Author: drmarchudson

Categories
Religion Vatican City

May 21, 2024 – the Pope warns again

One year ago, on this day, May 21st, 2024, Pope Francis (RIP) says that climate change is the  road to death.

“The destruction of the environment is an offense against God, a sin that is not only personal but also structural, one that greatly endangers all human beings, especially the most vulnerable in our midst, and threatens to unleash a conflict between generations” (Address to COP28, Dubai, 2 December 2023). This is the question: Are we working for a culture of life or for a culture of death? You have answered that we must heed the cry of the earth, hear the plea of the poor, and be attentive to the aspirations of the young and the dreams of children! We have a grave responsibility to ensure that their future is not denied them.…

The 46 less developed countries – mostly African – represent only 1% of global CO2 emissions, whereas the nations of the G20 are responsible for 80% of those emissions. The refusal to act quickly to protect the most vulnerable who are exposed to climate change caused by human activity is a serious offence and a grave violation of human rights….

In light of this planetary crisis, I add my voice to your heartfelt appeal.

First, there is a need to adopt a universal approach and a rapid and resolute activity capable of effecting changes and political decisions.

Second, there is a need to invert the global warming curve by efforts to decrease by a half the rate of warming within the brief span of a quarter-century. Likewise, there is a need to aim for global de-carbonization and the elimination of dependence on fossil fuels.

Third, the great quantities of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere must be eliminated through an environmental management programme that will span several generations.

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 427ppm. As of 2025 it is 430ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was Pope Francis had been banging on about the issue for a while (see, for example, is 2015 Laudato Si).

Laudato si’ (24 May 2015) | Francis

What I think we can learn from this. None of this matters. Every significant spiritual, cultural or “intellectual” leader has spoken. None of it has made any difference and you’re terminally naive if you expected it would. The “wake up, sheeple” model is wrong, has been proven to be so again and again. So it goes.

What happened next.  Pope Francis died in April 2025. The new Pope, Leo XIV, is on the same page, fwiw. 

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: 

May 21, 1971 – Marvin Gaye asks “What’s Going On?”

May 21, 1990 – “The Big Heat” documentary – All Our Yesterdays

May 21, 1998 – “Emissions Trading: Harnessing the Power of the Market”

Categories
Podcasts

Podcast Review: Tipping Point on The Limits to Growth. LISTEN NOW FOR THE LOVE OF GAIA

Podcasts come in all shapes and sizes. Short, pointed and single-header stuff (take a bow Alex Steffen). Looooong, not quite as insightful as it thinks it is, single-or-multi-header (you know who you are – as in, if you think this is about your podcast, it probably is).

Rarely do you come across a podcast that hits the trifecta

a) about a really important topic

b) not a second shorter or longer than it needs to be

c) super use of archival audio.

The Tipping Point series, a three-parter on the origins, reception and after life of the Club of Rome’s The Limits to Growth report is all of those and more. LISTEN TO IT NOW FOR THE LOVE OF GAIA.

It is what popular education should be, but so often isn’t.

Would I have put a bit more in there at the beginning about previous efforts to raise environmental alarm? Yes, but thank goodness I was not running the podcast, because it would have dragged the whole thing down. There could be a different podcast about that, the “before the Limits to Growth” – from, say, Malthus, through Vogt and Osborn to Carson and on to Ehrlich. That I would listen to. For now, though…


LISTEN TO IT NOW FOR THE LOVE OF GAIA.

Categories
United States of America

May 20, 1970 – NUC Symposium on Environmental Preservation

Fifty five years ago, on this day, May 20th, 1970, the Navy Undersea Research and Development Centre (NUC) held a symposium…

“If the greenhouse effect manifests itself as a result of continued burning of fossil fuels, there is little doubt that it would be catastrophic.”

NUC Symposium on Environmental Preservation, 20-21 May, 1970 https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.31822031466642&view=1up&seq=7&skin=2021&q1=greenhouse

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 325ppm. As of 2025 it is 430ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that the carbon dioxide build-up issue had been steadily growing, especially since the 1965 message to Congress by Lyndon Johnson and the report at the end of the same year by the PSAC.

