Forty seven years ago, on this day, July 11st, 1997, the Little Green Book (review here) got a shout out.
Birmingham Post 1979 07 20 p04 Little Green Book
“One of its great virtues is that it is only just over five inches by four and, though it is packed with information, it slips easily into the pocket or hand-bag.
It is sub-titled “An owner’s manual to the planet” and it has been produced by the editors of Vole magazine for The Green Alliance, formed last year by a group of environmentalists with the aim of ensuring “that the political priorities of the UK are determined with an ecological perspective.”
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was xxxppm. As of 2026, when this post was published, it is 430ppm. This matters because the more carbon dioxide in the air, the more heat gets trapped. The more heat, the more extreme weather events. You can make it more complicated than that if you want, but really, it’s not. Fwiw, I have a tattoo of the Keeling Curve on my left forearm.
The broader context was that there had been various groups and publications forming in the late 1960s early 1970s (The Ecologist, Our Environment, Friends of the Earth etc etc).
Vole was kinda interesting, and Ted Hughes, the poet, was heavily involved. You can see copies in the British Library.
What I think we can learn from this – “environmentalism’ has been with us for fifty years. It has not been able to do terribly much to slow down the race to extinction, either of other animals or of the hairless murder apes.
What happened next – Vole folded quite soon after this (1980?)
xxx
You can see the chronological list of All Our Yesterdays “on this day” posts here.
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.
If you want to get involved, let me know.
If you want to invite me on your podcast, that would boost my ego and probably improve the currently pitiful hit-rate on this site (the two are not-unrelated).
On 17th July 2022 local activist and general practitioner, Dr David McKelvey joined other healthcare professionals to carefully and symbolically crack panes of glass at JP Morgan in London. The action was shortly before the hottest day ever record in the UK; JP Morgan is the largest funder of fossil fuels in the world. The group had signs which read “In medical climate emergency break glass.”
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 419ppm. As of 2026, when this post was published, it is 430ppm. This matters because the more carbon dioxide in the air, the more heat gets trapped. The more heat, the more extreme weather events. You can make it more complicated than that if you want, but really, it’s not. Fwiw, I have a tattoo of the Keeling Curve on my left forearm.
The broader context was that there have been urgent warnings, broadly publicised, about climate change caused by carbon dioxide build-up, since 1988. Let that sink in. People have been born, educated, had children and those children have had children in that time.
The specific context was XR had turned up in 2018 and was going to save the world. By late 2019 it was pretty obvious that they were not, in fact, going to save the world. The pandemic saved their blushes, but reality does continue…
What I think we can learn from this – we are stuck in the emotacycle, and we “memory wand” ourselves all the time.
What happened next
The jury would not convict.
17 Feb 26 Share:
Six members of Health for XR unanimously acquitted of criminal damage by a jury, despite legal defences being withdrawn
Six medical professionals (doctors and nurses), all members of Health for XR, have been unanimously acquitted of criminal damage, having been charged following a protest in 2022. Health for XR is aligned with Extinction Rebellion, “a socio-political movement which utilises nonviolent resistance to avert climate breakdown, halt biodiversity loss and minimise the risk of human extinction and ecological collapse”.
In July 2022, the six medical professionals cracked windows at the European Headquarters of JP Morgan in Canary Wharf, the world’s largest financier of fossil fuels, as an intervention to try to save lives in the face of an unprecedented heatwave and the climate and ecological emergency.
All six were charged with criminal damage and first tried at Snaresbrook Crown Court in 2024. The jury, however, were unable to reach a verdict, despite all available legal defences having been withdrawn prior to trial.
The retrial commenced on 4th February 2026 and, following a nine-day trial, the jury unanimously acquitted all six defendants under four hours on 16th February 2026.
This is of course entirely unrelated to the government wanting to restrict jury trials.
On this topic, you might like these other posts on All Our Yesterdays
Xx
References
xx
You can see the chronological list of All Our Yesterdays “on this day” posts here.
