Categories
United States of America

April 4, 1964 – Revelle’s PSAC Working Group Five

Sixty years ago, on this day, April 4th, 1964, a working group of the President’s Scientific Advisory Council got looking at climate change…

PSAC was the second presidential task force to whom Revelle had introduced the issue of CO2. The first was a subgroup of President Johnson’s Domestic Council, which released a report in 1964. Joseph Fisher, Paul Freund, Margaret Mead and Roger Revelle., “Notes Prepared by Working Group Five, White House Group on Domestic Affairs,” April 4 1964. 

(Howe, 2014:219) [Mead and 1975 conference, with Stephen Schnenider)

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 319ppm. As of 2024 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that Roger Revelle, Conservation Foundation people, Charles Keeling, etc were looking at the carbon dioxide numbers and thinking, “you know, this is one to keep an eye on” as per the 1963 meeting.

And so on to Johnson. Within the Presidential Science Advisory Committee, which had been set up in the immediate aftermath of Sputnik, the climate issue was just one of those things that people thought about. (I’m not sure how Margaret Mead came to be involved, but I’m glad she was!)

The thing that we learned is that there they are within the policy subsystems beavering away, trying to get people to take this stuff seriously. 

What happened next? 

Well, a little under a year later, Johnson gave a special address to Congress about environmental pollution. And you know what? It mentioned CO2 buildup in the atmosphere. And that was thanks to Revelle. 

In November 1965 there was a long report, led by John Tukey, that kinda-sorta emerged from this PSAC group, but went much broader.

How did Margaret Mead get involved? She and then-husband Gregory Bateson will already have known about the issue via G. Evelyn Hutchinson, I’m sure. 

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 4, 1957 – New Scientist runs story on carbon dioxide build-up

April 4, 1964 – President Johnson’s Domestic Council on climate…

April 4, 1978 – UK Chief Scientific Advisor worries about atmospheric C02 build-upApril 4 – Interview with Ro Randal about “Living With Climate Crisis

Categories
United States of America

April 4, 1979 – DOE and AAAS meet on social science and climate

Forty five years ago, on this day, April 4th,1979, the Department of Energy and American Association for the Advancement of Science began a four day meeting about social sciences and climate change. 

4-7 April Annapolis Maryland DOE and AAAS meeting on social science and climate. See Felli “The Great Adaptation”

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 336.8ppm. As of 2024 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context is that from 1977 onwards, the Department of Energy I (don’t think it was called quite that then) and the AAAS were interested in climate and what could be done; or, perhaps more how societies might adapt because mitigation didn’t really figure that brightly at this stage. And so these sorts of workshops and meetings were happening all the time. This one was not particularly pivotal. I just mentioned it because I can… 

What we learn is that the question of societal responses to climate change was well on the agenda by then. 

What happened next – William Kellogg had no trouble writing a book published in 1981. We kept knowing, and not knowing…

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 4, 1957 – New Scientist runs story on carbon dioxide build-up

April 4, 1964 – President Johnson’s Domestic Council on climate…

April 4, 1978 – UK Chief Scientific Advisor worries about atmospheric C02 build-upApril 4 – Interview with Ro Randal about “Living With Climate Crisis

Categories
Interviews

Interview with Jane van Dis

The latest interview with a reader of All Our Yesterdays. If you want to do an interview, or want to nominate someone to be interviewed, let me know via drmarchudson@gmail.com

