Categories
Australia

May 7 1991 & 1992: From Hawke to Hewson, or “the year Australia’s political elite stopped bothering about #climate change”

 

Thirty three/two years ago, on this day, May 7th, 1991 and 1992, the Australian leader of the opposition’s trajectory shows an early (and permanent) retreat by “conservative” parties on the biggest question of the twenty-first century. Such leadership!!

For those coming late to the party: through the 1970s and 1980s a few politicians, from Liberals, Nationals and Labor, had warned of climate problems. The issue “blew up” in 1988 and 1989. The Liberals went to the federal election of March 1990 with a more ambitious carbon dioxide reduction target than the ALP. Yes, you read that right, more ambitious.

But then, as we see below, the new Liberal Leader, John Hewson, changed his tune (meanwhile, Prime Minister Bob Hawke was toppled by Paul Keating, who had no love for environmentalists or environmental issues. Whatsoever). So, with that said, check out the two quotes, a year apart.

The environment could be a victim of the move to reform Federal-state relations, Australian Conservation Foundation executive director Phillip Toyne said in Canberra last week.

He said environment groups see the special Premiers’ conference on federalism as posing a threat to a national ecologically sustainable development strategy.

“We think that substantial erosion of progress in the regulation and control of environmental management could be taking place,” he said.

“Much of the work is at departmental level, with the chairs of all of the various working groups coming from state bureaucracies.”

On Tuesday [7th], Prime Minister Bob Hawke met with the ESD roundtable, the umbrella body that has a general oversight of the work of the ESD working groups. About 30 people were there, including representatives from the greens, industry, the states, welfare agencies and some federal ministers.

Toyne said later: “I thought that there were some rather glib comments on the progress of the exercise.”

“it is absolutely extraordinary that there has been almost no scrutiny of the process by the media, very little information has reached us, and yet it could be profoundly affecting not only the outcomes for ecologically sustainable development but also many other aspects of national policy.”

Anon, 1991. Environment “A Victim of Reform”. Green Week, May 14, p.5.

And exactly a year later…

And in 1992, Dr Hewson captured the full flavour of the initiative in a speech to the Australian Mining Industry Council annual dinner on May 7, 1992, when he described it as sustainable development with a capital D. This move is really an exercise in fast-tracking, with an absolute limit of 12 months on government processes of evaluation, failing which the project gets automatic go-ahead.

This is dangerous, based as it is on the assumption that red, black or green tape is simply frustrating developments, rather than complex issues being carefully evaluated. There is also a quite dishonest attempt to list a long list of stalled projects without acknowledging that many had not proceeded for commercial reasons.

[Toyne, P. 1993. Environment forgotten in the race to the Lodge. Canberra Times, 8 March p. 11.

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 354ppm. As of 2024 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

This is another one of those “What a difference a year makes” Pivotal, blah blah blahs.

The context is that in 1991 the ecologically sustainable development process was underway. Yes, the greenhouse issue wasn’t as sexy as it had been because people have gotten bored. And there’s also been the small matter of Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Iraq, Kuwait, and the military response. But it was still a “hot” issue. And there were concerns about things possibly being watered down. Fast forward to exactly a year later and the Liberals have given up on trying to get green votes. They are still feeling the “betrayal” of the Australian Conservation Foundation.

John Hewson, who had seen off Bob Hawke, and looked like he was going to defeat Paul Keating (because it was before the wedding cake gate), felt that he didn’t have to make the same green noises that people did a couple of years previously. 

What we learn is that the mood music changes and that you can track it. And this was the time when, if there had been real leadership, we would have stuck to issues, but there wasn’t. So we didn’t. And here we are,

What happened next. The Liberals came to power in 1996, under John Howard, and dialled the indifference/hostility of the Keating gang up to 11. Or 12. And here we are.

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 7, 1966 – scientist warns public about carbon dioxide build-up…

May 7, 2001 – The American way of life is non-negotiable. Again.

Categories
Science United States of America

May 6, 1977 – Bert Bolin article in Science about increased atmospheric CO2 concentrations owing to forestry and agriculture

Forty seven years ago, on this day, May 6th, 1977, Swedish scientist Bert Bolin sounded a warning about other sources (besides burning oil, coal and gas) leading to more CO2 in the atmosphere.

Source – https://www.science.org/doi/pdf/10.1126/science.196.4290.613?casa_token=uAeo-ORaYTsAAAAA:IXMCd01f0aXX1KI_4E-_7x6PZC5_KW3MFgSHKAmDJ9wrZz1GMxc_o0Ga0glPcnCvHTBjvTYBpVnn

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 334ppm. As of 2024 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that Bolin had been looking at carbon dioxide buildup and its consequences since the late 50s. There were concerns about food production; these had been voiced publicly by Henry Kissinger in 1974. And other work was ongoing about that. What Bolin was doing here was pointing out how deforestation and agriculture might be contributing to CO2 build up alongside the vast increases in fossil fuel burning for energy production.