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.
If you want to get involved, let me know.
If you want to invite me on your podcast, that would boost my ego and probably improve the currently pitiful hit-rate on this site (the two are not-unrelated).
Fifty five years ago, on this day, July 4th, 1971, a new eco-group gets some publicity in the Sydney Morning Herald.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 325ppm. As of 2026, when this post was published, it is 430ppm. This matters because the more carbon dioxide in the air, the more heat gets trapped. The more heat, the more extreme weather events. You can make it more complicated than that if you want, but really, it’s not. Fwiw, I have a tattoo of the Keeling Curve on my left forearm.
The broader context was that from late 1969 Australia (as part of a global trend) experienced increased alarm about environmental problems. Various factors, including the publication of the Torrey Canyon, Population Bomb, the Earthrise photo, the Santa Barbara oil spill and action in the US. New groups had been forming through the 1960s (e.g. the Australian Conservation Society), mostly arranged around the idea of politely lobbying.
The specific context was that there were various local struggles going on in Sydney and New South Wales (Clutha etc) and it was pretty clear that the government of Robin Askew was in no mood to pretend to be at all green. (It was famously corrupt, even by NSW standards).
What I think we can learn from this
People could see the ordinary ways weren’t gonna cut it.
What happened next
Ecology Action lasted about ten years. I looked through its newsletters at the National Library of Australia, back in the day. Virtually nothing (as you’d expect) on carbon dioxide build-up.
On this topic, you might like these other posts on All Our Yesterdays
Xx
References
Jim Hagan (1972) Clutha: The politics of pollution, Politics, 7:2, 136-148, DOI:
10.1080/00323267208401287
You can see the chronological list of All Our Yesterdays “on this day” posts here.
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.
If you want to get involved, let me know.
If you want to invite me on your podcast, that would boost my ego and probably improve the currently pitiful hit-rate on this site (the two are not-unrelated).
Its advice mostly focussed on ‘holding good public meetings’. There is SO MUCH more to ‘growing a movement’ than this, but bad public meetings (and most of them are, in my extensive experience) is one way activists try to hit the accelerator with their whole body-weight unwittingly mashing down on the break. It’s heart-braking.
So, this below is a mix of questions, provocations and the customary unsolicited advice for anyone thinking about holding a meeting once this wretched heatwave ends and before the next one starts (and remember, this is one of the coolest summers of the rest of your life)
First question
Why are you holding this meeting?
Usually the answer is “to give people the facts” (and to be the person giving the people the facts)
That is not good enough – people can get the facts from the internet, newspapers etc. If you want people to have the facts, a decent video would do better. Are you sure you aren’t holding this meeting to pump some prestige/’momentum’ back into a grassroots group/NGO offshoot that had a sheen a year ago but is now looking a bit tired? Are you sure you’re not suffering from a little bit of Relevance Deprivation Syndrome? You wouldn’t be human if you didn’t, and suffering RDS doesn’t make you a bad/worthless person, but it DOES make you susceptible to perpetrating one of the many fatal errors in social movement organising/agitating.
Second question What would success look like for this meeting?
The usual answer is ‘lots of people come’ and ‘lots of people feel like/tell me they learned a lot.’
Okay, but then, so what? People are more informed (coulda been done more efficiently online, btw). How does a few more people knowing a few more facts (most of which they will forget quite quickly) translate into pressure for change at a local/national/international level? How?
Did those people form any new links with other people, or was all the time and all the attention devoted to the Big People at the Front Of the Room? Was the Q and A dominated by the usual suspects? Did people slump out, shoulders slinked before the close of the meeting, which seemed to have no clear end in sight? Did they? I bet they did, but you chose not to see it, or to explain it away, to blame the victim of your own malpractice for failing to design and execute a meeting well.
Who did you invite to speak at your meeting?
I bet it’s a natural scientist and some politician/celebrity.
Of course, you need a “name” to get people in the door. I understand that. People are more likely to come if they know that the Executive Member for the Environment, some scientist from the nearest university, some person off the telly is going to be there.
