Thirty seven years ago, on this day, October 17th, 1987, in Vancouver, a Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting took place, and other leaders (especially the small island states) tried to bend UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s ear on the problem of climate change.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 349ppm. As of 2024 it is 422ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that since 1985, scientists have been trying to warn politicians. Low lying nations and so forth were paying attention because they could see the writing on the wall or the waves washing over the seawall. And Thatcher by her own account, copped an earful at this Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting. For all the good it did – it would be almost another year before she would give her speech at the Royal Society
What we learn is that you have to tell ideologues the same thing many many times before they’ll pay any attention. And God what a stupid species we are.
What happened next? Yeah, you’ve got the explosion of interest in 1988.
In 1989, the CHOGM lot received Martin Holdgate’s report, which had been commissioned at Vancouver.
Shridath Ramphal, then Secretary-General of the Commonwealth, who commissioned the report from an international expert group at the Commonwealth Heads of Government summit in Vancouver, Canada, in 1987, described the threat of climate change in his foreword as “truly global in its implications”.
He said: “If the Earth is to warm by even the most modest of the various projections, there could be far reaching, long term implications for natural ecological systems, farming, the design of major energy and water projects and for low lying areas that could be affected by rising sea level.”
The Holdgate report called for a “major international initiative” to establish “global responsibilities” for preventing unmanageable rises in the world’s temperature. It also spelt out practical steps which poor and small countries like Guyana, Bangladesh, Maldives, and Pacific islands, could take to monitor their changing environment.
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.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 337ppm. As of 2024 it is 422ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that. Exxon had been looking at CO2 build up. They’d had discussions with oceanographer Wally Broecker. There were bits of equipment on oil tankers and so forth. And they’d done the calculations. And they basically knew what was coming, and made fairly accurate predictions of what was coming. See for example this June 6, 1978 presentation.
What we learn is that in the words of the website, “Exxon 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.
Twenty-five years ago, on this day, October 15th, 1999 the Australian Financial Review reported that ,
The Federal Government has conceded for the first time that its greenhouse gas policy could reduce the competitiveness of key sectors of the Australian economy.
The Australian Financial Review has obtained a draft record of an August 25 meeting of the Council of Australian Governments’ High Level Group on Greenhouse. It puts the Commonwealth position in these terms: “Competitiveness is fundamentally linked to the economy as a whole and not individual sectors – no government could promise that the competitiveness of individual sectors would remain unchanged over time.”
Hordern, N. 1999. Greenhouse policy `can affect competitiveness’. The Australian Financial Review, 15 October, p. 6.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 368ppm. As of 2024 it is 422ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the Howard Government had come in in 1996 even more hostile to climate action than Keating. It had ramped up the opposition to international commitments. It had done greenwash where necessary and naked contempt when it thought it could. In 1997 it had been cornered into making a few promises that it was now trying to backtrack on, and water down. But it couldn’t always bluster past the advocates of action at the state level, including New South Wales Premier Bob Carr…
What we learn is that in 1999 even the Howard Government realised that continuing to ignore climate impacts was going to cause problems for The Australian Economy.
What happened next? Howard continued to do everything he could to avoid any climate action, both domestically and internationally. Domestically, he continued to undermine any progress on renewables, and to kill a carbon price twice (in 2000 and 2003). Internationally, he refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol (despite having extorted the most unimaginably generous terms) and joined in various “spoiler” activities with the US.
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.
Forty-two years ago, on this day, October 14th, 1980, scientist Barry Commoner is running for president, and a ‘shocking ad’ is released.
“It’s all bullshit!”
“What?!”
“Carter- Reagan-Anderson, it’s all bullshit.”
See also https://time.com/4584919/barry-commoner-shocking-ad/
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 339ppm. As of 2024 it is 422ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that Barry Commoner had been banging on about the threats to the environment for a looong time. His first book, Science and Survival, had come out in 1966 and was a crucial node for awareness of climate change. And he finally decided to run for President to highlight the issues. Of course, that was the election that one of the Koch brothers also stood on a so-called “libertarian” platform.
Anyway, Commoner’s campaign was not getting a lot of attention, of course. His campaign manager had the bright idea to put out an advert saying that voters should pay attention to Commoner if they were sick of bullshit. And this was back in the days when swearing was newsworthy. And it got Commoner a certain amount of attention though, by all accounts Commoner was not happy since it kind of cut across his preferred reputation as a serious and non joke/ attention-seeking candidate.