 What we learn is Bolin was a mensch and that people reading science knew what was going on.

What happened next? Bolin ended up as the first chair of the IPCC and lived long enough to see the Nobel Prize and died shortly after that in 2007.

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 6, 1997 – The so-called “Cooler Heads” coalition created

May 6, 2004 – Australian Prime Minister John Howard meets business, to kill renewables

Categories
Australia Business Responses

May 5, 2000 – Business Council of Australia boss on “Strategic Greenhouse Issues”

Twenty four years ago, on this day, May 5th, 2000 former Federal public servant turned BCA Boss David Buckingham opined on “Strategic Greenhouse Issues for Australia.” Business Council of Australia

http://www.bca.com.au/media/strategic-greenhouse-issues-for-australia

Suggests a voluntary domestic emissions trading scheme might be a goer, as a “learning by doing” exercise.

See also Federal Environment Minister Robert Hill 2000. Warming to the Challenge; The Role of Australian Business in Combating Global warming. Address to the World Business Council on Sustainable Development and the Australian Business Council Forum, Melbourne, 5 May.

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 369.7ppm. As of 2024 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that there were various big conferences being held because there had been the Kyoto Protocol, at the end of ‘97. It looked like Al Gore would be the Democratic Party nominee for the president, and he might win, in which case the US would be taking more climate action, even if Kyoto itself weren’t necessarily on the cards. And therefore, everyone was making plans to be ready for that reality if it emerged in Australia. Yes, the Lavoisier group had been set up, but there were also tensions within the peak bodies, especially the Business Council of Australia about what the Australian response should be of interest in carbon trading, carbon farming and offsets and money to be made. 

And so it wasn’t a simple case of denial or bowing down before the great God of technology, at least not for the more thoughtful members of the business policy outfits. And here we have David Buckingham, who had been a Federal Environment civil servant, before being poached, first by the Minerals Council and then the Business Council. 

What we learn from this is that business was seriously scratching its head about what might be coming and how best to take advantage of what might be coming. 

What happened next? Well, Bush was selected president by his dad’s Supreme Court chums and then quickly pulled the US out of the Kyoto Protocol negotiations. In 2003, the BCA had to move from opposition to Kyoto ratification to a “neutral” stance because of fierce fights within it. 

And of course, 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: 

May 5, 1953 – Gilbert Plass launches the carbon dioxide theory globally

May 5, 1953 – Western Australian newspaper carries “climate and carbon dioxide” article

May 5, 1973 – Miners advertise for a greenie to join them

Categories
Australia

May 4, 2016 – South Australian Premier preening at Emissions Reduction Summit

Eight years ago, on this day, May 4th, 2016 then premier of South Australia Jay Weatherill said the nice things.

source – https://www.energymining.sa.gov.au/industry/modern-energy/hydrogen-in-south-australia/hydrogen-files/hydrogen-roadmap-11-sept-2017.pdf

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 404ppm. As of 2024 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that Jay Weatherill had been South Australian premier since October 2011, and had inherited a very clever policy set up from Mike Rann, where the South Australian government would look at the amount of new wind being installed, because there were federal incentives and set a target for years to come, which was completely in line with the current trajectory. They would win plaudits from desperate, environmentally-minded people who didn’t know the fine details, and then be able to take credit for stuff that was already happening. The name of the game is expectation management. So here was where we were able to say how wonderful South Australia was.

What we learn is there are games people play, and I don’t mean in the Eric Berne/transactional analysis sense.

What happened next? Well, South Australia had a blackout which set the culture war going. Weatherill, overall, played a blinder, and South Australia has continued to be a laboratory for more and more battery batteries, rooftop solar, you name 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 4, 1990 – coal industry sweats over greenie influence

May 4th, 2012 – The Heartland Institute tries the Unabomber smear. It, er, blows up in their face…

Categories
anti-reflexivity Australia Business Responses

May 3, 1989 “Exploration Access and Political Power” speech by Hugh Morgan

Thirty five years ago, on this day, May 3rd, 1989, Australian businessman and all round lovely guy Hugh Morgan makes a speech at the Australian Mining Industry Council’s “Minerals Outlook Seminar” at ANU

Its title was “Exploration Access and Political Power” and some representative quotes are here –

‘The true environmentalist, the revolutionary who sees man as vile and nature as sacred, is indifferent, if not hostile to economic benefits’ (Morgan 1989, 31).
‘If the politics of nature worship and economic decline … take hold and become institutionalised, then Australia will be seen as a place to leave, not as a place to come’. (Morgan 1989). (cited in McEachern)

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 353ppm. As of 2024 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that at this stage there were probably still a lot of concerned conservatives and businessmen saying “just keep a low profile and it will all blow over; the greenies will find something else to be hysterical about. And if we are a small target, then we stop it from continuing longer than it otherwise would”. Hugh Morgan was not one of those people. And Hugh Morgan was determined to take the fight to the enemy, i.e. people who gave a damn about future generations and ecological survival. 

