Author: drmarchudson

Categories
Australia Carbon Pricing

December 5, 1994 – Taxing times for Australia, maybe…

Thirty years ago, on this day, December 5th, 1994, Keating’s government was supposed to discuss a carbon tax (but it got bumped).

“Conservation groups yesterday stepped up pressure on the Federal Government to adopt tougher measures to reduce Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions. The Federal Cabinet will consider the issue tomorrow.

In Yallourn, Greenpeace activists chained themselves across railway tracks used by coal trains which feed the Yallourn W power station.

They also unfurled a huge banner down the side of one of the station’s smoke stacks.

 Birnbauer, B. 1994. Greenies Mount Campaign For Greenhouse Tax. The Age, 6 December, p.3.

AND 

LOCAL coal prices would double and the $8 billion export coal industry would be rendered unprofitable if Federal Cabinet introduced a new carbon levy to help reduce greenhouse gas, according to a major study released yesterday.“… But the Australian Conservation Foundation also released a new report yesterday (5 December), prepared for the ACF as a submission to the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering.

“On both a per capita basis and in terms of emissions per unit of GDP, Australia now has by far the highest level of all greenhouse gas emissions in the industrialised world,” said ACF executive director, Ms Tricia Caswell”.

1994 Dwyer, M. 1994. Coal fire on carbon levy. The Australian Financial Review, 6 December, p.8.

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 359ppm. As of 2024 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that Greenpeace had been launching court cases to try to stop coal-fired power stations. They’ve not been successful, sadly, no fault of their own. And also there was a carbon tax proposed by Labor Environment Minister John Faulkner (with the campaign to get this happening spear-headed by ACF). So this protest can be seen as two birds one stone sort of.

[It’d be fun to get hold of Greenpeace newsletters magazines from 1994 to ‘95. See what they had to say.]

What we learn is that nonviolent direct action against coal-fired power stations has been going on for a long time. Sadly without much success. 

What happened next? Australia kept building coal-fired power stations. The carbon tax was defeated and the emissions kept climbing. We are all going to die. 

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: 

December 5, 1952 & 2009 London sees climatic pollution events

December 5, 2002 – Australian Government CCS support begins…

Categories
State Violence

December 4, 1969 – Black Panther Fred Hampton assassinated by FBI, Chicago cops

Fifty five years ago, on this day, December 4th, 1969, Fred Hampton and Mark Clark were murdered.

In December 1969, Hampton was drugged,[7][8] then shot and killed in his bed during a predawn raid at his Chicago apartment by a tactical unit of the Cook County State’s Attorney‘s Office, who received aid from the Chicago Police Department and the FBI leading up to the attack. Law enforcement sprayed more than 100 gunshots throughout the apartment; the occupants fired once.

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 324ppm. As of 2024 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that some Black Panthers were running around waving guns, and that made them ultimately unimportant. Fred Hampton was smarter than that, and knew that all the imagery and rhetoric wouldn’t help build community networks. And he was really the FBI’s worst nightmare. A smart, dedicated black man who was capable of building links with other groups across racial lines. So of course, they had to whack him. And that’s what they did. 

What we learn is that the most dangerous radicals are the ones who you can’t easily dismiss. 

What happened next? The FBI had to patyo out a load of cash, but would not admit that they whacked Hampton, and others. COINTELPRO at its finest, eh?

In 1982, the City of Chicago, Cook County, and the federal government agreed to a settlement in which each would pay $616,333 (equivalent to $1.95 million per payee in 2023) to a group of nine plaintiffs, including the mothers of Hampton and Clark.[81] The $1.85 million settlement (equivalent to $5.84 million in 2023) was believed to be the largest ever in a civil rights case.[81] G. Flint Taylor, one of the attorneys representing the plaintiffs, said, “The settlement is an admission of the conspiracy that existed between the FBI and Hanrahan’s men to murder Fred Hampton.”[82] Assistant United States Attorney Robert Gruenberg said the settlement was intended to avoid another costly trial and was not an admission of guilt or responsibility by any of the defendants.[82]

Wikipedia

Fun fact: Hampton’s assassination was the final impetus for the Weather Underground to want to bomb shit. But instead, they blew themselves up in March of 1970, next door to Dustin Hoffman. 

