Thirty years ago, on this day, July 11th, 1994, it turns out promises are easier than delivery
Environment Minister John Faulkner says the Federal Government wonât be able to tell if it can meet its targets on the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions until AugustâŚ.
On Mondayâs ABC Lateline program, Senator Faulkner said the government will have a better idea when statistics on levels of greenhouse gas emissions are released in August.
Anon. 1994. Greenhouse performance uncertain. Green Week, July 15, p.5. [Lateline show will have been Monday 11th July]
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 359ppm. As of 2024 it is 426ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was Faulkner hadn’t been in his post long. And Australian climate policy was a complete freaking mess. Anyway, there wasn’t one, except for the meaningless National Greenhouse Response Strategy, which was a watered down consolation prize for the Ecologically Sustainable Development process.
What we learn is that even on the most important issue of all time, there was an incredibly lackadaisical âyeah, whatever doesn’t matterâ attitude. And this really is the fault of Paul Keating. As prime minister, that’s where the buck stops.
What happened next is when the first emissions report did come out, it showed that surprise, surprise, emissions had not gone down, but continued to go up. And this was a problem both for the Rio stabilisation target of returning emissions to 1990 levels by 2000. But also, there was still supposed to be the âminus 20% by 2005â of the Toronto target, agreed in October 1990. Faulkner, then, proposed a carbon tax which was defeated.
What do you think? Does this pass the âso what?â threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
And, in the long list of more vivid and salient problems around water, oil, species loss etc etc, there was this –
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 323ppm. As of 2024 it is 426ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that various scientists had been getting worried about carbon dioxide build-up. There wasnât really an âepistemic communityâ about it yet (though that would come, soon enough). But they were getting it onto the agendas, and into the reports of various three and four letter acronym bodies, both UN and ICSU. And, at that time, of course, the US of A, before it went apeshit on these isssues, from the early 1980s onwards.
What we learn
We knew enough to be worried, two generations ago.
What happened next:
In December 1968 the UN General Assembly agreed to Swedenâs proposal for a conference on the Human Environment. It was held in June 1972. It would take another 16 years for climate change to actually get the attention it deserved. All that wasted time, in which not only was more carbon dioxide poured into the sewer we call an atmosphere, but – crucially – infrastructure and momentum to suicide were built. And here we are.
Twenty eight years ago, on this day, July 10th, 1996, the Sydney Morning Herald ran a story about the NGAP report, saying it had ignored the tricky issue of climate change.
The day before, the Australian had had this –
FUEL and power subsidies, poor planning and political inaction have slowed Australia’s drive to cut its greenhouse emissions, a government advisory panel has warned.
The National Greenhouse Advisory Panel, representing industry, conservation, science and community sectors, has advised the Federal and State governments to consider imposing firm targets for greenhouse reductions in the manufacturing, agriculture, transport and household sectors.
It has urged governments to start planning for the effects of higher temperatures and rising sea levels caused by global warming next century.
NGAP’s chairman, Professor Paul Greenfield of the University of Queensland, yesterday said the panel’s two-year review of Australia’s official greenhouse policy had identified “shortfalls”. “There needs to be a bit of revitalisation in the response,” he told The Australian, on the eve of United Nations negotiations in Geneva for a new climate change treaty.
“I think it has slowed down a bit. It’s not that it’s all been totally a disaster, but it’s fair to say not a lot has happened.”
Statistics due to be released today show that Australia’s greenhouse emissions rose 3 per cent last year – in breach of an international target to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide to 1990 levels by 2000.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 362ppm. As of 2024 it is 426ppm, but check here for daily measures.Â
The context was that the NGAP was set up in June 1994, when Labor Environment Minister John Faulkner was trying to show he âgot itâ and gave a damn. The Howard Government had come in, in March, and had taken a chainsaw with it to COP-2 in Switzerland and the National Greenhouse Advisory Panel, which, to be fair, was merely advisory, not statutory and so could be (and was) easily ignored.
What we learn is that there’s a real risk to you if you get involved in these advisory panels that you’ll be used as a fig leaf and then presented with a choice of âshut up and be still be in the room with the big powerful people, but lose all credibility beyondâ or âwalk and be accused of spitting the dummy and not understanding how politics is done,â when in actual fact you understand all too well; you have the brains but not the stomach for the lies and evasions and bullshit.
What happened next? The National Greenhouse Advisory Panel was killed off a few years later and was not mourned or missed.
What do you think? Does this pass the âso what?â threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
Twenty years ago, on this day, July 9th, 2004, popular conservationist David Bellamy made a complete fool of himself.