What we learn is that there are always ideologically committed people within any faction whether it’s the environs of the business lobby, who think that they see the deep underlying pattern. And they may well be right. Just because they’re in a small minority. doesn’t mean they’re wrong. 

What happened next, Morgan kept giving these sorts of speeches about the defence of Western civilization and democracy, by which he meant capitalism and shareholder value and the right to screw other people over. Morgan’s henchman, Ray Evans, then started fighting on climate stuff too, and made links with American outfits. And 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.

References

Cahill, D. 2004. The radical neo-liber radical neo-liberal movement as a hegemonic force in Ace in Australia, 

https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/36978766.pdf

Doug McEachern (1995) Mining Meaning from the Rhetoric of Nature—Australian Mining Companies and their attitudes to the environment at home and abroad, Policy, Organisation and Society, 10:1, 48-69, DOI: 10.1080/10349952.1995.11876636

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/10349952.1995.11876636

Also on this day: 

May 3, 1978 – First and last “Sun Day”

May 3, 1990 – From Washington to Canberra, the “greenhouse effect” has elites promising…

Categories
Interviews

Interview with Anthony Negus, of Western Australia

One of the best things about running this site is it offers the excuse to ask smart people to write about their lives and perspectives. This is a long (unedited) interview that I think deserves and will repay your close attention.

1. Tell us a bit about who you are – where and when you grew up, and how and when you first learnt about climate change,

Answer: My name is Anthony Negus, known to many people by my second name, Shane, and I was born in Beverley (Ballardong Noongar name: Wergijan), Western Australia in 1957 to the farming couple Geoffrey and Shirley Negus.. My Australian settler-colonial forebears on both sides were almost all farming people, back to the 1830s on my paternal side and the 1850s on my maternal side.

As we have been in Western Australia so long, I am of mixed ancestry, which made my family rather unusual in those times inasmuch as many of these forebears married across both religious and class lines: free settler Presbyterian Scots with Irish Catholics of convict stock (a taboo subject when I was a child, convict ancestry being widely seen still as a stain on a family’s reputation and standing in small country communities). Welsh non-Conformists and Church of England members wed and bred and some of their offspring went on to marry Catholics who had converted from Judaism. None of this was easy in Beverley/Wergijan at the time for those who crossed sectarian divides, which also usually meant crossing the class divide: landed gentry who lived on large farms and “Nobs Hill”–for snobs, I guess–versus the hoi-polloi of lesser pedigree and far less wealth in most cases, certainly those who were Catholic. However, there was a plus in this situation for me: our family was by and large much more tolerant of difference and diversity than was typical of country Sandgropers (Western Australians). All this religious bigotry and animosity faded gradually from the early 1960s onwards but I still recall kids from the state school and those of us at the convent school taunting each other with ugly shouted insults and chants such as ”Catholic dogs stink like frogs, in and out of water logs”. This made for an interesting transition for those of us enrolled in the state school after the convent school closed. Happily, it all went pretty smoothly.

Less fortunate by far were the Noongar kids who attended Beverley Junior High. This was very much still the era of white supremacy pervading every aspect of the laws and culture of WA society, symbolised most tellingly in the White Australia Policy and the infamous WA Aboriginal Act 1905, a major influence some decades later when a newly elected racist government in South Africa legislated the country’s apartheid regime, drawing much of its inspiration and specific measures that would segregate the races from longstanding segregationist laws in both WA and Queensland. I witnessed the appalling living conditions for Noongar people at the Beverley native reserve. The poverty and lack of even the most basic services or amenities shocked me. My parents were hardscrabble farmers who lived with three children in a house that would be today considered very basic, if quite comfortable by the standards of the day. But we had running water; the Noongars on the reserve did not; we wadjellas (Noongar: non-Indigenous people, overwhelmingly whites of British and Irish ancestry then, as now) could move freely in the community but the Noongars had to abide by a curfew every night; by law, employers were permitted to pay Noongar workers a much lower wage than their wadjella co-workers doing the same job; and certainly the cruellest and most unjust thing the state government’s Native Welfare Department bureaucrats did, usually carried out on the ground by policemen was forced removal of so-called “half caste” Noongar children from their families, after which the littlies, some just babies, went into missions run most often by Christian denominations of one sort or another. This happened to a close friend of mine, now a much respected and outspoken elder, a woman who, as a young girl was used by a number of Benedictine priests, in her words, as a “sex slave”. She wasn’t the only one and many decades later the report issued by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse found that the New Norcia schools run by the Catholic Church represented one of the worst hotspots for such abuse in all Australia, a veritable paedophiles’ picnic.