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: 

December 4, 1989 – first anti-climate action economic “modelling” released in Australia

December 4, 1989 – Greenhouse tax urged…

Categories
Sweden

December 3, 1970 – Olof Palme looks to the future…

Fifty-four years ago, on this day, December 3rd, 1970, Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme tries to get some future-thinking going,

When, on 3 December 1970, he expressed the government’s intention to appoint a working group for futures studies, Olof Palme reiterated this outlook on futures studies, seeing them as a tool for national policy choices and based on Swedish values of neutrality, independence, and solidarity. If Sweden did not engage in the study of the future, Palme said, it would be dependent on future visions foreign to Swedish values. The study of the future was to seek a Swedish path between two seemingly existing alternatives of the future. Heidenblad 2021

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 325ppm. As of 2024 it is 424ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that all sorts of futurology, horizon-scanning stuff was getting done. And Olof Palme had just been talking about the threat of climate change. And his point about if you’re not doing it yourself, you’re gonna have to accept someone else’s vision is a really solid one. 

What we learn. Palme was a cut above.

What happened next. More futurology work got done. You can read about it here. All of Palmer kept doing stuff until 1986. 

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: 

December 3, 1968 – UN General Assembly says yes to a conference about environment. C02 mentioned.

December 3, 1972 – #climate scientists write “gizza grant” letter to President Nixon

Categories
Economics of mitigation United States of America

December 2, 2023 – Exxon’s boss vs IEA, planet

One year ago, on this day, December 2nd, 2023,

DUBAI, Dec 2 (Reuters) – Exxon Mobil CEO Darren Woods on Saturday rejected the International Energy Agency’s recent claim that using wide-scale carbon capture to fight climate change was an implausible “illusion”, saying the same could be said about electric vehicles and solar energy.

“There is no solution set out there today that is at the scale to solve the problem,” Woods told Reuters on the sidelines of the COP28 climate summit in Dubai.

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 423ppm. As of 2024 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that the oil industry chief execs were turning up in force to COP28, the one with the so-called “Stocktake”. And the chief executives have a habit of saying inconvenient things or truthful things.

What I think we can learn from this. From the mouths of babes. And not-terribly-bright greedheads…

What happened next

MARC TO WRITE IN DECEMBER

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

Xxx

Also on this day: 

December 2, 1964 – Mario Savio’s “bodies on the gears” speech at Berkeley..

December 2, 1981 – “Is the world getting warmer?” (YES)

December 2, 1991 – “Ecologically Sustainable Development” bites the dust…

Categories
Australia Economics of mitigation

December 1, 1995 – bullshit modelling put out by Keating Government

Twenty-nine years ago, on this day, December 1st, 1995, bullshit “ABARE” climate modelling put out by Australian government, as part of its push for special treatment internationally.

1995 Release of “Global Climate Change” report by Keating Government, based on ABARE AND DFAT “modelling”.

This was hardly a surprise. At the beginning of the year a front page story on The Australian (back when it was still almost a newspaper) had said as much. From January 18, 1995.

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 361ppm. As of 2024 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that the first Conference of the Parties (COP1) had happened in Berlin in March. Australia was one of the nations that, thanks to the Berlin Mandate, was expected to turn up a couple of years later, with a plan for emissions reductions. But Australia had already comprehensively failed to take any action towards its first proposed target, the Interim Planning Target of October 1990. And so it was going to need other ways of responding to the challenge, as in denying the challenge and trying to push it on to other people. ABARE had already done some idiotic plant modelling and now the Department for Foreign Affairs and Trade were happy to take ABARE’s modelling and create an argument that said Australia shouldn’t have to x. In essence, this was not under that wicked, wicked man, Liberal John Howard. It was under St. Paul Keating. 

What we learn is that the Australian political elites’ mendacious and rapacious hostility towards climate ambition is essentially bi-partisan and has been going on for 30 however many years and here we are, 

What happened next? Keating lost office in March of 1996. Howard simply turbo-charged the hostility to all things environmental and especially climate. 