What we learn is that if you want to get attention, you have to do something newsworthy. Because the media are bored of it reporting actual issues. Because they know that the voters want a circus instead. The voters want a circus because what they can choose doesn’t really matter anyway, so they may as well be entertained. And also, some of the voters are really fucking thick. But that’s not really their fault. Education System, schooling system and society are all designed to make people thick, because thick people are easy to manipulate. The last thing you want is an intelligent electorate. What a freaking nightmare that would be.
What happened next Commoner lost, obviously. Reagan got up. Gaia help us all.
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.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 357ppm. As of 2024 it is 422ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was tha the cold war -scientist shall talk unto scientist’ outfit the International Institute for Advanced Science Analysis (IIASA) was about 20 years old. It had a surprisingly long history of banging on about climate change and energy, back to 1975, with William Nordhaus and then Hafele’s energy studies. And they put together some workshops. And they were big fans of all their fancy computer models: really in love with them.
What we learn. And here we are 30 years later. And they just keep redrawing lines and magic shit into existence. Making heroic assumptions about the speed of development and deployment of offshore wind and hydrogen and so forth, bearing no resemblance to the real world. But how are you gonna make the numbers add up?
So we’re trapped in these ridiculous mental models and computer models, because we don’t tell the truth to ourselves about ourselves. That we screwed the pooch and is it no one’s short-term career interest to be the one who says “hey guys, I think we screwed the pooch.” You are not going to get promoted – in fact, you’re not going to keep your bloody job full stop if you do that…
What happened next so I’m sure that in 1993 there were people with misgivings. They didn’t speak up. I’m sure that there were other people who had misgivings in 2003, didn’t speak up. 2013 didn’t speak up. 2023 didn’t speak up. Why would you?
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.
Still here? Okay, thanks for the vote of confidence.
Now. Read this [link]. Ideally out loud. Ideally twice. Then stop and think about what that would feel like.
Want some more? From some Brits who only moved to the States a couple of years ago? The BBC can oblige. Here you go.
If you need a dose of vicarious misery pornography, and the Middle East doesn’t do it for you (wrong colour people, wrong languages etc) then Mother Nature and the 24hr news beast can provide. Endless photos, horror stories. Here comes the 21st century.
And of course, as you will also know if you’ve been following this even cursorily, there are just tons of “conspiracy theories” doing the rounds, and a lot (no, I mean a LOT) of articles, tweets about that. Which is what I am here to write about.
The articles include these three, which are both worth your time
The first two (I’ve added the Heglar upon finding it, on Oct 13) are very focussed – as journalists and pundits often are – on the recent past. Not so many of them make the obvious points (reasons of space, and focus and time and so on) that
There is a good book by Jason Rodger Fleming (2012) on all this, called Fixing the Sky. The cover art is from a 1950s magazine article, and you can see it in this All Our Yesterdays tile.
3. There have been stories about people controlling the weather for, well, since humans began telling the stories. Gods would do it and then their self-appointed ‘ambassadors’ on earth would (claim to do it). It’s a standard sci-fi trope. The two examples below are among MANY. I chose them because
a) They’re from the mid-1970s, when ALL sorts of anxieties were knocking about (the seeming end of prosperity, cheap oil, the American empire, the emergence of climate threats etc).
b) I have read them both and loved them, since watching Geostorm. My article (Hudson, 2017) on that disaster film includes LOTS of examples of weather control films, and some excellent observations from a ‘sci-fi tragic’ friend I am seeing tomorrow, for the first time in far too long.
c) The covers are mint.
And these novels were inspired by things like HAARP –
“High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program, a US government-funded program that studies the ionosphere” [Wikipedia].
Not to haarp on about it…
4. People can have a hard time separating stories they have heard a lot from “reality” (like, you know, bearded sky gods who take a personal interest in whose and what type of genitals an individual is rubbing their own genitals against).
Also, have we all forgotten Donald F – sorry, ‘J’ – Trump and his sharpie? The Dorian-Alabama thing in 2019, aka Sharpiegate. Have we?