I attended school locally at the Beverley Convent School, which closed in 1966 due to falling enrolments, then attended the Junior High School from Year 5 in 1967 to 1972. After that, I attended Aquinas College in Perth/Boorloo as a boarding student and completed my Leaving Certificate in 1974, achieving matriculation, which meant that I could apply to enrol in one of a wide range of courses at the University of Western Australia because my examination results were high enough to qualify me to do so. Our family farm was small, just 1000 acres on hard country and with three children to support on a very modest income, made more difficult by a bad drought in 1969 and death duties levied on my grandfather’s farm following his death in 1968. The farm was now managed by my father and he was faced with inherited debts, impending death duty liabilities and a harsh drought which resulted in a poor crop. If it wasn’t that I won a Commonwealth Student Scholarship at the end of Year 10, my parents wouldn’t have had the money to enrol me at Aquinas College.

This financial struggle for my parents during the whole of the 1970s prompted me to take what was known as a student teacher bond. This scheme enabled students to obtain a Teachers Certificate at very low cost because the WA government paid for one’s course without requirement to repay the money received, on one proviso: that a bonded graduate would serve for a minimum of three years somewhere in the state. As I wanted to become a secondary school English, History and Media Studies teacher, I seized the opportunity to sign up for the bond, thus greatly reducing the financial contribution my parents would have had to have made towards my tuition at WASTC and boarding costs at a university residential college. In fact, my father made it very clear that if I couldn’t find my own means of paying to attend three years at the teachers’ college, I’d have to abandon the idea because he didn’t have the money to support me for so long.

As a fairly solitary farm boy I spent a lot of my time until I was 15 walking through bushland and along the banks of the local river, the Avon (in Ballardong, Gugulja Bilya), observing very closely the native plant and animal species; which I continued doing when back home on holidays from Aquinas in 1973 and 1974.

My siblings and I grew up witnessing regular flooding events, the worst of which caused major damage to roads, bridges and buildings. There were a lot of heavy rainfall events from April onwards, through to late spring. Frosts were a part of everyday life on most winter mornings, some of them ‘black frosts’ which were colder and more penetrating than lighter frosts, so did more damage to frost-sensitive plants kept under cover on verandas. The upside was that fruit trees such as apples and pears, which require at least 300 chill hours, that is hours below 7-degrees Celsius, across autumn-winter-spring, did well and fruited heavily. Frosts are now significantly less frequent or severe, with an occasional cold snap perhaps lasting a few days, but nothing like we experienced in the mid-20th century.

Bureau of Meteorology weather records taken since the 1950s show that annual rainfall has declined in the south-west of WA by at least 20 percent and frosts are much less common than they were. It’s also now much warmer across all seasons on average. The early signs of the impacts of anthropogenic global heating began to become evident from the mid-1970s on, especially to those of us deeply connected to the local natural environment and involved in maintaining healthy, productive domestic gardens. The climate simply wasn’t what it used to be.


In 1977, I became the first member of my family in Western Australia to obtain a tertiary education degree, which happened when I graduated from the Western Australian Secondary Teachers’ College. I was employed by a leading Catholic school named John XXIII College, which had only come into existence that year following an amalgamation of the all-girls Loreto Convent and the Jesuit-run all-boys St Louis School. It was the beginning of a long and successful career at John XXIII College, during which time I rose from a fledging first-year teacher on probation to serve for five years as deputy principal, from 1994 to 1999, after which I gained employment as an educational consultant and, finally, researcher at the Catholic Education Office of WA. I left education in 2005 and retrained as a horticulturalist, a career I pursued until I retired from the paid workforce in 2023.. The last ten years of that period was spent working as a sole trader, offering horticultural services to customers back  in my Wheatbelt town where I’d relocated from Perth/Boorloo in 2012, largely because I wanted to live close to my elderly parents and to do some caring for them (cooking meals, driving them to medical appointments in Northam, a regional hub for the Wheatbelt and very often to the ‘big smoke’.

