Author: drmarchudson

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Australia

March 30, 2007 – Climate as “the great moral challenge of our generation” #auspol

On this day 15 years ago then-Opposition Leader Kevin “I’m from Queensland, I’m here to help” Rudd made a speech about “great moral challenge of our generation”  at the ALP climate summit at Parliament House, Canberra.

You can read more about this here, in a post by an incredibly intelligent, good-looking and kind individual who has given permission for linking. The conversation below the line is really really good…

Rudd was using the climate issue to make John Howard, Prime Minister and climate criminal since 1996, look outa touch. It was working, and kept working, all the way to the election. Australia cared about climate change.


Rudd then did fuck all as Prime Minister, using the climate issue to wedge the Liberals and Nationals, and then running scared after the failure of the Copenhagen conference and Tony Abbott’s arrival.

Labor folks still blame the Greens (for sake of clarity, I am not and never have been a member of ANY political party – Trot, Green Labour, Labor whatever). To admit that they chose and supported a wrong ‘un who has totally fucked Australian climate politics is just too much for them.

Categories
International processes Science Scientists UNFCCC

March 29, 1995- Kuwaiti scientist says if global warming happening, it’s not fossil fuels. #MRDA

On the 29th of March 1995, in Berlin at the first “Conference of the Parties” of the UNFCCC, Kuwait, put forward a scientist, who said that if global warming was happening, it wasn’t the fault of coal and oil. Of course, they would say that;  “Mandy Rice Davies applies.” You need to think about Kuwait, as a spoiler in all of this, along with Saudi in the US and Australia. And if you’re looking for the gory details, Jeremy Leggett’s book, The Carbon War is really good on this. 

What happened next?

COP1 ended with the Berlin Mandate – rich countries agree to cut emissions first.  Two years later, in Kyoto, the first agreement to reduce emissions was agreed for what that was worth (not much). Kyoto was not replaced, and eventually a laughable “pledge and review” system got implemented (Paris). And the emissions climb and climb.

Categories
Australia Coal

March 28, 2010 – protestors block Newcastle coal terminal #auspol

On March 28 2010, a flotilla of brave campaigners and citizens and protesters tried to stop the Newcastle coal port and briefly succeeded. This was a Rising Tide Australia action. 

Climate protest fleet attempts blockade of Newcastle coal port | Climate Citizen (takvera.blogspot.com)

The context is that Newcastle is a huge coal exporting port for both thermal coal and metallurgical coal. In 2010, while the Labour government had just abandoned its lame “carbon reduction pollution scheme” it was still talking about continuing to expand coal export infrastructure. 

And these human beings were trying to stop it. 

Why this matters. 

It’s easy to forget that there has been constant resistance to stupidity.  But there is that Schiller line, isn’t there – “against stupidity, the gods themselves contend in vain.”

What happened next?

The protestors, of course failed, but that’s not their fault. And the exports have continued and are continuing against all common sense and care for future generations. 

Categories
Activism United States of America

March 27th, 1977- what we can learn from Dutch arrogance and aviation disasters

On March 27th 1977 there was a major aviation disaster;  still the biggest loss of life in a single aviation accident. (Obviously, 911 cost more lives in toto). This was the collision by a KLM jumbo jet with a Pan Am jet in the Canary Islands. And there are various accounts of it and why it happened but the consensus is that the KLM chief pilot was an arrogant “my way or the highway” dick, and the inability of the co-pilot to challenge him [the co-pilot almost certainly understood that the control tower had NOT given them permission to take off, but wasn’t willing to challenge The Boss] led to hella lotta death. 

What are the lessons here?

Firstly that arrogant Dutch men are more trouble than they are worth. And the more we learn to tell them to shut up, the more we ignore them, the happier and safer everyone will be.

On a serious note we could learn a lot from the aviation industry, which is safer than ever (give or take some 787 Max disasters). In terms of notechs for social movement organisations, I think that would be really handy.

You can have the technical systems, but the human factor will still get you all killed. 


For more on “notechs”- 

Nobody really likes it when planes drop out of the sky full of passengers.
Categories
Science Scientists

March 26, 1979 – Exxon meets a climate scientist

On this day in 1979, a few weeks after the end of the First World Climate Conference, Wally Broecker, the oceanographer met with Exxon scientists who were studying climate change and fossil fuels.

Broecker, to his apparent dismay, had coined the had been the first to use the term global warming in an academic context. (According to Alice Bell’s book “Our Biggest Experiment”, he  offered 200 bucks to anyone who could find an earlier example so he wouldn’t be lumbered with the unwanted title. 