What I think we can learn from this is that by 1970, carbon dioxide as an issue to keep a serious eye on was becoming embedded in scientific circles. What a species we are.

What happened next.  By the late 1970s the significant uncertainties were gone. But the elite politicians did not act. In 1988 the issue broke through.

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: 

May 20, 1959 Times of India letter about Teller and CO2 – All Our Yesterdays

May 20, 1960 – Spengler suggests decline of the … whole shebang

May 20, 1976 – UK World Trends committee chair worries about the weather… – All Our Yesterdays

May 20, 1977 – Australian Prime Minister says “coal, not solar” is the future

May 20, 1990 – “Ironing out the Greenhouse Effect”

May 20, 2010 – climategate keeps delivering for denialist

Categories
United Kingdom

May 19, 1982 – House of Lords debate on “Coal and the Environment”

Forty three years ago, on this day, May 19th, 1982, the House of Lords held a debate on “Coal and the Environment”

Earl of Halsbury (this chap – who introduced the amendment that became, well, Section 28) said the following

Take, for example, the problem of the glasshouse effect and so on—the rise of carbon dioxide —when nothing we do in this country can make very much difference to the carbon dioxide content in the world, but of course what the world does can make quite a big difference to the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere over this country. But the latest and most refined mathematical calculations—these have reached me only in the last few weeks, so they are stop press news—indicate that the atmospheric effects are a good deal more sophisticated than was originally thought. We may be going to be faced, for example, with much more in the way of local, than global, effects; there will be droughts in places where we are no longer accustomed to having droughts, and there will be floods where we are not accustomed to having floods. But all that lies a long way in the future.

Plant photosynthesis is at an optimum when the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere is three times what it is. Maybe that is what the long-term historical average has always been and plants have adapted to it. Maybe we are merely living in a carbon dioxide world at the present time. The great storehouse of carbon dioxide is the sea, and the sea and the atmosphere interchange carbon dioxide—nobody knows the details. If the sea warms up, it emits carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and if it cools down it absorbs carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Having absorbed it, it can fix some of it as coral, future limestone rocks and so on. If we want to know more about that we must study not the atmosphere but oceanography because the two interreact and we shall never understand the atmosphere until we understand the oceans or vice versa. It may be a rather strange conclusion to say that if you want to know about the glasshouse effect, do not bother about measuring the carbon dioxide of the atmosphere but study oceanography. It is an example of how one adjusts one’s priorities if one thinks in the right timescale.

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 341ppm. As of 2025 it is 430ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was the Labour government had set up the “Commission on Energy and the Environment” in 1977. It decided its first report would be on Coal. Brian Flowers, its chair, was persuaded by John Mason to soft-pedal on the carbon dioxide atmosphere issue. By the time the report finally came out, the Conservatives were in charge, and CENE basically got buried. This parliamentary debate is against that backdrop.

What I think we can learn from this

Official reports and commissions of the Great and the Good might be worth reading or then again, they might not be worth a bucket of warm spit. It depends both on the official terms of reference and the unspoken (but still official!) ones.

What happened next  CENE disappeared. The climate issue it ignored did not.

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: 

May 19, 1937 – Guy Callendar’s carbon dioxide warning lands on someone’s desk

May 19, 1957 – LA Times asks “Is your smoke helping to melt polar icecaps?” – All Our Yesterdays

May 19, 1993 – President Clinton begins to lose the BTU battle…

May 19, 1997 – an oil company defects from the denialists. Sort of.

May 19, 1997 – BP boss says “If we are to take responsibility for the future of our planet, then it falls to us to begin to take precautionary action now.”

Categories
Australia

May 18, 2011- Malcolm Turnbull disses “direct action” on Lateline

Fourteen years ago, on this day, May 18th, 2011,

18 May 2011: Malcolm Turnbull explains on Lateline that direct action is “a very expensive charge on the budget.” He explains its merits are that: “It can be easily terminated. If in fact climate change is proved to be not real”.