David Bellamy – Whatever the experts say about the howling gales, thunder and lightning weâve had over the past two days, of one thing we can be certain. Someone, somewhere â and there is every chance it will be a politician or an environmentalist â will blame the weather on global warming. (Daily Mail, 9 July 2004)
Gavin et al.: Climate change, flooding and the media in Britain Public Understand. Sci. 20(3) (2011) 422â438
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 378ppm. As of 2024 it is 426ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that David Bellamy was suffering a certain amount of Relevance Deprivation Syndrome. His star had waned since the 1980s. And along with a lot of other curmudgeonly old white men, he couldn’t bring himself to see that because fossil fuels have given us such power theyâre also deadly. One of the ironies is that Bellamy pops up in a 1984 documentary called âWhat to do about CO2?â, directed by Russell Porter. And a mere 90 seconds into that, he gives a concise and compelling summary of… the greenhouse effect.
What we learn is that just because someone’s on television, banging on about nature doesn’t actually mean they’re capable of seeing the really Big Picture. They, like everyone else, have their blind spots, because they’re human.
What happened next? Shortly after (in April 2005) Bellamy made a tragic miscalculation about ice glacier melt. George Monbiot, eviscerated him and basically ended his career, something he was bitter about, till he died.
What do you think? Does this pass the âso what?â threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
Fifty four years ago, on this day, July 8th, 1970, a crucial new US state organisation came into existence.
Environmental Protection Agency formed. President Nixon works with Congress to establish the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), a new Federal agency primarily responsible for United States environmental policy.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 325ppm. As of 2024 it is 426ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that Nixon at the beginning of 1970, had signed the Environmental Protection Act. Democrats had been pushing for this for years. That hadn’t happened under Lyndon Johnson. He was too busy fighting the Vietnam War and then trying to extricate himself and so, it happened on Nixon’s watch, and people around Nixon are happy for him to take the credit. But he doesn’t deserve any. Nixon had looked at environmental issues as a chance to distract attention from that war in Vietnam. See his early 1969 speech for the North Atlantic Council, and Daniel Patrick Moynihanâs memos and so forth, none of which had entirely convinced West Germany. And the British had probably thought to themselves, âare they trying to play Athens to their own Sparta?â
What we learn is that politicians are cynical bastards. I hope you were sitting down when you read that.
What happened next? The EPA is still with us, despite the efforts of Republicans to kill it off, especially in the early 80s, when they went too hard and in public and basically stepped on a rake. Slow defunding, and stripping of its powers is a more clever way of doing it. Leave the husk there. That doesn’t satisfy the real culture wars lunatics who need a bloody corpse.
EPA should be included as a page in the list of organisations, of course it should. Other Greatest Hits as it tried to say that under Bush Jr. had tried to save the carbon dioxide wasn’t a pollutant. And then it was 2003. And then in 2007, the Supreme Court had said you don’t get away with that. But I think it was Massachusetts under Mitt Romney, who had forced that case there.
What do you think? Does this pass the âso what?â threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
Fifty five years ago, on this day, July 7th, 1969, Newsweek was pointing to the environmental problems humans had created. Including CO2 build-up.
The article, the Good Earth, by John G. Mitchell, is based in part on a UNESCO conference and statement in May of the same year.
“Transparent to sunlight but opaque to the earth’s radiation, a blanket of moisture and carbon dioxide could conceivably raise the surface temperatures of the earth enough to melt the polar icepacks and raise sea levels 300 feet. Even 200 feet would inundate New York, Boston and most of Florida.”
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 324ppm. As of 2024 it is 426ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the environment movement, and Malthusian moment had begun. You can say January 28 1969, when the Santa Barbara oil spill happened. Then a couple of months later People’s Park had kicked off in Berkeley. And so newspapers could and magazines could fill up on hand wringing pearl clutching surveys like this one. And they could do if they so chose, illustrate it all with a picture of Earthrise. And throw in some guff about âour fragile planetâ âour imperilled Earthâ, whatever, this stuff writes itself.
What we learn is that by 1969, everyone who was reading this stuff was aware that CO2 was probably an issue whether they agreed with it or not.
What happened next? Newsweek and Time kept running the stuff. Senators started calling for it to be written into the record. In September of â69. Senator Gaylord Nelson announced Earth day. I think this was the brainchild of Dennis Hayes. Anyway, Hayes ran it. And everyone held hands and sang Kumbaya and achieved not very much. Or rather – some knew what was at stake and did their best, but “normal life” resumed….
What do you think? Does this pass the âso what?â threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
This rather brilliant post, by the newly-minted Dr Dena Arya, appeared on the website of the Political Studies Association. I have Dr Arya’s permission to repost it. Please read it. It eloquently raises many of the questions that face precarious ECRs.