Philosophical interlude
What did we do in response to the pain we can’t imagine? And the ‘stupidity’ we are sure we are better than? We – some of the best among us – reported and commented on what was happening without offering historical, political, psychological context. Blinded by our fear of what is already here, and what it presages.
Conspiracy theories about weather manipulation are, unfortunately, the logical next step in climate denialism, and the traction they are getting shows how hard it is to get out of this absurdly terrifying loop.
I know we shouldn't expect consistency from conspiracy fantasists, but seeing people claim that "human beings can't possibly alter the climate" AND "human beings are causing hurricanes with cloud seeding/chemtrails/Jewish space lasers" suggests we really are doomed as a species.
I know we shouldn’t expect consistency from conspiracy fantasists, but seeing people claim that “human beings can’t possibly alter the climate” AND “human beings are causing hurricanes with cloud seeding/chemtrails/Jewish space lasers” suggests we really are doomed as a species.
I can hear the objections, that I am being unfair to these (good) thinkers and misunderstanding the limits of a limited social media platform. SO I say, calmly and quietly, the following.
YES I KNOW THESE ARE TWEETS BUT THERE ARE SUCH THINGS AS
Twitter threads
Blogs and columns you write and then tweet about to your tens/hundreds of thousands of followers so they are not merely confirmed in their fear/disdain, but forced to think.
And the rest of us? We do like to the mock the Jewish Space Laser people. (I understand that impulse, and give into it most of the time)
And we push the stupidity narrative.
And we framed the problem as (only) stupidity. And not our stupidity.
I will say this several times in the rest of this rant. The stupidity narrative (especially on its own) doesn’t help. You could almost say it is… what’s the word… stupid?
But it is both easy and also it makes us feel good. And ultimately, what matters more than that?
Most of the people pushing these lines probably don’t like the Conservatives very much. And if they’re old enough and British, they probably didn’t like John Major (UK Conservative Prime Minister from 1990 to 1997).
In February 1993, speaking to the entirely wonderful newspaper the Mail on Sunday, Major said – in the context of the murder of a 2-year old boy by two 10 year-olds – “ ‘Society needs to condemn a little more and understand a little less,”
But we need to condemn a little less and understand a little more.
What’s the backstory?
The back story is not just “neoliberalism” (though that really hasn’t helped. It is not as if the “Keynesian” government of the Glorious 30 (1945-1973) were beloved (see Seabrook, 1978; Gross, 1980; Slater, 1972). Things weren’t great before (though in retrospect they look like, well, a Golden Age). Nearly 40 years of ‘austerity’ and widening wealth gaps has happened.
Enormous social changes (some for the ‘better’, some perhaps not). Enormous technological changes. People feel hella disorientated, aggrieved etc.
And on neoliberalism? It is part of the response to the Crisis of Democracy. What’s that? Well, here’s a short Noam Chomsky video.
But humans are also fragile, cognitively. It’s easy to plant false memories in them. [Wikipedia]. And we are so surrounded by stories, all day. We are made of dreams and bones, sang Pete Seeger. And stories.
It’s a comforting story, people believe it. And it is a very short sidestep to Smart, Qualified People acting nefariously in cahoots with the WEF, OECD, PTA, whoever.
At least somebody is in charge, at least somebody knows what is going on. “Phew, we do, ultimately, live in a rational society.”
Except, remember that Nate Bear article you didn’t go and read? Or you did and you’re about to get a repeat….
Bear talks about reading a well-meaning tweet from someone who laments ‘if only we’d been told about the brain-damage aspect of COVID in 2020, we’d have acted differently’ and observes it got a lot of likes and retweets. And Bear writes
I’m going to be honest about what this says to me.
It says that too few people who consider themselves informed, clever, rational, followers of science, have spent any time thinking about how bad things happen and why.
It suggests to me a certain amount of privilege in your circumstances and life experiences.
My brain kind of translates it as how did I, a white person in the global north, where I thought we had our shit together, end up living in such an irrational society?
Bear, N. 2024.
What about the race, class, gender and general powerlessness (stripped out civil society). And the pandemic if you haven’t spoken of it before and anyhoo, recap
So, here’s a new section I am going to put in all these sorts of rants, I mean, “considered and very publishable in respected outlets think pieces.” You can call it mechanical, abrupt, virtue-signally, whatever floats your boat. I will call it forcing myself to think about things I can – as a white, male, hetero, middle-class, able-bodied mofo – very easily pretend don’t actually matter (pro-tip, they do).