1.  Who are you and what do you “do” around climate change campaigning (can answer both ‘personally’ and professionally 

Hi, thanks for asking. I’m an OBGYN and began reading about the climate crisis in 2008 –the year my twins were born. I lived in Southern California from 2010 until 2021 and during that time I saw marked changes in the landscape and hydrology in the area, and very few people talking about it. In 2020 the Bobcat fire raged behind my house and for weeks we were told to be ready to evacuate, the air quality was horrific and we truly couldn’t even walk outside save for essential transport, like going to work or the grocery store. The fire eventually burned 115k acres and it really scared me, physically and mentally. I had been working the majority of my career as a physician on issues around gender equity, and I realized that there was a necessary intersection between women’s and maternal health equity, reproductive justice, and the climate crisis, and decided to focus my efforts in my spare time learning about how temperature affects preterm births, how wildfire affects lung function, how phthalates in plastics affect birth weight, preterm birth, and cancer, and many other consequences to living in a society dependent on fossil fuel, whether as energy or as consumer products, and that both were having profound effects on human health. Another doctor and I started OBGYNs for Sustainable Future focused on assisting the medical field to decarbonize and study the intersection of the climate and fossil fuel crisis and human and maternal health. 

2. When and how did you first hear about climate change and when and how did it move from an “ooh, that sounds bad” to “holy fucking SHIT”


Great question, I used to have nightmares when I lived in California, that I would get into the shower and no water would come out.  And I had that dream over and over again.  I remember in 2006 hearing about climate change and drought on the NPR show Marketplace, but it was far off.  The first time I started thinking about in a serious way was about 15 years ago – it was an article about ocean acidification, and I remember thinking that based on the math, the Great Barrier Reef would be nearly dead by the time my kids graduated high school, nor would I spend the jet fuel, CO2, to go see it. And that was a revelation: that things in this world will disappear soon, in our lifetimes, due to our consumptive extractivist lifestyles and our absent understanding of ecology.  I’ve been reading more and more since that article, listening, learning.  Now I lecture on the topic of climate change and health. The question is: how many people have felt the terror of all that we are poised to lose?  I would argue not enough.  Not a fraction of enough. 

3. What can we learn from the long long history of unsuccessful campaigning and scientific warnings (a theme of All Our Yesterdays).  What do campaigners/activists/concerned citizens need to do differently? 

Another excellent question. I do think talking to people (friends, neighbors, colleagues) helps.  I know I feel reenergized especially when I speak to others that understand the severity of the situation. Call us doomers, call us climate realists, I don’t care what the label is, I care that people understand the science and are willing to speak openly about the implications of the science. To be sure children and young adults may need some protection from the catastrophe unfolding, but adults?  Nah.  It makes me furious when I see smart people downplay the severity in the name of keeping the public calm.  Like we’re children?  If civil society is going to break when they understand what is inevitable, then that society wasn’t built to endure, which, I would argue, our society is very fragile and not built to endure. Would you not tell a patient whose MRI shows invasive cancer that she doesn’t have cancer?  No, you wouldn’t, that would be paternalistic.  I think civil disobedience helps, and I have given hundreds of dollars to Climate Defiance for their work, I think it’s impactful.  I think the media could do a much better job, as we saw media coverage of the crisis in the U.S. was down in 2023, the hottest year in 125,000.  Make that make sense?  We need more stories connecting the world of Dune and that of Earth, what would a world devoid of plants and water mean, and how many people could it support?  Spoiler, not many!  I think the language of degrowth needs to get louder.  People need to be shown that an economy (maybe 1/10000000th of the size) could exist without extraction. 

4.  What projects/events have you got coming up in the near future that you want to give a shout out to.  

I am doing a local talk at a library in April.  I’m interviewing an expert on the connection between phthalate exposure and preterm birth, among other ills when we eat, breathe and are constantly ingesting plastic.  I’m also working on an editorial, that may become a book, about how essential it is to equate climate justice and reproductive justice.  Contraception and education are imperative so that women and girls have the ability to choose if and when they want to have a child in this crisis.  People say, “but having a child is an act of hope,” but hope can’t feed you when crops fail due to drought and floods.  The patriarchy, a system that has operated for 10,000+ years, cannot continue. We cannot continue to subjugate women and girls to a system that has forced or encouraged them to have children for the church, for the state, for capitalism, for tribal government and systems. Reproductive justice is climate justice.  Women and girls’ bodies are not anyone’s to write a personal or societal agenda on.  People complaining that society will collapse if women stop having children… who will support the old people?  If the system can’t support elders because too much is siphoned off in profits for a tiny minority, then the problem is the system, not women.  A universal income would go a long way to supporting the elderly.  But we can’t have universal income because then how would Mark Zuckerberg afford a 300 million yacht.  The top 1% in the world own 30% of the world’s wealth.  That is a system designed to collapse.  Not the problem of women and girls to fix for ya’ll.  I want to give a shout out to Nandita Bajaj at Population Balance. I’ve been taking a course through Antioch University with her and others and I’ve learned a lot of about capitalism, forced birth, pronatalism, speciesism, ecocide and what it would mean to downsize in order that natural ecosystems can flourish alongside human flourishing.  

