a whole bunch of undiagnosed TLAs. This is my way of coping.
(How) does it connect to climate change?
Nope
What happened next
The Soviet system collapsed under the weight of its own contradictions, with the visible portion being 1989-1992.
How does it help us understand the world?
Afaik, it doesn’t
How does it help us act in the world?
Afaik, it doesn’t
The source that it comes from, if necessary,
Xxx
The other things that you could read about this or watch
Ten years ago, on this day, January 17th, 2016 the Financial Times reports on the aftermath of the Conservative government’s decision to pull funding (£1bn) for carbon capture and storage.
Scott, M. 2016. Carbon capture at risk of running out of steam. Financial Times, 17 January. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/91726a24-a4be-11e5-a91e-162b86790c58.html#ixzz3xVjZrV00
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 401ppm. As of 2025 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The broader context was that carbon capture and storage had first been mooted in the late 1970s (and was regarded sceptically). It had had a brief moment in the late 1980s, and then disappeared into the undergrowth.
The specific context was that after a failed first CCS competition (2007-2011) another one had been set up. Companies were to compete for a billion quid. Then, abruptly, Chancellor George Osborne killed that.
What I think we can learn from this is that technologies go through ups and downs. CCS is a proper roller-coaster. You can read all about it here. (Hudson, 2024)
What happened next
The CCS band-wagon had its wheels put back on, a new axle etc, between 2016 and 2018. Enormous amounts of money are being spent. CO2 savings? Not so much…
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.
Prohibiting things can create grey and black markets, leading to all sorts of mayhem. But once there are viable alternatives (looking at you around electricity generation, Mr Fossil Fuels), then it becomes less problematic…
Twenty three years ago, the Chicago Climate Exchange was announcing founding members. Because carbon trading was going to help reduce emissions. Right. Right?
36 years ago, ahead of the 1990 Federal Election, Liberal Party candidate tried to get the Australian Conservation Foundation to pressure “the green movement” to sit this one out. The beginning of the end for bipartisan consensus on the “greenhouse effect.”
The world revolves around Washington. It was there, in May 1953, that Canadian physicist Gilbert Plass warned a scientific conference that the carbon dioxide being put into the atmosphere when humans burnt ever more oil, coal and gas would heat the planet, with the impacts being obvious by the century.
It was there in November 1965 that President Johnson’s Science Advisory Committee released a report saying Plass’s concerns might well be justified.
It was there in January 1982 at another scientific meeting that at American and German scientists warned “the signs are so ominous that we must expect (a large climatic impact) and take action to avoid it.”
And it was there, on Thursday, that The Trump administration announced its intention to pull out of both the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), alongside many other organisations.
By the late 1970s the build up of carbon dioxide was attracting serious attention by ever more alarmed scientists (see, for example, the 1979-1982 CO2 Newsletter I recently uncovered). President Carter’s science advisor asked skeptical scientists to “kick the tires” on these views. The “Charney Report,” produced to meet this request said they could find no reason to doubt that if the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere doubled, then there would be a warning of anywhere between 1.5 to 3 degrees.
The incoming Reagan administration was uninterested (or, hostile) to these concerns. By 1985 two things had changed. The scientific consensus around carbon dioxide build-up as a problem had become even firmer, and thanks to the discovery of the Ozone Hole, the credibility of atmospheric scientists was sky-high (sorry about that, but it was there and I had to use it). After a pivotal meeting in Villach, Austria scientists grabbed every alarm lever they could, and pulled. In December, Carl Sagan gave his famous, gripping, testimony, In… Washington.
Speaking to reporters after giving testimony in Washington (where else?) in June 1988, scientist James Hansen famously said“it’s time to stop waffling and say that the greenhouse effect is here.”
Well, if there HAS to be a treaty…
1989 saw a flurry of international summits, both specifically on climate, and “sustainable development” more generally. Not coincidentally, the “Global Climate Coalition”, made up of mostly but not exclusively US oil companies, automobile makers and other usual suspects (on their attacks on the IPCC, which the Trump administration is also pulling out of, see here).
As I wrote when President George HW Bush died, the US could have got in on the ground floor. He didn’t. Once the push for a treaty became inevitable, the Americans decided to make the best of it, and prevent outcomes that would be too challenging (some within the US Department of State had felt bruised over the speed of a treaty to protect the Ozone Layer, a few years earlier.)
The main sticking point for the Americans – and there were competing factions within the Bush administration, which led to some whiplash statements and negotiating positions, at least until the “skeptics” won – was that targets and timetables for emissions reductions by rich nations were not to be included in the any climate treaty. As Bush repeatedly and publicly said “American way of life is not negotiable.”