Incomplete list to consider (e.g. age, species)
Well then.
Race
Why might black people be suspicious of the medical system? Why might they have crazy crazy ideas about being neglected, or used as unconsenting guinea pigs, their diseases treatable but left untreated? BECAUSE IT HAPPENED. But that sort of thing has definitely stopped. For sure. Yes.
Class
Just go reread the quote about losing everything at the top. And also look at the people in that meme with the bandages on their ears. They are of a different class. They are part of a class that likes Trump’s tax cuts. And the permission Trump gives them to sneer at anyone Not Them.
Gender
Think about all this in interplay. And think about what it will be like for female meteorologists. Remember, when the death threats started flying at Australian climate scientists in the late 2000s, women copped more. And still are (as per Gergis, 2024).
Powerlessness
It’s all combined. The neoliberalism (destroying the democratic state), the algorithms and surveillance and carceral state. The sense of hopelessness that anything will get better, that the enormous challenges will be dealt with. There ARE evil actors out there, meaning harm. But it’s easier to punch on meteorologists than the people who wrote Project 2025, because those guys have the power to mess you up good and proper. So allow your fear, hate, despair, anger to be channelled towards punching ‘down’.
Pandemic
Unprocessed trauma. Trauma about how the whole thing has been memory-holed. See also Terror Management Theory
Synergy/intersectionality
Yeah. If you have to ask, you won’t ever understand.
Time for more Bear. Read more Bear.
“Under conditions of depoliticisation, people either reach for conspiracies or mold their understanding of events into long-standing explanations of the world. This goes as much for centrists and even some leftists as it does for the right.
“Centrists famously lack the ability to see the world through prisms of imperial capitalist power, leftists see imperial capitalist power behind every crisis, and the right see manufactured threats to a loosely defined freedom as behind every crisis.”
Bear, 2024
What it implies/what is coming next(what hand-wringing opportunities for guilty impotent liberals [most of us] lie ahead?
At times like this, one needs to quote the famous Swedish political philosophers Ulvaeus, and Andersson.
“Something bad is happening, I’m sure you do agree
People care for nothing, no respect for human rights
Evil times are coming, we are in for darker nights”
The anger and all the rest of it isn’t going away, whether Trump i) wins, ii) steals or iii) is somehow unable to steal and that nice Kamala Harris gets into the White House. The goose, like the planet, is well and truly cooked.
More death threats and shit against the impact scientists (meteorologists, disaster preparedness etc etc – see the Walzer quote below).
What is to be done? (by social movement organisations. But won’t be)
Oh, the usual.
Create and maintain functional groups that support members, extend their skills, knowledge and relationships while avoiding co-optation, cognitive capture, repression and burnout.
Work with other similarly effective groups across a range of issues (all the issues), sharing resources and working to democratise the state (good luck with that) and using the state to control private concentrations of power.
Create and defend venues for individuals and networks to figure out what is actually going on.
Easy-peasy.
It’s the only way you’ll prevent climate meltdown, and as long as you start in the early 1970s and work consistently and persistently and don’t suffer too many setbacks, by about 2026 or so you’ll be home free.
What are the academic theories I find useful for thinking about this/Concepts for you to use (in rough order of importance or alphabetical order or no order whatsoever because there were other things I had to do and anyway i) ymmv and ii) about three people are reading these
Terror Management Theory [Wikipedia] – people scared of death. And they figure ways to ignore it, blame others
Anti-reflexivity – we’re fed up with how damn COMPLICATED the world has gotten. See this by McCright and Dunlap.
It’s a bit of a miracle that an article (okay, rant) about conspiracy theories hasn’t already referenced Lewis Carrol and “Six impossible things before breakfast.”
Well, here’s three impossible things to do before breakfast. (Also, like accusations, every bit of advice is a confession).
A little humility
Maybe (we) liberals could reflect on all the patently absurd shit we either believe or find convenient to pretend in pubic to believe?
About markets, democracy, progress, the capacity of their institutions to cope with climate change.