But look, all these people come with baggage, with problems
The Executive Member for the Environment will probably be some brittle egomaniac who throws out half an hour of verbiage to try to disguise the fact that her local authority is far more interested in building skyscrapers and raking in cash from the airport than in doing anything meaningful about climate change. They will bludgeon the audience with factoids and boasts about their Strategies and Implementation Protocols, until everyone has lost the will to live. If anyone points out their long record of failure they will, as per media training come out with “well, I’m focussed on the future and what we do next, not on the past.” Rinse and repeat.
Your scientist
May not be a very good public speaker at all. This will be bad.
Or they may be a very good public speaker but without a strict (agreed beforehand and then gently enforced) time limit, will go on and on and on.
They may get involved in long detailed discussions about obscure/confusing (to Joe and Jane Public)
The scientist won’t necessarily know much about what is(n’t) being done locally, and in any case will fear tarnishing their reputation for high-minded neutrality by having an opinion about a local issue (it’s fine to bash the usual suspects). [The whole question of why we continue to fetishise natural scientists about what is a social problem is for another day].
All three, unless kept to time, will talk too long, too vaguely.
This will eat into time for the Q and A.
The Q and A will almost certainly be dominated by a few people (usually over-educated middle class white men, young, middle-aged, and old). They will engage in point-scoring or ‘look at me for asking an obscure question’ or give speeches thinly disguised as questions (some may be butt-hurt that they were not invited to be a panellist).
The energy will be leaking from the room by now, and the chair will either be sad about it or ignore it and plough on. The meeting will dribble to an inconclusive conclusion, with those people not reliant on public transport and who don’t have to get home to the baby-sitter or get up early in the morning sticking around and regurgitating their talking points.
Other people, who came and were talked at, who hoped to meet people and start thinking about DOING things, will go away, thinking the problem is them, and that they simply aren’t dedicated enough to be involved.
A few months later, another meeting, same format, same usual suspects, new ego-fodder. Rinse and repeat repeat repeat.
So, when you hold your meeting, I BEG you, have answers to the following questions.
Have you looked at this meeting through the eyes of someone who is coming who doesn’t know anyone else? How will you make them feel welcome, how will you make it easier for them to make loose connections, chatting to people who are strangers?
What is the meeting FOR? Are you hoping to start/revive a group that will take action? Have you thought about what skills are needed? Have you got a well-written information sheet (2 sides of A4 at absolute most) to give out to everyone
Have you agreed with the speakers how long they will speak for and about what, making clear that you WILL keep them to time?
Have you got a plan for how make sure that the Q&A is not the usual sausage-fest?
Have you got a way to finish the meeting ON TIME, with an up-beat feel
Most of all. MOST OF ALL. Have you got a way for QUICKLY communicating the content and the outcome of the meeting to all those people who would be interested in what you are doing but couldn’t come because of finances, work commitments, child-care, illness, agoraphobia etc etc? If there isn’t a blog up on your website (you do have a website, don’t you? I mean, you’re not a captive of Meta, are you?) within a couple of days of the meeting, then, guess what champion, you’ve failed.
It’s too hot, this minute, to do anything. It’s too hot to march, it’s too hot to rally, it’s too hot to launch any dense, detailed footnoted report urging government (local, national, global) to Take Action Now. (It’s too hot to work on your tan as well).
So, what is to be done? Plant some (mental) seeds.
Explain to people (especially easy if you have a Keeling Curve tattooed on your forearm, just sayin’) that this heat is caused by the build-up of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere over the last couple of centuries. Explain to people that scientists and activists have been warning about this for forty years (longer, in fact, but no need to complicate the narrative right now).
Explain that all the talk of renewables this, Strategic Plan that, have not, in fact, slowed the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
And, most of all, explain to them that this weather we are having is only in the most trivial sense the “new normal” – explain that it is not going to stay like this, it is going to get warmer – that looking back from 10 years into the future this will be regarded as not a particularly unusual year.