Only once the offending targets and timetables by rich countries were removed from the negotiating text did the Bush Administration agree that Bush would attend the Rio Earth Summit and sign the “United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.”
Article 2 of that treaty makes for rueful reading now. It states that the goal is
“to achieve, in accordance with the relevant provisions of the Convention, stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system. Such a level should be achieved within a time-frame sufficient to allow ecosystems to adapt naturally to climate change, to ensure that food production is not threatened and to enable economic development to proceed in a sustainable manner.”
Fine words butter no parsnips.
Thirty years of dummy spits
However, the idea that rich countries, which had caused the problem and were wealthy, should go first on emissions reductions could only be delayed, not defeated. The first “Conferences of the Parties”, in early 1995 ended with the Berlin Mandate, calling on rich countries to come to the 1997 COP with a plan, which ended up being held in Kyoto Protocol.. This sparked a huge pre-emptive effort against the “Kyoto Protocol” driven by the Global Climate Coalition, with other bad-faith actors adding their two cents (some will have seen the play Kyoto, about the Climate Council), leading the US Senate to vote, 95-0 in favour of a motion that said, in effect, “we’re not cutting until poor countries agree to”
The US – with help from Australia – pushed a “technology will fix it” line, but once Kyoto was ratified by enough nations to become law, in 2005 (a quid pro quo with Russia, which wanted World Trade Organisation membership), then the US had to re-engage.
Famously at the 2008 G8 meeting Bush said – revealingly – “Goodbye from the world’s biggest polluter.”
The 2009 “last chance to save the world” meeting at Copenhagen ended in disarray and the next five years saw the pieces of the dropped vase were glued back together in time for the Paris Agreement, which managed not to mention the dread words “fossil fuels.”
Trump announced in 2017 that he would pull out of the Paris Agreement. That man Biden from 1986 re-entered in 2021, and Paris, and introduced huge incentives for “clean tech” (renewable energy and other more dubious ventures, such as direct air capture under the “Inflation Reduction Act and other pump-priming schemes. Although the IRA should have made big business happy, they decided not to try to defend it in the face of Trump’s obvious hostility.
And now this. A couple of random observations;
As the costs pile up, and reality becomes harder and harder to ignore
The Trump administration is not doing what is in the long-term interest of American capital, which could have made more money via Biden’s IRA. While there was a “logic” to anti-Kyoto activity, this anti-climate crusade seems far more ideological
What next?
Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future.
IF the US goes ahead and pulls out (and there’s little reason to believe they won’t – their claims should be taken both literally and seriously) then several things happen.
There will be an audible sigh of relief from Australia – especially Adelaide – that they lost out on hosting the next COP.
The various academics who critique the whole UNFCCC process as not fit for purpose will try (and sometimes fail) to keep from saying “I told you so.”
There will be a blizzard of academic papers on “multilateralism” and bilateral deals between states, with the focus switching to what cities and technologies can do.
People invested in the COP process will insist it continues, and say the role is to keep the US seat warm for the glorious day in 2029 when a Democratic president restores “order” and “sanity.”
Regardless of what happens, we should remember the following
When Gilbert Plass made his warning, humans (mostly in the West) were pumping out about 6 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide a year, and the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was about 314ppm
When the UNFCCC was agreed, emissions were about 23 billion tonnes and the CO2 level was 355ppm
Today, despite all the pledges, all the renewables and so forth, we are pumping out about 40 billion tonnes, and the CO2 in the atmosphere is 428ppm, and galloping upwards.
More emissions means more CO2 hanging around in the atmosphere. More CO2 means more heat in the Earth System, means more extreme weather events and – between them – a remorseless rise in temperatures, with all that that entails.
Twenty years ago, on this day, January 14th, 2006 one Australian offshoot of the Atlas Network had shade thrown at it by a very good Australian climate scientist.
“The Institute of Public Affairs supports, as far as I know, road rules and safety standards, for example for automotive design, medical procedures and drugs. Sensible regulation, with carrots and sticks for people to do the right thing, is necessary in an imperfect world. The same must apply to environmental damage caused by human activities that threatens future human health and welfare.”
Pittock, B. 2006 “In global warming war, may market forces be with you”, The Age, January 14.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 376ppm. As of 2025 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The broader context was the Atlas Network – well, you can read about it here. The IPA, set up during WW2 had been a fairly stodgy beast, but then became a leading player in the push to the right… .
The specific context was from 1989 the IPA had been pushing doubt and denial. They were (and still are, one assumes) proud of that..
What I think we can learn from this is that there are simple arguments – look up the Plimsoll line – that do cut through all the bullshit.