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

Xxx

Also on this day: 

December 1, 1976 – Met Office boss still saying carbon dioxide build-up a non-issue

December 1, 2005 – David Cameron says “low carbon living should not be a weird or worthy obligation”

December 1, 2008 – Climate Change Committee fanboys carbon capture

Categories
Carbon Capture and Storage United States of America

December 1, 1984 – they’re talking about CCS already…

Forty years ago, on this day, December 1st, 1984, Carbon Capture and Storage got an early study,

 Systems study for the removal, recovery and disposal of carbon dioxide from fossil fuel power plants in the US

Abstract

This report examines the feasibility of preventing man-made CO/sub 2/ from entering the atmosphere. Utilities produce about 30% of the emissions of CO/sub 2/, therefore, the system is first applied in this study to the power plant effluents. An absorption/stripping stack gas scrubbing and regeneration process was chosen for the present system study. An improved solvent process is used and the process is integrated with the power plant operations to improve the efficiency of the combined plant. Three methods of disposal are selected and appropriately applied, depending on geographical proximity to the source power plants. The US Department of Energy Federal Region Divisions for utility power plants was utilised to aggregate and design the disposal system. The energy requirement to drive the various parts of the system is estimated. This is a first order design and cost estimation system study, made primarily for the purpose of determining the order of magnitude feasibility and economic costs for the removal, recovery, and disposal of CO/sub 2/ from power plant stacks in the US. The base year chosen for the systems analysis was 1980 and all capacity and costs are indexed to that year.

Authors: Steinberg, M; Cheng, H C; Horn, F

Publication Date: 1984-12-01

Research Org.: Brookhaven National Lab., Upton, NY (USA)

OSTI Identifier: 6084354 published 2 years later as https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/ep.670050409?saml_referrer

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 345ppm. As of 2024 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that CCS had got its first serious push in 1977, with the publication of an article by Cesar Marchetti, an Italian physicist who had been asked to think about the issue by our good friends a the International Institute for Advanced Systems Analysis,t IIASA, never-knowingly out-technofixed. Albanese had done some work in the late 1970s, and this was a follow-up

What I think we can learn from this is that CCS has been talked about for almost 50 years. Still not delivering any detectable-compared-to-annual-emissions ‘savings’ (EOR doesn’t count, for obvious reasons).

What happened next. There was a spasm of interest in the late 1980s, but for real hype, you have to wait until the early 2000s.

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

Xxx

Also on this day: 

December 1, 1976 – Met Office boss still saying carbon dioxide build-up a non-issue

December 1, 2005 – David Cameron says “low carbon living should not be a weird or worthy obligation”

December 1, 2008 – Climate Change Committee fanboys carbon capture

Categories
Cultural responses United States of America

November 30, 2014 – US TV show The Newsroom tackles climate change

Ten years ago, on this day, November 30th, 2014,Aaron Sorkin’s drama show The Newsroom “does” climate change.

“The person has already been born who will die due to catastrophic failure of the planet.”

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 399ppm. As of 2024 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that Sorkin has tried to get people thinking about climate change before. Check out “The American President” from 1995.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_American_President

What I think we can learn from this

We ignored all the warnings, because to not do so would require collective action, and we really suck at that.

What happened next

Which then got chided by various “lefties” for, oh the usual – insufficiently hopey-changey blah blah blah

https://grist.org/living/aaron-sorkin-tackles-climate-change-on-the-newsroom-and-oy/  

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/11/climate-desk-fact-checks-aaron-sorkins-climate-science-newsroom/

The emissions kept climbing and the predictions came closer. Some of them have arrived. Others, well, they’re pending. 

References/further reading

Black, M. (2017). Environmental Deadpan: New Scales and Sensations of Ecological Fallout. American Quarterly 69(2), 397-409. https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/aq.2017.0033.

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: 

November 30, 1978 – House of Lords debate on Atmospheric Changes…

November 30, 1998 – Exxon and Mobil merge

Categories
Australia Carbon Pricing Denial

November 30, 1994 – Another denialist dolt – “Global warming a clouded issue”

Thirty years ago, on this day, November 30th, 1994,

ANDREW McINTYRE finds that the gap is just getting wider between the politicians and the scientists.

Greenpeace has just made a submission to Federal Cabinet claiming greenhouse gases should be subjected to the same stringent regulations as other damaging materials. Cabinet will make a decision early in December, and is likely to consider measures including the introduction of a carbon tax. But will it base its decisions on the facts or the fictions?

McIntyre, A. 1994. Global warming a clouded issue. Canberra Times, 30 November, p.16.

and

Meanwhile, the BCA has eschewed the denial angle, and sends a letter to Keating-

The brief introduction explains the purpose of the letter. The Business Council presents its argument in the next five paragraph and refutes [well, maybe] the view of pro-carbon tax lobbyists in the following seven paragraphs. (Worden, 1998, p133)

It concludes “Costly policies such as a unilateral carbon tax or an environmental levy are not necessary for Australia to make an equitable contribution to global emission abatement. On the other hand we believe that complementary industry and government action within a no regrets framework provide good scope for further emission abatement.” (cited Worden 1998, p130)

Letter to the MP from BCA 30 November 1994 (Wordern, 1998, ch 6)

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 359ppm. As of 2024 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that the day before the IPA had had GB Tucker writing gibberish, and now the Canberra Times was running a denialist screed. It was the second time that year, at least, by an IPA hanger-on. 