And, beyond explaining, if you’re not checking in on your neighbours and family who are vulnerable to heat (the old, the young, the poor, the ill, the asthmatic etc), then why should you expect anyone to listen to you about anything?
This heatwave will end. There will be others, later this summer (it is, after all, only June), and next year. And the year after.
So what does responsible activism on climate change mean? Most of all, it’s about, wait for it… holding good meetings.
The point is this. We need to understand that governments (made up of elected politicians and employed officials) have had forty years of warning, forty years to act, on climate, and they have been either unwilling or unable, for the most part. They will make declarations, sign pledges and then continue with business as usual, blameshifting onto another layer of government (“Well, we can’t do anything without money from central government” “Well, most of these actions have to be taken locally.” Rinse and repeat.
Similarly, there are constant false dawns of ‘progressive’ business, groups formed with great fanfare while CEOs get around the world to give motherhood-and-apple pie powerpoint presentations about ‘the sustainability agenda’ and “innovations which will help meet the challenge (once research and development funding from the taxpayer arrives).”
Meanwhile, every year we burn more coal, oil and gas to heat houses, fly planes, etc. Yes, electric vehicles are going gang-busters, but the total amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere does not come down, it keeps going up.
So, if government and the corporate sector can’t act/won’t act, then, what? Individual action? Too difficult, not going to make a difference. Amounts to re-arranging deckchairs on the Titanic while feeling good about yourself.
But what if – stay with me here, I know it sounds crazy – people got together in groups (unions, parties, churches, mosques, pressure groups, professional bodies) and those groups came up with enough in common (not frying the planet would be a start), then they might be able to insist, effectively, that governments and corporates stop making things worse – because that is what we’ve been doing these last forty years. In 1988, when the ‘carbon dioxide’ issue finally broke through, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 351ppm. We’ve now made that blanket much much thicker – it’s about 430ppm and rising more quickly with every (well, most) passing year.
This would be what the academics like to call ‘civil society’ getting up on its hind legs.
The initiator for this, or one of them, would likely be effective ‘grass roots’ groups (based around shared interest, shared beliefs, shared demographics, shared location).
The problem with this pretty picture is that most groups are led by people with confidence and status who – almost always, from my experience – absolutely lack the relevant abilities to hold a meeting that is engaging, inspiring and will involve more than the usual suspects staying involved. I mean, most meetings are excruciating – boring, alienating, disempowering. As per one L. Cohen “they sentenced me to twenty years of boredom, for trying to change the system from within.”
Alongside that, you have charismatic individuals with Old Testament prophet vibes who lead a bunch of desperate people (and anyone who can read a Keeling Curve and has the courage to understand its implications is desperate) into emotionally-charged and (in the moment) satisfying actions which lead to long court cases and not much else.
Somehow we need to create norms for these “social movement organisations” so that they avoid the boredom and demotivation of the former, and ALSO avoid the sugar-rush/sugar-crash of the latter.
In the former case the air leaks out like a punctured tire – people simply don’t come back for a second or third meeting. In the latter case they go up like a rocket and come tumbling down like a stick.
I think I have developed some (okay, quite a lot of) words to help explain that, and – more importantly – some techniques for how to avoid it. BUT it isn’t something that can be done in isolation. It requires a ‘critical mass’ of different groups all doing it at the same time, to kind of ‘create their own weather’.
I no longer believe it will happen, but if there are other people who want to know about it, then I’ll write about it.
Seventeen years ago, on this day, June 23rd, 2009.
2009: Mountaintop Removal Mining Protest, Raleigh County, WV
A small, but vehement group staged a protest at the Goals Coal plant owned by Massey Energy against a type of mining called mountaintop removal. At least 30 demonstrators, including actress Darryl Hannah and James Hansen, then the head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, were arrested for trespassing and other misdemeanor offenses like impeding traffic.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 387ppm. As of 2026, when this post was published, it is 430ppm. This matters because the more carbon dioxide in the air, the more heat gets trapped. The more heat, the more extreme weather events. You can make it more complicated than that if you want, but really, it’s not. Fwiw, I have a tattoo of the Keeling Curve on my left forearm.