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 392ppm. As of 2025 it is 430ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that Turnbull had wanted to cooperate with Rudd on passing the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, but Rudd was enjoying Turnbull getting roasted by the LNP knuckle-draggers too much and so said no. (Rudd is a weapons-grade jerk. This does not mean Turnbull isn’t one too.) Turnbull lost the leadership of the Liberal Party in November 2009, and lurked on the backbenches.

What I think we can learn from this. It was an awful soap opera. No way to run a country. Pure banana republic stuff…

What happened next. Tony Abbott became Prime Minister and his grotesque inadequacy – obvious to those who disliked him – eventually became apparent to even his “supporters”. Turnbull knifed him in 2015, and then got knifed himself in 2018. It made a Jacobean tragedy look like playschool. Meanwhile, the emissions kept climbing, the impacts became ever more obvious. Dumb as a rock.

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: 

May 18, 1953 – Newsweek covers climate change. Yes, 1953.

May 18, 1967 – NA Leslie at Institute of Petroleum, citing Barry Commoner on C02 build up – All Our Yesterdays

May 18, 1976 – US congress begins hearings on #climate

May 18, 2006- Denialist nutjobs do denialist nutjobbery. Again.

Categories
United States of America

May 17, 1969 – Ritchie Calder gives a speech

Fifty six years ago, on this day, May 17th, 1969, Lord Ritchie Calder makes his warning again…

“Degradation of the Environment at Centre for Continuing Education, University of Chicago, 15-17th May 1969”

“With this combination fish are migrating, changing even their latitudes. On land the snow-line is retreating, the permafrost line in Siberia as well as in the Western Hemisphere is being altered and the glaciers are melting. In Scandinavia, land which was perennially under snow and ice are melting and the arrow heads of over 1,000 years ago when the black earth was last exposed have been found. I am advising all my friends in Britain not to take 99 year leases on properties at present sea-level.”

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 324ppm. As of 2025 it is 430ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that Ritchie Calder had known about CO2 build-up from 1954 at the latest (possibly earlier). He had warned and warned and warned (see 1963 activities). By 1968 he had become quite apocalyptic – see his Presidential Address to the Conservation Society. 

What I think we can learn from this is that smart people knew. But as per Schiller “against stupidity, the gods themselves contend in vain”.

What happened next Calder warned and warned (see his “Mortgaging the Old Homestead,” article and his 1975 interview on The Science Show). His son Nigel made a documentary that basically warned of a new Ice Age (The Weather Machine). Calder died in 1982, before the world “woke up”…

xxx

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: 

May 17, 1968 – “Some prophets of darkness warn of polar icecaps melting…”

May 17, 1972 – New York Times reports carbon dioxide build-up worries…

May 17, 1979 – Martin Holdgate’s A Perspective on Environmental Pollution” published – All Our Yesterdays

Categories
biodiversity

May 16, 1972 – “Carbon and the Biosphere” symposium

Fifty-three years ago, on this day, May 16th, 1972,

https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/bibliography/4036#/summary

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 327ppm. As of 2025 it is 430ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that by the late 1960s biologists were starting to pay more serious attention to carbon dioxide build-up. The “Keeling Curve” was now ten years old. It was obvious that atmospheric concentrations would continue to rise and rise, on a timescale that was a geological eye-blink.

What I think we can learn from this. We knew. We knew. We knew.

What happened next. The scientific work continued through the 1970s. In the late 1970s, with better political leaders, we might have started responding. But we had Thatcher, and then Reagan, and so awareness proper was delayed until 1988. And the response? Well, it never actually started, did it?

What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.

Also on this day: 

May 16, 1973 Energy and how we live. UNESCO seminar at Flinders – All Our Yesterdays

May 16, 2005 – Anthony Albanese says critical action on #climate being delayed by 20 years… #auspol

May 16, 2006 – UK Prime Minister Tony Blair goes nuclear…

May 16, 2005 – Anthony Albanese, eco-warrior…

May 16 – Interview with Rosie, about zero population growth, zero climate progress, etc…

Categories
Agriculture United States of America

May 15, 1963 – JFK gets told “Yeah, Rachel Carson was Right”

Sixty two years ago, on this day, May 15th, 1963,

Not long after the New Yorker series appeared, President John F. Kennedy announced the formation of a special governmental group to investigate use and control of pesticides, under the direction of the President’s Science Advisory Committee (PSAC). On May 15, 1963, the committee’s report, Pesticides Use and Control, confirmed every point highlighted in Silent Spring.