Categories
Australia

April 3, 1995 and 2001 – Australia’s international trajectory – from bullshit to batshit delusion (but honest)

Twenty nine and twenty three years ago, on this day, April 3rd, 1995 and 2001, the Australian position on international negotiations went from mildly hypocritical to unashamedly evil.

Australian environment minister John Faulkner meets with German Environment Minister Angela Merkel at COP1 and says “Australia is not obstructionist”

McCathie, 1995, 5 April. Australia’s change of heart hits the spot.

AND THEN 

The Australian government is being applauded by corporate polluters and corporate front groups at home and abroad. The Global Climate Coalition, the major front group for US corporate polluters, features on its web site an article by Alan Wood in the April 3 Australian (<http://www.globalclimate.org>). Wood’s article, titled “Killing Kyoto in Australia’s best interests”, urges Australia to back the US in pulling out of the Kyoto Protocol.

Wood comments favourably on a paper written by climate sceptic Alan Oxley for the Lavoisier Group, an Australian “think tank” which argues that the Kyoto Protocol poses “the most serious challenge to our sovereignty since the Japanese fleet entered the Coral Sea on 3 May, 1942”.

https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/canberra-covers-bush-greenhouse

and

The US has called Europe’s bluff.

LISTEN to the Europeans and you could be forgiven for thinking George W. Bush has just sent the world to the gas chamber – the greenhouse gas chamber, that is. What Bush has really done by rejecting the Kyoto Protocol is shatter a European dream of running the international energy market, or at least a substantial bit of it.

This dream arose from a mix of Europe’s quasi-religious green fundamentalism and cynical calculation of commercial advantage. Jacques Chirac gave the game away at the failed COP6 talks at The Hague last November, when he described the protocol as “a genuine instrument of global governance”.

Wood, A. 2001. Killing Kyoto in Australia’s best interests. The Australian, 3 April, p13.

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 361 to 371ppm. As of 2024 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that this six year period is really where the “failing to deal with climate change” accelerates. Before April 1995 two serious battles had already been lost. The Ecologically Sustainable Development process, which came up with some workable if not transformative in-and-of-themselves ideas, had been watered down and then killed off by Keating and federal bureaucrats. 

A second bite at the “carbon tax” cherry had just been defeated by early February 1995. John Faulkner had had to run up the white flag. The COP1 meeting was underway when this first bullshit was being spouted. 

But then if you look at the next six years, it’s an astonishing period of abject policy failure on climate, if, of course, by failure you mean protecting current and future generations. If your metric is “keeping rich people rich and the fossil fuel interests happy” that it was a stunning success. You have Australia’s adoption of ABARE modelling for international purposes by late 1995 under Keating.

You have the hostility to international negotiations breaking out in public in Geneva in July 1996. 

You have the year long campaign in 1997 for Australia to have some sort of special exemption, which sadly was successful.

You have the play acting of the Australian Greenhouse Office.

You have the defeat of the first Emissions Trading Scheme in 2000.

You have the introduction of an incredibly watered down Mandatory Renewable Energy Target. 

And you have the protection of state sanctioned credibility for a fantasy technology known as “carbon capture and storage.” 