As a horticulturist living and working back in my hometown, the impacts of global heating on the environment were clear for all to see: massively increased bushfire risk, depletion of plant and animal species, the aforementioned much reduced annual rainfall, annual temperature increases across all seasons, very rare flooding events (and those that occurred weren’t so much during winter, as in the 1950s to 1970s, but as the result of summer thunderstorm events.)

Long before all this, though, I was coming across reports in the news about the theory of human-induced global warming and predictions of super-cyclones if our species kept emitting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere at the rate then taking place, since much accelerated by the burning of ever-increasing amounts of fossil fuels such as coal, gas and oil.

Climate scientists were already modelling the changes in climate and probable adverse impacts of AGW on the climate of south-west WA. This was in the mid-1980s and they were warning of much more severe impacts in coming decades unless the burning of fossil fuels wasn’t drastically reduced, not just in WA but across the entire world. I had no hesitation, like my colleagues, many of whom also grew up on farms in the State or “over east”, of teaching students in Social Studies classes about global heating and what the future held for them and future generations of AGW wasn’t dealt with by the world’s governments.

We are certainly paying a heavy price for that inaction in the south-west of WA, our largest population centre by far, with mass tree deaths in the Jarrah and Karri forests due mostly to having not received ANY significant rainfall during the hottest summer on record.  My 92-year-old mother had to get though night-time temperatures in her house of over 30C for days on end during repeated power outages in January and February. She couldn’t sleep, having not even a fan to cool her off a bit. As a result of this experience, she asked her three children, of whom I’m the eldest, to put her house on the market so she could move into a modern air-conditioned aged care facility that has back-up power storage if there’s a system blackout. The house sold quickly and she’s now happily ensconsed in a new beaut facility.

A farmers’ wife who used to read The Australian (a Murdoch newspaper) and believe their climate denialist commentary and reports has become utterly convinced that human-induced global heating is real. I’d expect the penny has now dropped for hundreds of thousands of Western Australians who swallowed the News Corps lies about climate change—the evidence of its massive impacts is now staring them in the face and many have endured a summer they would never want to go through again but are certain too. The alarming thing is that we are only at the early stages of a rapidly warming planet and much worse is to come.

Certainly it’s a massive issue for most voters in Kate Chaney’s federal seat of Curtin where trees and shrubs are dying as they’ve reached the point of terminal wilting and commuters into the city centre and home again are in peak hour traffic, crawling past tree after tree that are either dead or clearly dying. The weather forecast is for another three months of above average maxima and minima, and with very little rainfall in prospect until late June, early July. If relieving rains do come, it will be far too late save millions of trees in state forests and along street verges in the Metropolitan area. I’m observing all this around the leafy—or should I say, increasingly much less leafy—western suburbs of Perth/Boorloo, in the heart of Curtin, once a jewel in the crown of the WA Liberal Party, the membership of which is rapidly decreasing and Kate Chaney’s prospects of being re-elected at the 2025 federal election are looking better by the day, unlike the fate of our vegetation and animal species acutely impacted by the prolonged, truly unprecedented drought.

It’s really very depressing yet our state Labor government is gung-ho about developing more huge gas projects in the north and mid-west of the state, knowing full well that the IEA, WMO, NOAA and more than 99 percent of the world’s climate scientists, as well as many scientific bodies around the world, have declared that no new fossil fuel projects can be opened from here on if we are to avoid catastrophic impacts of AGW in coming decades. It’s nothing less than state capture by the big gas companies such as Woodside, Santos and the Stokes’ family’s interests in gas companies like Beach Energy. The full influence and power of WA’s monopolistic SevenWest Network is all but total and neither major party dares to defy the damage that could be inflicted by Stokes using Network Seven and his newspapers as an organ of propaganda for Big Gas or deployed them to campaign against any party which says it will take real action to lower WA’s GHG emissions.



 2. When did you first start to see changes with your own eyes? What were they? What changes have you seen over the decades? Do you think the pace and/or scope of change is increasing?

As stated above, I’ve been noticing the impacts of AGW on our climate in the south-west of WA, both in the Wheatbelt and here in the city, since at least the early 1970s.

Much can be gleaned about my perspective on this issue from this letter I wrote, published in The Farm Weekly back in May 2019, another very hot year, just as it was to be during the black summer fires over east in late 2019, early 2020…

Last Thursday, an out of control bushfire raged in the hills near Mundaring on a day which reached a maximum of 30-degrees Celcius. It is mid-May, WA has recorded its hottest autumn on record, and we’ve yet to receive any significant rainfall.

It is little wonder to me, then, that 23 former fire and emergency services chiefs from across Australia, people with over 600 years of combined experience, recently warned that “the burning of coal, oil and gas is worsening extreme weather events, including hot days, heatwaves, heavy rainfall, coastal flooding and catastrophic bushfire weather.”