12 June 2024
After six years of perseverance and determination, nourished by the love and support of my communities, I have completed my PhD. I must confess I have daydreamed about writing that post â the one where I tag my examiners, my supervisors, my mentors and bask for just a moment in the glory of âlikesâ, âsharesâ, and praises. A virtual homecoming where I can finally be recognised for my proverbial blood sweat and tears â having shared my ideas with the world ready to stand proud amongst my peers who made it over the finish line â to the land of early career researchers.
But I am yet to write that âglory tweetâ. The next few paragraphs are not going to tell my personal story of academic success â rather I hope that this blog might be read by others who have lessons to share with me so that I can learn how to âdo somethingâ about the predicament I find myself in.
Since September 2022, with the murder of Jina Amini which sparked the Zan Zendegi Azadi (Women Life Freedom) movement in Iran â the online space shifted for me. In the winter of â22, as a member of the Iranian diaspora, and at the time teaching a module on the politics of youth resistance, suddenly online protest space was no longer something abstract, theoretical or removed. In real time I began to watch the bravery of young people back home risking their lives and standing up for each other â many lost their lives dreaming of a better tomorrow. For months my research, my thesis, my PhD seemed futile, I felt purposeless and all I could do was scroll as day turned to night and watch young people, often women, risk everything for a slither of possibility that their singing, dancing, hair, art, bodies could carry others beyond the brutality they faced.
After some months, I could no longer watch. I did what I could where I could, but nothing felt good enough. My contributions felt empty and the pain of watching too severe – so I stopped watching and went back to my theories, concepts and eventually the movement fell into a period of lull. A year went by and I submitted my thesis â and then came October 7th and the now eight months of catastrophe that people surviving in struggle in Palestine are living through.
This time, I could not watch. This horror is beyond my bodyâs capabilities to simply bear witness to. So, I do what I can where I can and I carry on living my life. A freedom that many surviving in struggle through the multiple monstruous genocides across the planet can only dream.
My life goes on and I pass my viva. I submit my corrections â I have spent six years reading, thinking, writing and exploring with young people the role of intersectional inequalities in their climate action. I publish papers, I attend talks, I experience, in my little world successes â I am the first person in my family to get a doctorate. My father who dedicated his life to nourishing my critical mind is proud of me. This is a reason to celebrate.
But how do we celebrate success in the face of horror as early career researchers?
And so what of our role is as academics, researchers, scholars, intellectuals (whatever term floats your boat) In the commodified academy where you can be as justice orientated and radically left as you like as long as you bring in the REF scores? How do we ensure that we donât become the âleft wing intelligenciaâ that simply critiques horror from the side lines? How do we âdo the doingâ of scholar activism in an academy that was never meant to be a place where political community, social movements, resistance or change happened? How do we subvert power in a thought factory that benefits from our labour?
Then I remember that, in spite of the very nature of the academy, when people come together and break out of their atomisation there is possibility. I suppose Foucault might have called that âpower to/power withâ.
I think about what I have learnt from great thinkers and political creators like hooks, Freire, Fanon, Davis and Truth. I think about the encampments in support of Palestine where students and academics across the world area standing together and risking their bodies, their livelihoods and their careers to stand up for those who are not able to stand up for themselves in the face of megaton bombs, warheads and fighter jets. And I ask myself â what is my role? How can I contribute from within the academy?
We all know that early career researchers occupy second class citizen status in academia – then there are those who are racially minoritised, working class, differently abled, or gender oppressed. We take short term precarious contracts anywhere we can, jump for joy at opportunities which promise to elevate our status but which in reality are free labour â all the while we sit alone at our desks wondering how to jump through the next hoop.
In no way of course am I insinuating that the experiences of ECRs, many of whom live in the relative safety of Global Minority locales, can be compared to the immeasurable pain and suffering that exists globally as a result of the mechanisms of a global hegemony that prides itself of racialised patriarchal capitalism that exploits people and planet for profit.
But, whilst I count up my successes and wonder how to share them, I also reflect on how we within academies across the world are supposed to make sense of our purpose. I left grassroots organising and community engagement to try and be a more useful member of the collective struggle â hoping that I could find it in academia.
I have indeed found communities of care, people who are willing to stand up and speak out: dedicators, strugglers, fighters and dreamers. In and amongst the conveyer belt of commodification of intellectualism there is a beautiful thread that ties so many of us together that I like to see as a shared experience of injustice and a striving for transformation â from the minute to the mountainous.
Thinking, understanding, participating in collective and self-education â developing our critical consciousness is dangerous to the system. If it wasnât so dangerous I suppose Gramsci would have been allowed access to a pen in the first years of his solitary confinement in prison.