By here we are on  April 3 2001, just after Bush had pulled out of Kyoto. That Bush decision meant that Australia was going to do the same, as per the leak in 1998. The batshit denialists could have just rested on their laurels. But theirs is a fire that continues to burn, regardless of whether they’re winning big or winning medium; and they were winning big. 

What we learn – the failure was public. There were no secrets, really.

What happened next. The failure has continued. And unless people behave differently, will continue to do so.

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 3, 1980 – US news anchorman Walter Cronkite on the greenhouse effect

April 3, 1991- Does coal have a future?

April 3, 2000 – Australian diplomats spread bullshit about climate. Again

Categories
Australia

April 2, 1968 – Oz Senate debates Air Pollution Select Committee

Fifty six years ago, on this day, April 2nd, 1968 some Australian politicians decide to create an investigative committee into Air Pollution.

See link here

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 323ppm. As of 2024 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that, for any debate to get as far as a Senate hearing, and for the suggestion of setting up a select committee on air pollution, then some people must have been pushing hard, lobbying behind the scenes, making sure they had the numbers. And it’d be fascinating to try and figure out who initiated the debate and why.

It was most certainly not about climate change, per se. It will have been about the air quality in especially Sydney and Melbourne, but also the other population centres of Australia. The climate issue came along in the midst of the hearings. 

What we learn is that issues or a body that is set up to investigate one thing can stumble across something else, and be consequential for that reason. This is surely quite unsurprising. 

 What happened next? By 1969 the committee was hearing from experts warning about carbon dioxide buildup…including a certain Professor in Tasmania…

The final report released in September of 1969 explicitly flags carbon dioxide buildup as something to watch. People knew. We knew. 

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 2, 1979 – AAAS workshop in Anaheim begins…

April 2, 2008 – Senator Barack Obama blathers about coal

Categories
Australia

April 1, 1970 – “And on the Eighth Day” shown in Melbourne – including climate warning

Fifty four years ago, on this day, April 1st, 1970, a super documentary made in the UK is shown in the colonies…

Australian TV (Melbourne at least) showing And On the Eighth Day 1st April 1970 – see preview by TV critic at The Age From The Melbourne Age, 1st April 1970…

https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=59QnAAAAIBAJ&sjid=vJADAAAAIBAJ&pg=5181%2C8183

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 325ppm. As of 2024 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that Australia, like the rest of the world, in the late 1960s, and especially in 1969, had really become aware of the environment problems. So a British (therefore prestigious) documentary about the issues was an obvious thing to buy, and to show.

What we learn is that there are these international networks of information. Of course there are. And people, good documentary filmmakers like Richard Broad. Their work got a big audience. 

What happened next? Australia kept being informed by local scientists and filmmakers as well as international ones. And the climate issue was in the mix. In 1970-1972 – it was already there being spoken of as a serious potential problem. But we just couldn’t hold onto it as an issue. It’s too big, it’s too daunting, too all-encompassing for our species. And here we are, having failed to solve it for 50 years, by which time it becomes functionally insoluble. 

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.

Categories
United States of America

April 1, 1960 – TIROS satellite launched

Sixty four years ago, on this day, April 1st, 1960, a weather satellite started being like the wheels on the bus (i.e. going round and round).

On 1 April 1960, the USA launched its first meteorological satellite, TIROS 1. It was a remarkable experience for people to be able to view the earth and its atmosphere from the outside. The bluish colour of our planet fascinated observers and a number of well-known features of the circulation of the atmosphere became visible through the cloud formations that they create.

(Bolin, 2007) Page 19

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 316.9ppm. As of 2024 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that we’d been talking about putting satellites into space for 100 years. And that had finally happened in September 1957 with Sputnik. The Americans had some failures but were now on the path

Tiros 1 was a weather satellite. And how sad that Johnny von Neumann wasn’t alive to see it. A shame. 

What we learn from this is being able to really see and measure the world from above had an enormous impact on not just weather forecasting, but also just thinking about how the systems worked. (See Paul Edwards’ A Vast Machine).