MacDonald, G. 1998. Environment: The evolution of a concept. IIASA

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 319ppm. As of 2025 it is 430ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that Rachel Carson had written a book that no publisher was interested in. The New Yorker serialised it and the shit properly hit the fan. The pesticide manufacturers and chemical companies came out swinging of course – all the techniques that would later be standard – smears, strawmanning and the rest of it. Kennedy asked his science guys to look at it…

What I think we can learn from this. We should all stage annual am-dram productions of Henry Ibsen’s “An Enemy of the People” to remind ourselves of what happens if you alert folks to dangers that will interfere with capital accumulation (in a few hands).

What happened next Carson died of breast cancer in 1964. In terms of people with the biggest impact in the 20th century who isn’t a homicidal maniac, she’s pretty high up the league table.

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

President’s Advisory Committee on Pesticides, 1963

Also on this day: 

May 15, 1932 – great deluge forecast by science, reports New York Times… – All Our Yesterdays

May 15, 1950 – Getting Warmer? Asks Time Magazine… – All Our Yesterdays

May 15, 1972 – Clean Air Conference in Melbourne – All Our Yesterdays

May 15, 2006 – Australian Prime Minister John Howard spouting “nuclear to fix climate” nonsense

May 15, 2010 – another pointless overnight vigil.

Categories
Activism Renewable energy

Date for your diary – Sun Day, Sept 21st

Hold the date – Sunday September 21st is Sun Day.

Sun Day is a day of action on September 21, 2025, celebrating solar and wind power, and the movement to leave fossil fuels behind.

Solar energy is now the cheapest source of power on the planet – and gives us a chance to actually do something about the climate crisis. But fossil fuel billionaires are doing everything they can to shut it down.

We will build, rally, sing, and come together in the communities that we need to get laws changed and work done.

See also – interview with Bill McKibben

Categories
Australia Carbon Pricing

May 14, 2009 – First bite at the CPRS apple

Sixteen years ago, on this day, May 14th, 2009 the first Australian ETS legislation introduced into Parliament:

The Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme Bill 2009 is introduced into the House of Representatives.

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 387ppm. As of 2025 it is 430ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that there had been proposals to put a price on carbon dioxide via a tax in the early 1990s. Both had been defeated by coalitions of actors coordinated by the Business Council of Australia and what became the Minerals Council of Australia. There had been an effort by state Premiers to stitch together a “bottom-up” emissions trading scheme after it became clear that the Federal Government would not implement one (Prime Minister John Howard personally vetoed a proposal supported by the rest of his Cabinet in 2003). Prime Minister Kevin Rudd of the ALP had come to power promising climate action. Now, at last, he was introducing some deeply shitty legislation that was basically a do-as-little-as-possible-while-keeping-big-business-happy scheme. He expected it to fail the first time round, and he wasn’t disappointed.

What I think we can learn from this

Play games with the fate of the earth and don’t be surprised when it blows up in your face and people realise you are a hollow wanker. Rudd was the worst Prime Minister Australia had had for a while, imo. But then came Abbott and Morrison…

What happened next the CPRS got reintroduced as legislation in November 2009, and fell, because the Opposition toppled its leader, Malcolm Turnbull, and replaced him with an inadequate knuckle dragger called Tony Abbott. Oh god, what a horrorshow. What a soap opera scripted and directed by David Lynch, Salvador Dali and Satan.

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: 

May 14, 1979 – The greenhouse effect is … “almost common knowledge” – All Our Yesterdays

May 14, 2007 – another C40 large cities summit – All Our Yesterdays

May 14, 2002 – well-connected denialists gather in Washington DC to spout #climate nonsense

May 14, 2010 – a day of action/mourning on climate