Having grown up in heartland Country (National) Party territory, I’m well aware that many primary producers are leery of meta-scientific theories such as anthropogenic global warming. Therefore, I offer the following argument for a paradigm shift based on a conservative rather than progressive perspective.

What do the following pragmatic conservative institutions, corporations and organisations have in common?

The British royal family, Bank of England, Insurance Council of Australia, National Farmers Federation, U.S. Defense Department, Exxon Mobil Corp, Catholic Church, Reserve Bank of Australia, and the centre-right governments of the UK, Germany and many European nations.

Answer: they all accept the scientific consensus on human-induced global warming and the need to take urgent action to both reduce the rate of future global temperature increases and to ameliorate the effects which now cannot be avoided because of carbon emissions already locked into the world’s atmosphere.

That so many leading conservative entities across the world have reached this position on climate change should come as no surprise. One of the bedrock principles of conservatism is to protect, conserve and be good stewards of the environment on which human civilisation and prosperous economies depend.

True conservatives also adhere to the precautionary (or prudential) principle of making fact-based decisions calculated to minimise the risk of avoidable and potentially catastrophic events in the future. Hence the insurance industry’s longstanding acceptance of the science on climate change.

I’m an ardent republican but I couldn’t agree more with Prince Charles, our likely next monarch: “We should be treating the whole issue of climate change and global warming with a far greater degree of priority than I think is happening now.”

3. What changes do you think are coming to your part of the world?
Please distil my answer to this question from all I’ve said above. In a phrase, we are facing a real and imminent existential threat.


4. Beyond “all of us”, who is to blame?

That’s a toughie because the culprits for a very large percentage of GHG emissions across the world cover their tracks with obfuscation, dodgy science done by their hireling scientists, massive positive PR campaigns about their bogus claims of taking real action, mobilising Australia’s media to regurgitate the propaganda sent them by Big Carbon outfits (to say nothing of the threats of losing advertising dollars if particular media companies go hard on the issue—thank God, not a big problem for the likes of The Guardian Australia and The New Daily).

But I remember seeing a recent article somewhere, probably The Guardian, which reported that something like 60% of all GHG emissions are produced by a surprisingly small number of giant companies across a range of industries. Ah, found it…
The majority of fossil fuel companies produce more emissions after Paris Agreement than before: report – ABC News

And I have to say, too, living as I do in a small, very conservative rural community where upwards of ten percent of voters cast their ballots for Pauline Hanson’s mob of drongoes and a much larger percentage for the climate-denying Liberal MHR for the seat of O’Connor, Rick Wilson, there’s still a big number of people, mostly baby boomers and older, who loudly and aggressively denounce climate change as a hoax.

The pig-ignorant opinions of these people, most of whom have never heard of the scientific method, let alone ever respected the “eggheads” who do, pose a real encumbrance, if not menace, to our society by encouraging the climate deniers in politics to obstruct any real climate action even more boldly, aided and abetted always by anti-science, anti-expertise-in-any-field populists like Hanson, Dutton, Palmer, Stokes and his media lackeys. Their influence extends so far that Labor has been far too timorous in its policy settings on bringing down GHG emissions—and, worse, it is waving through the opening of new fossil fuel developments and expansion of existing projects across the country, all the while disingenuously claiming it is fair dinkum on tackling AGW.

5. What is to be done, beyond bracing for further impacts?

It will mark a big shift in Australian politics when the Millenials become the largest voting bloc, displacing us baby boomers and the so-called Great Generation in the near future. The centre of political gravity on climate change in Australia will lurch, if not altogether towards the Greens, then certainly towards independents like Kate Chaney demanding far more ambitious climate change mitigation and adaptation policies.

It’s going to be very difficult for people in this region of Australia to brace for the enormous impacts that are already unfolding at an alarming pace. The only glimmer of hope I take from our current environmental calamity is that it will make the job of climate denying politicians extremely hard, trying to sell a dog of a policy to promote nuclear power generation to an already VERY sceptical public, given that we’d be unlikely to see any form of reactor, small or large, built and operating, this side of 2040, even if the technology were viable as a part of our energy mix at a commercially competitive price, which it most certainly isn’t as things stand.