The broader context for this was that in order to get at coal under mountains in the cheapest way, just remove the top of the mountain. Very clever.
The specific context was that James Hansen and others were helping to try to defeat these proposals. This was shortly into the beginning of the Obama administration, and Obama was pushing cap and trade ahead of the Copenhagen conference,
What I think we can learn is this: we have been trying to stop the rest of our species being insanely fucking stupid, and we have largely failed because stupidity and greed and fear and hate are easily accessed emotions. We are easily riled up apes.
What happened next: Don’t know. Google didn’t tell me. Presumably the bad guys won…
On this topic, you might like these other posts on All Our Yesterdays
References
You can see the chronological list of All Our Yesterdays “on this day” posts here.
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.
If you want to get involved, let me know.
If you want to invite me on your podcast, that would boost my ego and probably improve the currently pitiful hit-rate on this site (the two are not-unrelated).
The Wilderness Society, Australian Conservation Foundation & Greenpeace 1999, 82 Reasons Why the New Environment Legislation is Bad for the Environment, joint media release by the Wilderness Society, Australian Conservation Foundation and Greenpeace, 20 June, 1999.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 368ppm. As of 2026, when this post was published, it is 430ppm. This matters because the more carbon dioxide in the air, the more heat gets trapped. The more heat, the more extreme weather events. You can make it more complicated than that if you want, but really, it’s not. Fwiw, I have a tattoo of the Keeling Curve on my left forearm.
The broader context for this was that between 1988 and sort of 1991 there had been a huge amount of media attention on climate change as an issue. Greenpeace, The Wilderness Society and Australian Conservation Foundation, as the three biggest environment groups had been frenemies, had cooperated, collaborated and competed over various issues, all of course, hoping to get the most prestige, membership dues, etc.
That’s normal, but occasionally they would come together to try and amplify their voices. And you see this now with this event in 1999, presumably around the Howard government’s Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EBPC) Bill.
The specific context was that the Howard Government is trying to minimise any environmental commitments.
What I think we can learn is this: is that environment groups are like anything anyone else, they’ll compete and collaborate.
What happened next: Howard continued to be an absolute twunt. If only he’d been booted out in 2001 there wouldn’t have been quite as much damage done to the Australian policy. But here we are. Australia is fucked.
On this topic, you might like these other posts on All Our Yesterdays
References
You can see the chronological list of All Our Yesterdays “on this day” posts here.
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.
If you want to get involved, let me know.
If you want to invite me on your podcast, that would boost my ego and probably improve the currently pitiful hit-rate on this site (the two are not-unrelated).
Of course, that doesn’t narrow down the things I could write about (I mean, everything, other than that I exist: merci, Rene!).
Specifically, then. A couple of days ago one of those ‘things could be much much better than they are’ reports got released. And the Guardian, bless its centrist socks, ran an op-ed by the authors.
I did a keyword search for ‘movements’ on the latter, which came up blank. So then I wrote a two-part thread on BSky.
It ran thus-
Another day, another worthless (worse than useless?) ‘The cat should wear a bell’report about how everything can be wonderful.
No mention of social movements.
Apparently the state and corporates will do all this wonderful stuff un-bidden. Because some academics wrote a report.
1/2
And part two
I can’t take this shit seriously, and I would encourage other people to do likewise.
I search “hey, we can save the world, here’s how” articles for the word ‘movements’. No mentions gets a hard pass from me.
The first post got 5 reposts, on quote post, 16 likes and a save.
The second one got some comments, a repost and 4 likes.
It is to these comments that I now turn.
One person on Bluesky typed
How to make it happen is the next step not a replacement step.