Broecker also famously later compared the climate system to a sleeping beast and suggested that we stop poking it with a sharp stick.

What’s Exxon in all this? Well, “Exxon knew”. Exxon was doing its own studies of the climate problem, the carbon dioxide problem in the late 70s, early 80s. And this involved talking to scientists who knew what they were talking about. And Broecker most certainly was one of the scientists who really knew what he was talking about 

You can read more about this at the truly excellent “Inside Climate News”

Wallace Broecker

See also the page on Inside Climate News about “Exxon: The Road not taken.”

Exxon: The Road Not Taken

Why this matters

We need to remember that Exxon knew, and that scientists, quite rightly will talk to different constituencies they are paid out of taxpayer funding, and they should talk to not just the grassroots groups, but the biggies. And we need to know that in 1979, there were people seriously worried about climate. And these weren’t just hippies living in communes. This was the elite and it would be another 9 or 10 years before the issue would successfully break through and the co2 concentration had gone up and more kit had been built, and more norms around production and consumption had been established. And yes, yes, the population had gone up too;  we have two problems. The one that we in the West really need to do something about is overconsumption, exploitation, imperialism, hyper-extractivism, murder, you name it. And once we’ve done all of that, and paid reparations, then we can start to lecture other people about having too many babies.

Categories
International processes IPCC Science

March 25, 1988- World Meteorological Organisation sends IPCC invites.

On this day in 1988 the World Meteorological Organisation, (the clue is in the name) sent out invites to be part of what is now known as the IPCC

“In the absence of an official US initiative, WMO took the lead and held discussions with UNEP on this proposal. Eventually, a slightly modified version was sent out by the Secretary General of WMO on March 25, 1988 to member governments inquiring whether their country would like to be represented on a proposed ‘Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’ (Obasi, 1988).”

Agrawala, S. (1998a, p 615)

The context is this

The discovery of the ozone “hole” gave atmospheric scientists a high profile and trust.  Atmospheric scientists had finally decided at a meeting hosted by WMO, UNEP and ICSCU,, in Villach, Austria, in October 1985, that the carbon dioxide problem they had been studying and talking about in-depth for roughly 15 years, needed proper policy responses

The right-wing administration of the US “President” Ronald Reagan was split, but mostly opposed to this. They DEFINITELY did not want independent scientists pushing them around.  So, we get an intergovernmental panel rather than an international one.  They key sources – but by no means the only ones –  for this, are

Agrawala, S. Context and Early Origins of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Climatic Change 39, 605–620 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1005315532386

Agrawala, S. Structural and Process History of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Climatic Change 39, 621–642 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1005312331477


What happened next

The IPCC first met in November 1988, in Geneva. Within a year and a half its first assessment report was ready. It was, of course, attacked and enormous attempts were made to water it down.  Things really got heated (ho ho) when the second assessment report came out.  That was very very nasty indeed…

Meanwhile, the carbon dioxide accumulates

Categories
Fossil fuels Greenwash United States of America

March 24, 1989 – Exxon Valdez vs Alaska. (EV wins)

On the March 24 1989, the Exxon Valdez, ran aground in Alaska. Another of the consequential oil spills like the Torrey Canyon (1967) , and the one in the March 1978 (the Amoco Cadiz).

 And that was followed, of course, by Deepwater Horizon. 

And the thing to remember is that it’s not the accidents that are the problem, itt’s the normal operating of the system. So here Imma point you at the Onion article about “Millions Of Barrels Of Oil Safely Reach Port In Major Environmental Catastrophe”

What’s interesting about the Valdez is it was probably the last time we thought things could be better. It spurred in the short term, Exxon to run a very effective publicity campaign about people scrubbing individual rocks and birds. And there was more loose talk about double hold oil tankers. In the longer term, they fought a successful ish rearguard action via the legal system and academia. And here we are. 

Then in 1997, one of my favourite references to this disaster is the Exxon is the movie Good Will Hunting where as part of his monologue about the dots between the National Security Agency and everyone getting fucked over, Matt Damon makes reference to a drunk captain who wants to slalom with the icebergs.

Check out the post for the 26th March, btw

Categories
Energy Science Scientists United States of America

March 23, 1989 – cold fusion!!

On March 23 1989, cold fusion was announced by a couple of overexcited scientists. (the gory details of why they came to be releasing this when they did can be found here).