What happened next? A lot more satellites, a lot bigger computers, a lot better picture and precisely zero meaningful action. On the problem we identified. 

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

Edwards, P. 2010 A Vast Machine. MIT PRess

Also on this day: 

April 1, 1979 – JASONs have their two cents on the greenhouse effect

April 1, 2001 – John Howard sucks up to George Bush on climate wrecking

Categories
Fossil fuels

April 1, 1857 – Bucharest gets oily illuminations

One hundred and sixty seven years ago, on this day, April 1st, 1857, Bucharest was the first city to be crude…

The contract began to be executed on April 1, 1857, when, by replacing the kidnapped oil with the products supplied by the Rafov refinery, “Bucharest became the first city in the world illuminated entirely with distilled crude oil.” https://www.worldrecordacademy.org/technology/worlds-first-oil-refinery-ploiesti-218277

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 286ppm. As of 2024 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that some city had to be the first to be lit by oil. And there’s lots of oil in that part of the world. So perhaps not surprising. 

What we learn was that before pipelines and supertankers it was location, location, location

What happened next: A couple of years later, Drake hit oil in Pennsylvania. It’s also important to remember that Burma oil had been going for quite some time by this stage, in South East Asia.

Ultimately, it would only be the first Oil Shock (1973) that meant oil for generating electricity started taking a dive.

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 1, 1979 – JASONs have their two cents on the greenhouse effect

April 1, 2001 – John Howard sucks up to George Bush on climate wrecking

Categories
United Kingdom

March 31, 1973 – Protest in Piccadilly Circus

Fifty one years ago, on this day, March 31st, 1973, there was a demo in London.  

We found out about it first when we went down on 31 March to London, where Commitment were blocking off Piccadilly Circus from cars. There were about 400 people there and a lot of police, who swooped in and arrested the obvious ringleaders”. The attempt to block the road was in fact not much of a success as most of the remaining protesters seemed unwilling to do anything. “I ended up as one of the organisers – it became that ridiculous!”

http://www.muthergrumble.co.uk/issue17/mg1708.htm

Horace Herring, H. 2003. Energy Utopianism p.104

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 329ppm. As of 2024 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that the Young Liberals had been banging the drum about environmental issues. There had already been a similar style protests in 1971. This one seems to have garnered even less press but will have influenced some people I guess? The war against the car or the war against motorists. What can you do? What a species we are! 

What we can learn is that antipathy towards cars being taken over by cities goes back a long way. “Reclaim the Streets” goes back a long way. And our failure to succeed goes back a long way. 

What happened next, Commitment could not be maintained. But people within it stayed committed to the broader cause of ecological sanity. Including Victor Anderson…

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: 

March 31, 1998 – another report about #climate and business in the UK

March 31, 1998 – two business-friendly climate events in UK and Australia

Categories
United States of America

March 31, 1968 – Can the world be saved?

Fifty six years ago, on this day, March 31st, 1968, the ecologist LaMont Cole pondered the Big Question…

Cole, L. 1968. Can the world be saved? New York TImes, March 31.

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 323ppm. As of 2024 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that people were beginning to freak out about not just the bomb, but also the Population Bomb, local air pollution, national air pollution a sense of fragility and weakness.

This might be tied to the in this instance of the Tet Offensive and the question of whether rich white people could continue to dominate.

LaMont Cole at this point was worried about the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere potentially dropping and causing us all to choke to death; that was revealed to be not something to worry about a couple of years later.  

What we learned is that you know, people were reading this stuff and it was sensitising them. When things like the Santa Barbara oil spill came along, in late January of 1969, folks could join the dots and go, “oops.” 

What happened next, the Santa Barbara oil spill. People joining the dots and going “oops.”

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: 

March 31, 1998 – another report about #climate and business in the UK

March 31, 1998 – two business-friendly climate events in UK and Australia