There were several things I could have said. I chose to keep it relatively neutral –
In my experience these reports never have an “implementation” sequel. Happy to be proven wrong…
To which came
*We* need to be the implementation sequel.
A map isn’t worthless just because it comes without a car.
To which I replied
A map tells you the terrain. A castle in the air doesn’t.
I suspect we agree on a lot, and could/can fruitfully disagree.
This platform isn’t the format, imo. So I will write A (sic) post and you can respond if you like.
Which brings you up to speed, if you’re still here.
Life is short and there are moorhens to say hello to (it’s been far too long), so I will frame this around a series of questions. (These may be leading questions, they may not be the right questions, and I am happy to be told they are not, and to be told what ARE the right questions.)
Did the report (which you can read here) have anything new about new strategies for a world where hope is dying, where our situational awareness is being destroyed not merely by accelerating corporate propaganda and government secrecy but also AI slop?
Nope. I am sorry, but having only one reference to social movements, and quite a glib one in the introduction, is just not on.
(“civil society” appears not at all. Apparently this is all going to be done by technocrats in bureaucracies. Yeah. Sure.)
Are vague invocations of “we” “being the implementation” helpful?
No. If anything, that sort of statement is more likely to have us staying within our smugospheres, doing things that make us feel good/give us status (or continue to deprive us of status perhaps?) and are easy because we’ve been doing them for ages, independently of their actual or likely success.
Why might someone push back against my performative world-weariness?
Nobody likes some smug performative world-weary asshole who pisses on everybody’s chips and apparently has no solutions of his own. (Actually, I have plenty, at a microlevel, which is what is required to make the meso and macro happen. But I totally understand how somebody might assume I don’t, either because they don’t know my stuff, aren’t interested in finding out or wouldn’t find it convenient to find out because then I would be less easily chided/dismissed).
I keep meaning to put all this shit together in one place, but never do. Anyhoos, one the social movements, incentive structures and our inevitable doom, see here.
Is this report much of a map of the existing terrain?
No.
You haven’t read the whole thing, how can you be sure?
I brown M&Med it.
Eh?
The Van Halen test. I asked some specific questions via my old friend Ctrl F.
Will you find any of these words? (Spoiler: no, so, not much of a map, imo)
Advertising
Artificial intelligence
Buen vivir
Permaculture
Positional goods
Predatory delay
Propaganda
Repression
Veganism
Vegetarianism
Only two mentions of capitalism, and one of those is a reference.
“More generally, the development of Western industrial capitalism since the 18th century is closely linked to a system based on the international division of labour, the mobilization of natural and human resources at the world level, and the European powers’ military and colonial domination over the rest of the planet.” (p.115)
and
Nogues-Marco, P. (2021). “Measuring colonial extraction: The East India Company’s rule and the drain of wealth (1757–1858)”. In: Capitalism: A Journal of History and Economics 2.1, pp. 154–195.
Does this report, coming in at 136 pages, have anything other than another international body that will be instantly captured/de-fanged to suggest?
No. I don’t think it does (but I have yet to read all 136 pages)
Do these authors give any indication at all of knowing what a car is?
Not to me they don’t.
Are our metaphors all outa whack?
Why yes, yes they are.
What, ultimately, is the responsibility of intellectuals?
“There’s a huge cultural, intellectual, political battle that is going on. And we all have a role to play,” said Thomas Piketty, a co-director of the WIL and a professor at the Paris School of Economics.
Well, sure. But for me, you can’t go past Noam Chomsky – it is the responsibility of intellectuals to expose lies and tell the truth.
And the truth I keep coming back to is that ”we” (note the quote marks) are losing, and have been losing quite badly since the 70s (not that before then was exactly great).
And if intellectuals are going to spend the bulk off their time building these probably necessary “visions” but NOT offer a fair assessment of how “we” have been failing on these questions for well over fifty years, then I do not think they are either exposing lies (sweet little lies we have been telling ourselves) or telling the truth.
James Baldwin said it best – “not everything that can be faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”
The report doesn’t help us face our failures since (before) the 1972 Stockholm conference, at a state, corporate, civil society or social movements level.