A little fucking humility might be in order (1)
Marilyn Robinson’s 1989 book Mother Country: Britain, the Welfare State and Nuclear Pollution was so incendiary that those loveable scamps at Greenpeace sued her for libel (and won). Among its many gems was one she wrote(and I can’t find the exact page number or quote, so this is a paraphrase – if you have a copy, please let me know) (2).
“Most people know a little about some things and nothing about everything else. They have little islands of knowledge in vast seas of ignorance”
And Robinson was writing thirty years ago, before the sea level rise – literal and of metaphorical ignorance was rising.
A little empathy, compassion, hermeneutical phenomenology, whatever label you want to stick on it.
Who knows, maybe some compassion and imagining what the world would look like in someone else’s shoes? (3).
Update on October 13, 2024 – See this from Heglar (2024) on the question of compassion
So why are folks running to invent new conspiracy theories when the real, undeniable conspiracy is right there? Because for them to change their mind would be to lose a very real part of their identity and, perhaps, to have to consider the possibility that some of their other beliefs may not be real either. And that might mean they need to find new communities or even new families. Changing your mind about something as colossal as the ground you live on and the air you breathe is not unlike coming out of a cult.
But we don’t treat people that way. We treat them like doofuses who fell for an obvious lie. Ultimately, who does that serve? Perhaps it’s time we start treating these people as what they are: victims of a manipulative, deliberate lie. And then turn our attention back toward the people who lied to them.
TO BE CLEAR: THIS IS DISTINCT FROM CONDONING OR TOLERATING DEATH THREATS.
Earn your ‘keep’ as intellectuals and tackle the “Warzel challenge” Remember those two articles at the beginning of this post. Well, the second was by a guy called Warzel. “We need new ways of thinking.”
The whip-smart American journalism professor Jay Rosen (you should follow him) screengrabbed this bit below of Warzel’s essay. I’ve not got access to the full Warzel, but I trust Rosen to get to the crux.
Maybe stop fucking wallowing in the fucking smugosphere and riding the emotacycle off the cliff? Eh?
And as anyone who knows the author can attest, if you’re getting humility advice from Marc Fucking Hudson, you are in far deeper shit than you actually understand
The closest a perfunctory google search (GoogleBooks not letting search of MC) was this
“How is one to understand the degradation of the sea and earth and air of the British homeland by people who use the word British the way others of us use the words good, and just, and proud, and precious, and lovely, and clement, and humane? No matter that these associations reflect and reinforce the complacency that allows the spoliation to go unchecked; still, surely they bespeak self-love, which should be some small corrective. I think ignorance must be a great part of the explanation–though ignorance so obdurate could be preserved only through an act of will.” From Granta.
This had me making some jibe about MTG (the g stands for gourd – as in Empty Gourd. Geddit?” It’s not funny (but I thought it was at the time) and it is EXACTLY the sort of shit that is going to piss people off for no benefit. I have ZERO problem pissing people off if there is a potential benefit (to them and me both, ideally). But for the yucks? Really? Isn’t that just using other people’s misery and confusion to make us feel more powerful and superior in the moment? Isn’t that morally and politically bankrupt? Oughtn’t I to grow the fuck up?
See also what else I’ve written
Oh, there is the old “Conspiracy -Apocalypse- Paranoia” booklet I should dig out and scan because it is bound to be startlingly brilliant, oh yes.
See also what other people have written
When the Conversation article goes live, I will post it here.
Thirty-eight years ago, on this day, October 12th, 1986, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s science discussion show, Ockham’s Razor – soap box for all things scientific, with short talks about research, industry and policy from people with something thoughtful to say- tackled climate change… Yes. 1986.
Ockham’s Razor [Series 86, Episode 101] – The Greenhouse Effect, Part 1 – Cause – Doctor Brian Tucker [CSIRO Division of Atmospheric Research]
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 347ppm. As of 2024 it is 422ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the CSIRO had finally been able to ring the alarm bell about carbon dioxide. And people starting to talk about it, worry about it. And it turned up on the radio. The broader context was that there had been people on ABC radio science shows since 1969, – and conceivably earlier – warning about carbon dioxide buildup. We had Frank Fenner on 16th of September 1969 And we’d had Richie-Calder on the first ever Science Show in 1975.
What we learn is what we always learn – that we knew, we knew, we knew.