What we learn is that even a fundamentally okay newspaper like the Canberra Times was still running denialist tripe out of a misplaced sense of “balance” (See also Boykoff and Boykoff article about bias as balance). 

What happened next? The carbon tax was defeated. The IPA is still with us. The Tasman Institute was abolished – surplus to requirements, job done, mission accomplished. And then Prime Minister John Howard delivered everything that the fossil fuel lobby could expect. 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: 

November 30, 1978 – House of Lords debate on Atmospheric Changes…

November 30, 1998 – Exxon and Mobil merge

Categories
Australia Denial Uncategorized

November 29, 1990 and 1994 – Australian denial fools (Fred Singer and Brian Tucker)

Thirty-four and thirty years ago, on this day, November 29th, 1990/1994, two climate denialists who really ought to have known better (and did, before idiocy overtook them) were spouting their nonsens.

29 November 1990 Fred Singer The Greenhouse Effect and Global Warming: Fact or Fiction? Tasman Institute Seminar

and

29 November 1994 – Canberra Times piece IPA whining about greenhouse, wheeling out Brian Tucker, who had been head of the CSIRO’s Atmospheric Sciences Division.

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 354ppm/359ppm. As of 2024 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context is this: We have two examples of high status dickheads, one American, one Australian, denying the reality of climate change. What were both sort of relatively crucial moments in history. So in 1990, Ros Kelly had just come back from the Second World Climate Conference. The negotiations for a climate treaty were about to begin in earnest within a couple of months. In the second case, there was a battle going on about whether to have a carbon tax. And in both cases, the denialists will have said, “Oh, it’s all a scare. It’s all hysteria. Nothing should be done, needs to be done. And any action that is taken is merely rent seeking and appealing to silly ill informed portions of the electorate.” 

Gee, that went well didn’t it? And I want to say this again. Fuck you, and burn in hell you 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: 

November 29, 1973 – Australian politician warns of climate change

NOVEMBER 29, 1974 – SWEDISH PRIME MINISTER SAYS “RISK OF A CHANGED CLIMATE DUE TO HUMAN ACTIVITIES … [IS] OF UTTER IMPORTANCE”

November 29, 1988 – Australian parliamentarians taught climate

Categories
Australia

 November 28, 2001 – “Stellar team for sun-powered debate” in Adelaide

Twenty-three years ago, on this day, November 28th, 2001,

FOOTBALLERS, media identities, politicians and scientists have little in common but tonight they unite for solar energy. They will be at the Adelaide Convention Centre for a public debate from 6pm on the future of solar power.

The debate features ABC science presenter Robyn Williams, former Adelaide lord mayor Dr Jane Lomax-Smith, CEO of UK solar electric power company Solar Century Dr Jeremy Leggett, Griffith University professor Ian Lowe, Advertiser youth columnist Mia Handshin, author of more than 90 publications on solar power and energy Don Osborne, and AFL player and politics student Che Cockatoo-Collins.

Freeborn, A. 2001. Stellar team for sun-power debate.Adelaide Advertiser,28 November 2001 P. 20

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 371ppm. As of 2024 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that South Australia was back under Labor control. And therefore, it was trying to be more progressive on climate than the Liberals had been. And one thing to do was to get a bunch of celebrities together, hold hands, have a few PowerPoint. I’m being cynical because that’s who I am. But ultimately, it’s this sort of event that creates a “buzz.” 

 What happened next, South Australia kept acting on some of the green issues. Premier Mike Rann created the “Thinker in Residence” post and a couple of those people were very explicitly environment focused, for example, Stephen Schneider. South Australia has been making the running, especially penetration of renewables. So you know, you can be cynical if you want, (and I do) but sometimes something comes from the celebrities and the PowerPoints. They’re necessary, perhaps, but not sufficient. But maybe they’re not necessary. Maybe there’s correlation, not causation.

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: 

November 28, 1976 – climate modelling workshop in USA

November 28, 2008 – somebody shuts down a coal plant, solo