This is by technocrats, for technocrats, and will sink without trace. Meanwhile, the emissions will climb, the impacts will hit ever harder.
We are near the beginning of the Fafocene. Buckle up, mofos.
That report, btw –
Chancel, L., Mohren, C., Moshrif, R., Odersky, M., Piketty, T., Somanchi, A., et al. (2026), The Global Justice Report: A Plan for Equality & Prosperity Within Planetary Boundaries, World Inequality Lab (gjp.wid.world).
Nineteen years ago, on this day, June 5th, 2006, 70 brave people put their bodies on the line…
June 5, 2006, and Nov. 3, 2007: Rising Tide boat blockades of Newcastle port
On June 5, 2006, in a Rising Tide Australia action, 70 people used small boats to blockade the port of Newcastle, Australia, which exports 80 million tons of coal each year. The protest aimed to call attention to a planned expansion that would allow the port to export twice that amount.[1] The action was repeated by 100 people on Nov. 3, 2007: at this second action, participants attempted to block ships from entering the port for four hours, but police boats managed to escort three ships into the port. At one point, a police jetski rammed one woman’s kayak, resulting in her hospitalization.[2][3]
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 382ppm. As of 2026 it is 430ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The broader context was that all the petitions, marches and begging of politicians had not worked. Emissions climbed, fossil intensive infrastructure projects kept getting approved (and still get approved).
The specific context was that the Howard government (like the Keating and Hawke governments before it) had mouthed occasional platitudes about “the environment” but were hell-bent on saying yes to whatever fossil extraction and export was proposed.
What I think we can learn from this is that brave people have had the foresight and clarity – it hasn’t been enough. What was needed was broad-based movements. Oh well…
What happened next was that the exports and burning went on, the emissions and concentrations went up and up. The mainstream politicians have mostly given up pretending to give a shit.
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.
May 29 2025 case filed against Exxon etc by daughter of woman who died of hyperthermia in 2021 heat dome – https://climatecasechart.com/wp-content/uploads/case-documents/2025/20250529_docket-25-2-15986-8-SEA_complaint.pdf
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 427ppm. As of 2026 it is 430ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The broader context was that from the late 70s, Exxon was well aware of the carbon dioxide threat, and had even helped oceanographers take samples of CO2 on their oil tankers, and had made many predictions and presentations for the C suite. But Exxon decided in the mid 1980s that it would change its stance on the reality of carbon dioxide build up, and it became one of the chief proponents and funders of outfits like the Global Climate Coalition, established in 1989 to resist both domestic US and international climate policy. And Exxon also funded various denialist groups, so much so that in 2006 the UK Royal Society had published an open letter asking them to knock it off.
Exxon was also instrumental in the Dubya Bush White House 2001 to 2008 especially with their apparatchik in the CEQ writing climate policy and spreading denial.
The specific context was that we’re now getting the long predicted weather anomalies, disasters sometimes happening much sooner than the scientists had thought, because, well, that’s nonlinear patterns for you. And what do you do when you’ve been hit by one of these well, you sue, if you can. You use court to try and do what the politics hasn’t been able to do.
What I think we can learn from this is that most court cases fail, but that doesn’t mean you don’t use it as one of your venues for seeking justice, I guess.
A trial court in Washington State denied fossil fuel industry defendants’ motion to stay proceedings pending the outcome of the U.S. Supreme Court’s review of Suncor Energy (U.S.A.) Inc. v. County Commissioners of Boulder County. The Washington trial court found that the outcome of the Boulder proceedings was “far from certain,” including whether the Court would issue a substantive ruling and whether the Court would resolve the issues in this case. The court also found that a potentially 14-month stay could prejudice the plaintiff’s ability to conduct discovery, that the public interest weighed against the stay, and that potential prejudice to the defendants was mitigated by the fact that some documents had already been preserved and some discovery had already been conducted in other similar cases.
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.