The reality is that the federal Coalition is just stalling for time to help their mates out in Big Carbon, major donors to the Liberals and Nationals and likely employers of many a retired politician looking for a handsomely renumerated job lobbying for the likes of Woodside, Gina Rinehart, Kerry Stokes, etc. It’s an incredible fact, related to me by Dr Colin Hughes, a former public health administrator in this State and passionate campaigner for far more ambitious action, that every single retired resources minister across Australia, both state and federal, Coalition or Labor, has landed a job with a fossil fuel company since 2001. It’s state capture like this makes me realise that only people power expressed through protests, shareholder activism, Extinction Rebellion actions, voting for Greens and independent candidates, etc, that we have any hope of overcoming Big Carbon’s capture of the major political parties. I assume you are across what happened at Woodside’s AGM last week—a hopeful development, though unlikely to shift the Executive’s and Board’s heedless disregard for the damage they are threatening to do to the prospects of our young ones here in south-west WA living anywhere nearly as well, safely and securely as my generation and my parents have. Woodside is facing a rapid, sharp reduction in their social licence as things get worse in coming years here.

Though pancreatic cancer will probably claim me in the next few years—unless I defy the odds as Eric Idle has—I’m desperately worried about the impacts AGW is going to impose on the lives of my children and grandchildren. For one thing, Western Australia is sparsely populated and the shores of our north-west regions will be a tempting destination for the vast hordes of climate refugees from places like Bangladesh, the Maldives and other low-lying countries in our region. I shudder to think what an Australian government might do to prevent their arrival. Never mind that Australia has been one of the most recalcitrant of climate laggards—no, too generous, hopelessly irresponsible—in dealing with an existential threat that is likely to affect Australia more severely than anywhere else, as demonstrated by the record flooding events in the east and the unprecedented big dry, certainly since Europeans have been here in WA.

I’m doing what little I can during my cancer treatment to make fossil fuel companies and their media company enablers/collaborators/hirelings realise that they will be remembered as climate criminals in years to come, even by many of their own children and grandchildren. To that end I’ve been making hard-hitting comments about both individuals and companies committing these egregious climate crimes, even daring them to sue me for defamation so I can mount a truth defence argued by barristers representing me pro bono and the many distinguished climate scientists and international bodies like the IEA, WMO, NOAA, Professor Michael Mann and many others who’d be more than happy to give evidence as to the dangers posed by fossil fuel companies continuing to expand their activities with massive projects such as the Scarborough gas project, on which these scientists have belled the cat…
Why this new climate case against the high-polluting Scarborough gas project is so significant (theconversation.com)

Categories
AFrica

May 2, 1990 – Nairobi Declaration on Climatic Change

Thirty four years ago, on this day, May 2nd, 1990, another declaration…,

See here for pdf

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 354.5ppm. As of 2024 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that there were ongoing meetings about climate and “sustainable development” in the aftermath of both the Brundtland Report and the 1988 upsurge. There was to be a meeting in Bergen, about sustainable development. And here we have Africans saying, “hey, maybe there should be nothing about us without us”.

What we can learn is that these sorts of declarations are being made all the time. My other favourite is the Male Declaration of November 18, 1989,  about sea level rise, and then forgotten. Now, all that’s remembered is what the rich largely white nations said or agreed to do (and then didn’t do).

What happened next, the emissions kept rising. Every so often there were more declarations and we’re here we are 

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

1990 Nairobi meeting with Woods Hole folks http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_Nairobi_Declaration_on_Climatic_Chan.html?id=MRfPAAAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y

Paterson 1996 page 39

Also on this day: 

May 2, 2009 – Australian Liberals warned of wipe-out if seen as “anti-climate action” #auspol

May 2, 2012 – CCS is gonna save us all. Oh yes.

May 2, 2019 – Committee on Climate change report on net zero by 2050

Categories
Activism United States of America

May 1, 1971 – May Day anti-war actions in Washington DC

Fifty three years ago, on this day, May 1st, 1971, people came to Washington to throw their bodies on the gears of the machine, to stop the Vietnam War.

1971 May Day protests in Washington [Wikipedia]

See also

Mayday: The Case for Civil Disobedience
Noam Chomsky
The New York Review of Books, June 17, 1971

https://chomsky.info/19710617

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 326ppm. As of 2024 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that the war in Vietnam was continuing. And the war in Cambodia, the bombing, there had been years of marches, petitions, protests, and now they were trying civil disobedience, direct action in Washington DC itself. And I wonder what it was like to be there. So desperate, so exhausted, scared, determined, you name it.

What we learn is that this is written out of the official histories that the war in Vietnam stories tend to end with Kent State. And the ongoing resistance to the war, after Kent State, is kind of largely ignored. It doesn’t fit the narrative because you have to then speak of domestic violence by the state against citizens. Well, also the whole “Weather Underground” thing, blowing themselves in that Greenwich Village townhouse, didn’t really help, did it?