What happened next. The Commission for the Future put together the Greenhouse Project with CSIRO. It was effective in raising awareness among policy elites and mass publics in 1988 and 1989. And then they didn’t get further funding.
And as per the Rosaleen Love’s article in Arena, it all just went away because we can’t stare into the abyss for very long…
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.
Five years ago today (October 11 2019), the rules were amended – as they so often are – to allow for a new wheeze…
In 2019, Contracting Parties to the London Protocol adopted a resolution (LP.5(14)) to allow provisional application of an amendment to Article 6 of the Protocol to allow export of CO2 for storage in sub-seabed geological formations. Two or more countries can therefore agree to export CO2 for geological storage. To do so they must deposit a formal declaration of provisional application with the Secretary-General of IMO, and also notify IMO of any agreements and arrangements for permitting and responsibilities between the Parties, following the existing guidance. https://www.imo.org/en/OurWork/Environment/Pages/CCS-Default.aspx#:~:text=In%202019%2C%20Contracting%20Parties%20to,CO2%20for%20geological%20storage.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 411ppm. As of 2024 it is 422ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that CCS was becoming important for the rhetoric of mitigation, but there were various legal barriers. This helped remove one of them.
What we learn is that who is gonna let laws get in the way?
What happened next. The CCS bandwagon keeps trundling on. Too important to powerful actors not to.
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
Wettestad et al 2023. ESG on Norway and Mongstad to Longship
On October 11, 2016, five brave climate activists, determined to act commensurately with the truth of unfolding climate cataclysm, closed safety valves on the 5 pipelines carrying tar sands crude oil into the United States. This is their story.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 404ppm. As of 2024 it is 422ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was Canadian and US companies were extracting huge amounts of oil from tar sands; the filthiest kind of oil you can imagine. The getting of it is especially destructive. So what do we do? We try to take nonviolent direct action and throw ourselves on the mercy of the courts. But the beast, the machine, the Juggernaut continues and the emissions climb.
What do we learn that there’s a juggernaut, and it’s hungry.
What happened next? From Wikipedia
All five participants planned to use the necessity defence to draw attention to their cause and justify their actions,[6] though three were not permitted to do so.[7] The judge presiding over the Johnston & Klapstein trial, Robert Tiffany, initially ruled that they could mount the necessity defense.[8] However, he then reversed his decision, prohibiting expert testimony that would establish the argument for necessity,[9] before dismissing the case before the defendants could present its necessity defense.[10] Klapstein said she was happy the charges were dismissed, but “at the same time, we were indeed disappointed not to be able to present this to the jury. We were hoping to educate the jury and the classroom of greater public opinion on the dire issues of climate change”.[9] Foster, Higgins, and Ward were prohibited by the judges overseeing their cases from mounting the necessity defense.[11]
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.
Thirty three years ago, on this day, October 10th, 1991, on the one year anniversary of Australia setting an ambitious greenhouse gas reduction target…
MELBOURNE: Accusing the Prime Minister, Bob Hawke, of a “gross betrayal”, major conservation groups united yesterday to condemn the Federal Government’s proposed resource-security legislation.
The executive director of the Australian Conservation Foundation, Phillip Toyne, said Mr Hawke was going ahead with the legislation despite a commitment last year that he would not.
He said the Prime Minister had made the pledge to himself and environmentalist-musician Peter Garrett, during a meeting between the three.
“He told us there would be no resource-security legislation. It was an unambiguous exchange of views and the intent was clear,” Mr Toyne said.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 355ppm. As of 2024 it is 422ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the Ecologically Sustainable Development process was clearly being gutted. And Hawke was not defending it. It was a long time since the heady days of 1989, 1990 when people were voting green. Hawke had other things on his mind, such as a potential challenge from Paul Keating, and also the new Liberal leader, John Hewson with his so-called Fightback! neoliberal policy. So the green issues could go jump, basically.
What we learn is that for everything there is a season and seasons for environmental concern, rarely seem to last more than a year or two. And then the pull of greed and “must keep the economy bubbling along” comes back stronger than ever. And so it came to pass.
What happened next two months later, Hawke was gone. Paul Keating successfully challenged: he was not a fan of environmental issues. And especially the so-called amorphous greenhouse issue. And it’s fun when you read his memoirs or biographies, it just doesn’t crop up. It’s just staggeringly absent.
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.