The implication in fusion (hot or cold, but especially cold) is of limitless energy, which sounds like a good idea until you start thinking about how infantile human societies would actually use that limitless energy: we would just intensify our exploitation/exploration. [Comedy fact, the Portuguese have one word that covers both of those]. 

And limitless energy would accelerate our doom in all probability without some serious wisdom in our institutions. And I see no evidence of any wisdom in our institutions. (There may have been some, but we have moron-ified ourselves over the last 40 years or more.)

But anyway, this particular bout of cold fusion was quickly debunked, and there were many articles and books about what it all “meant.” Science and Technology Studies was then a relatively new thing.

And the following day…

Categories
Activism

March 22, 2012 – flash mobs and repertoire exhaustion

On this day, March 22 2012, exactly 10 years ago, the then new organisation 350.org, held a flash mob on a university campus in Canada to try to drum up interest in its divestment from fossil fuels activities.

On March 22nd, approximately 30 students met on campus at 1pm with their ipods ready. At 1:10, we pressed play simultaneously and followed the instructions on the 14 minute long mp3. The energy was high, and curious onlookers were already starting to gather. THREE, TWO, ONE, START! The voice told us about the horrors of climate change while we participated in a giant shoulder massage train. Later we caused a stir in a high-traffic area on campus with 2 minutes to high five as many non-participants as possible. http://350.org/flash-mobs-and-mysterious-mp3s-tools-raise-climate-awareness-yes-please/

This was not a big or important event. And I mention it because it’s 10 years ago and flash mobs are so over. And 350.org has had a fairly typical story of late in that it tried to expand too quickly and has had to pull its horns in. And it continues to have the same problems that all the big green organisations have around black and ethnic minority representation. And this has been going on since – well this has been spoken of – the late 80s, early 90s. And of course it’s been going on even longer than that.

Meanwhile, about flash mobs: Repertoires get old fast, but they continue to be used after they have lost their novelty value because people struggled to innovate understandably and you want to sweat your assets. In some ways. NGOs and civil society organisations are under the same forces as big industrial outfits you have skill sets repertoires things that feel and are “right” and you keep doing them. And that isn’t automatically a bad thing. You know, you wouldn’t want to have surgery from a surgical team that had given up on hand-washing, because that was an old thing. Some things are really, really worth keeping. But at the same time, you wouldn’t want the surgery from a surgeon who hadn’t learned anything from his failures, or an anaesthetist or nurses who hadn’t kept up with the latest research. And we’re still using techniques which were proven to be less effective than more recent ones. Now, the analogy of the human body in a society is an old one. And the analogy I’m telling around in a medical innovation and social movement, innovation is not perfect. That’s because it’s an analogy, a metaphor. See the 1931 Robert Frost essay about this….

“All metaphor breaks down somewhere. That is the beauty of it. It is touch and go with the metaphor, and until you have lived with it long enough you don’t know when it is going. You don’t know how much you can get out of it and when it will cease to yield. It is a very living thing. It is as life itself”

But I am digressing…

Categories
Australia

March 21, 1994 – Yes to UNFCCC, yes to more coal-fired plants. Obviously. #auspol

On this day in March 21 1994 is an important and ironic day for climate action. Two things happened that tell you a lot about where we are.

This was the day on which the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change became international law. And it was secondly, the day that Singleton Council in New South Wales said yes to another coal fired power station over the protestations of Greenpeace, Australia. 

So, on that first one: there had been the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 and the requisite number of nations, including the United States and Australia had ratified the treaty. And this all took place a little bit quicker than a lot of people expected, (which left the Manchester Global Forum as basically an irrelevance – it had been plotted when the assumption was that it would take several more years for Rio to become a “thing”.)

At the end of 1992, when Australia ratified the UNFCCC, it had also launched the National Greenhouse Response Strategy, full of vague platitudes (all the real commitments and ideas had been killed off in the committees beforehand, rendering the “Ecologically Sustainable Development” process of 1990-1991 useless).

And you can argue that the federal system in Australia makes it impossible to get strong, coordinated action on climate. And maybe there’s an element of truth to that, but the federal government didn’t even bloody try. 

And the Singleton coal fired power plant is a really good example of how we can pat ourselves on the back for passing international laws, while on literally the same day pursuing the path that will give the light to all our fine words. Greenpeace did their best, they had a court case. They lost it later that year. 

And the Singleton coal fired power station has had a long life, which is more than you can say, perhaps for children born in the year 2030, or 40.