What happened next, Nixon won the 1972 election, which tells you a lot of what you need to know. And the war in Vietnam continued. The Americans left in 73. And my first television memory that I can date was the fall of Saigon in April of 1975. The tank crashing through the gates of the Presidential Palace…

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.

See also

See also Oreskes and Conway, 2010 Page 176

See also this from Jacobin

https://jacobin.com/2021/05/may-day-1971-vietnam-war-nixon

Also on this day: 

May 1, 1980 – ABC talks about atmospheric carbon dioxide measurement

May 1, 1996 – US Congressman says climate research money is “money down a rat hole”

Categories
Ignored Warnings Science Scientists United States of America

May 1, 1981 – scorching editorial about Energy and Climate received at Climatic Change

Forty-three years ago, on this day, May 1st, 1981, a scorching editorial was submitted to a new-ish academic journal (I know, hold the front page, right?). The writer reviews some recent studies and says, well…

“Still, these studies of energy and climate might lull us into concluding that we can put off worrying seriously about man-made climate change for a half century or so. For both physical and political reasons, both conclusions may be terribly wrong.”

John Perry Energy and Climate guest editorial received 1st May 1981 – https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/BF02423215.pdf?pdf=button

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 338.7ppm. As of 2024 it is 425.85ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that there was clear consensus among scientists that there was a problem. They had done their level best to get politicians alert, interested, concerned. And it was fairly clear by the time this editorial was submitted, that they had failed, that there would be at least four years of ignorance and resistance ahead, and that the clock was running out.

What we learn from this is that you have to know enough to be able to contextualise a given document. And the first time I read this, I thought, “wow, gee, this guy was prescient.” And, you know, I still think that he was smart. But now that I know how much was going on in the background, with the Global 2000 report, which I was only dimly aware, Council on Environmental Quality, Charney, Department of Energy, AAAS, the European moves, it was clear that this guy was writing at a time when lots of other people were also pointing at climate change and going “shit shit shit”. Other context would be that the journal Climatic Change was set up by Stephen Schneider. Anyway…

 What happened next? We didn’t take action, the emissions kept rising. It would be 1988 before the alarm bell was heard widely enough. 

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: 

May 1, 1980 – ABC talks about atmospheric carbon dioxide measurement

May 1, 1996 – US Congressman says climate research money is “money down a rat hole”

Categories
Australia

April 30, 2007 – Rudd hires Garnaut

Seventeen years ago, on this day, April 30th, 2007, new Leader of the Opposition Kevin Rudd hires an economist…

On 30 April 2007, the leader of the federal opposition Australian Labor Party, Kevin Rudd,(along with the state and territory governments) engaged world renowned economist Professor Ross Garnaut to conduct a wide ranging review into the effects of climate change on Australia and its economy (Garnaut 2008).

(Rice and Martin, 2016:48)

and

BRISBANE, April 30 AAP – The federal opposition has commissioned an economics professor to head a Stern-type review into the impact of climate change on Australia’s future.

Labor leader Kevin Rudd announced the Garnaut Climate Change Review in Brisbane today, saying it would outline the threat to the country’s economic prosperity and investigate mitigation strategies.

It will be headed by Australian National University economics Professor Ross Garnaut, who will hand down interim findings mid next year, and a completed report by October 2008.

Marszalek, J. 2007 Fed: Opposition commissions Australia’s own climate report. Australian Associated Press General News, April 30

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 384ppm. As of 2024 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that new opposition leader Kevin Rudd was using climate as a stick to beat John Howard with, in much the same way that the UK Conservative leader David Cameron was using climate issue as a way to detoxify the Tory brand at more or less the same time. 

The broader context was that there had been multiple efforts to get emissions trading schemes going. Two had happened at the federal level in 200- and 2003, defeated by Tim Nick Minchin and John Howard, respectively. And also state led States led Emissions Trading had been on the agenda. So for example, especially the Victorian and New South Wales Premiers Bob Carr, leading the charge. And Garnautr who had been involved in some of that was a well respected economist who’d worked for Hawke on opening up the Australian economy, ie, reducing tariff barriers. 

What we learn is that policy might be good or bad, but it gets used as a blunt instrument in political wars to its cost. Because once it becomes part of political war, implementation is fragile and reversal is possible. That’s what happened in this case. (this is not an argument for pas devant les enfants technocracy, btw). 

What happened next Garnaut produced his final report rather in the middle of the following year, but by that time, Rudd as prime minister had set up a parallel process and Garnaut was kind of on the outer. The parallel process gave us the CPRS bless it and you know, the rest. 

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: 

April 30, 1985 – New York Times reports C02 not the only greenhouse problem

April 30, 2001 – Dick Cheney predicts 1000 new power plants