So perhaps with that in mind, and in honouring the innumerable students across the world from Palestine, the Congo, Sudan, Ukraine who no longer have universities within which to complete their PhDâs, I owe it to them to celebrate my success â as all of our wins belong to each other and are for each otherâs tomorrow.
Author Biography:
Dr Dena Arya, Nottingham Trent University and the PSA’s Young Peopleâs Politics Specialist Group Convenor, is an expert in conducting focus groups on climate change issues and who has worked with Professor Henn on recent projects for the Nottingham City Council.
Thirty six years ago, on this day, July 6th,1988, an oil drilling platform in the North Sea blows up.
The Piper Alpha drilling platform in the North Sea is destroyed by explosions and fires. One hundred sixty-seven oil workers are killed, making it the world’s worst offshore oil disaster in terms of direct loss of life.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 350ppm. As of 2024 it is 426ppm, but check here for daily measures.Â
The context was that Piper Alpha had a bad safety reputation. Workers had been complaining and⌠boom.
What we learn is that energy extraction is a dangerous business. Whether it’s coal mines, oil platforms, small coal mines are definitely more dangerous. And accidents happen. Normal accidents in the world words of Charles Perrow.
What happened next? There were the usual prolonged battles over blame and compensation. At this point, in Britain, this was the third big infrastructure horror show after the Kings Cross fire and also The Herald of Free Enterprise. It did feel like things were falling apart. And then of course, the following year, Exxon Valdez.Â
What do you think? Does this pass the âso what?â threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
Eleven years ago, on this day, July 5th, 2013, Michael Gove had to back down on one of his more prickish gambits.
Michael Gove has abandoned plans to drop climate change from the geography national curriculum.
The education secretary’s decision represents a victory for Ed Davey, the energy and climate change secretary, who has waged a sustained battle in Whitehall to ensure the topic’s retention.
The move to omit it from the new curriculum took on a symbolic status. Gove insisted it was part of his drive to slim an unwieldy curriculum down, to give teachers greater freedom to show their initiative.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 397ppm. As of 2024 it is 426ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the âConservativesâ hate anything that reminds people that the status quo that they are trying to conserve is already killing some, and is going to kill everyone. And so they would like to de-educate the young.
What we learn here is that these sorts of decisions can be defeated. If there’s a broad enough coalition and there’s enough outrage. And the politician doesn’t think the game is worth the candle. Fine. But Read on to what happened next.
What happened next on climate is it ostensibly allegedly stayed within the national curriculum. But look, what else got torched? Have a look at this article from the Morning Star on the ninth of December 2023, pointing out what Gove was able to remove from the curriculum. I don’t know, maybe there was a similar effort to push back. But it won’t have had as many educated white people behind it, as the climate campaign did. I’m not saying that all white people are racist, or that all the people who campaigned on the climate curriculum issue are hypocrites at all. I’m just saying that for some issues people who care about them are able to mobilise this kind of cultural capital, social capital, and on other issues itâs that much harder.Â
And I can see how people pushing on other issues might notice that we were silent when they needed help. I personally don’t recall being involved. And this is to my shame in either campaign. But at this point I wasn’t in a good headspace and I was focusing on Manchester City Council, those are my excuses.
What do you think? Does this pass the âso what?â threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
The “What to do about C02?” documentary, directed by Russell Porter, is 40 years old. The tweet about it did well, and I contacted Russell to say that people were watching his (excellent) documentary.
“I used to say in my teaching that a good documentary film should work for any audience anywhere, beyond its own time and place.
“TV current affairs and news programmes on the same subjects are by definition ephemeral – they usually disappear after their initial broadcast.Â
“The challenge for documentarians is to find the universal truths behind the specific context, and I think the enduring appeal of these CSIRO films demonstrates this point.
“But as I said in the interview, I doubt this kind of film could be made today, certainly not within an institutional context.Â
“For a start the national institutions like CSIRO no longer have the luxury of their own production and distribution facilities.
“Secondly, the integrity of the institutions themselves has been fatally compromised by the imposition of Thatcherite privatisations and the need to “make profit” at the expense of all other values.Â
“The current revelations and legal / personal disasters relating to UK sub-post masters as a result of privatised corporate greed, lies and cover-ups is a case in point.Â
“It is revealing that there was no official reaction to these monumental injustices until the ITV broadcast of a compelling dramatised documentary. “Mr Bates Vs. The Post Office”.“
NB He wants to make clear that
it is just my personal view rather than anything formally connected to CSIRO. I haven’t had anything to do with the organisation since 1988
I say – one of the crucial losses in the last 40 years (not that before then was by any means perfect) has been the stupefaation and demoralisation of those opposed to escalating murder and mayhem against all other species, and future generations of humans. Our sense-making has been attacked, mostly successfully. And here we are.