What happened next
The IPA continued on its merry way and was a major player in the denial-o-sphere of the late 2000s and early 2010s.
The emissions kept climbing. The Age of consequences (for rich white people, the only ones who matter) has begun.
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.
Amphitryon is a French language comedy in a prologue and 3 Acts by Molière which is based on the story of the Greek mythological character Amphitryon as told by Plautus in his play from ca. 190–185 B.C. The play was first performed at the Théâtre du Palais-Royal in Paris on 13 January 1668.[1] A whiff of scandal surrounded the play, with some claiming that Molière was criticizing the amorous affairs of Louis XIV of France in the guise of Jupiter. It was performed again three days later at the Tuileries Garden in the presence of Louis XIV.
Moliere at his peak. The Sun King and all that. One of the gnarlier Greek myths.
Why care?
You really don’t need to. I mean, I don’t half the time – these are markers/aide memoires/”I should come back and read this”.
(How) does it connect to climate change?
Almost any Greek myth could get repurposed, I reckon, if someone was bothered enough.
What happened next
Moliere died on stage. Literally, pretty much.
Molière suffered from pulmonary tuberculosis, possibly contracted when he was imprisoned for debt as a young man. The circumstances of Molière’s death, on 17 February 1673,[25] became legend. He collapsed on stage in a fit of coughing and haemorrhaging while performing in the last play he had written, which had lavish ballets performed to the music of Marc-Antoine Charpentier and which ironically was titled Le Malade imaginaire (The Imaginary Invalid). Molière insisted on completing his performance. Afterwards he collapsed again with another, larger haemorrhage before being taken home, where he died a few hours later, without receiving the last rites because two priests refused to visit him while a third arrived too late. The superstition that green brings bad luck to actors is said to originate from the colour of the clothing he was wearing at the time of his death.
Thinking about gods and them messing up/being assholes is a good analogy, imo. Powerful doesn’t mean smart. It means powerful, or at least consequential.
How does it help us act in the world?
It does not, as best as I can see – what of it?
The source that it comes from, if necessary,
Xxx
The other things that you could read about this or watch
More Moliere is called for, I think.
What do you think?
If you have opinions or info about this, or other things that happened on this day that are worth knowing, let me know!
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 320ppm. As of 2026 it is 428ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The broader context was that scientists have been warning us. Then shouting. Then pleading. Also, lots of ordinary people who didn’t go to the right universities, don’t have the right qualifications.
The specific context was that there isn’t a specific context. This is just how it is going to be from now on. Except it will get worse, gradually and suddenly, suddenly and gradually, in fits and starts.
What I think we can learn from this is that this is just how it is going to be from now on. Except it will get worse, gradually and suddenly, suddenly and gradually, in fits and starts.
What happened next
The record hasn’t been broken. Yet. Watch this space.
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:
-January 13, 2004 – Bob Carr rallies states for emissions trading
On this day, January 12, in 1946 Frankie Fay, a fascist asshole who had been the “first stand-up” held a rally of 10,000 fellow fascist asssholes.
And this AFTER the truth of what the Nazis had done was out there….
“… Actor’s Equity stood by Brooks, Darling, Malina and Osato. Rather than expel them from his union, Lytell censured Frank Fay for “conduct prejudicial to the association or its membership.”
…
In response to the censure, allies of Franco, members of the Ku Klux Klan and the American Nazi party organized a rally at Madison Square Garden in January 1946 called “The Friends of Frank Fay.” Speakers included Klan ally Joseph Scott, Nazi Laura Ingalls, publisher of anti-Semitic pamphlets John Geis, and the prolific Joseph P. Kamp, who had used the KKK’s mailing list to distribute his work about “Jewish influence” and America’s “Communist President” Franklin D. Roosevelt.
The context was that the truth of the extermination camps and the industrialised murder of millions of Jewish people, Roma, and other “undesirables” was kinda hard to ignore in 1946. But never underestimate the fash, I guess.
Why care?
This stuff matters! We need to remember that there is nothing that cannot be denied/ignored/minimised if it gets between you and your a) money and b) sense of yourself as a Good Person.
(How) does it connect to climate change?
See above.
What happened next
The white supremacists took a series of defeats through the 50s-70s, but have come roaring back.
Fay died, unlamented, in 1961.
How does it help us understand the world?
That evil never goes away. It can be contained, on a good day.
How does it help us act in the world?
Xx
The source that it comes from, if necessary,
Xxx
The other things that you could read about this or watch
There’s a Kurt Vonnegut novel I should read again, about 1930s White Supremacists…
What do you think?
If you have opinions or info about this, or other things that happened on this day that are worth knowing, let me know!