Twenty years ago, on this day, August 4th, 2004,
THE greatest risk facing farmers is climate change and global warming, National Farmers Federation president Peter Corish has warned.
Calling for a national blueprint on the long-term problems facing the bush, Mr Corish said the NFF had changed its position in the past 12 months and was now convinced of the threat of global warming.
“Twelve or 18 months ago, we would have said very strongly the jury is still out on climate change because we believed there had been a lack of research into assessment of how real climate change is and how far it is likely to go,” he told the National Press Club in Canberra yesterday.
Karvelas, P. 2004. Farmers chief warns on climate. The Australian, 5 August, p.5.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 378ppm. As of 2024 it is 424ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that there was a drought going on. Australian farmers are always worrying about the weather, because the weather in the land is quite marginal a lot of the time. And of course, at this point, climate change had been an issue of public debate for 15 years. The broader context was that Australian Prime Minister John Howard was doing everything in his power to avoid taking any substantive action on climate change, either domestically or internationally. And he was banging on about coal. The other context is that the National Farmers Association or whatever it’s called, had basically been captured and silenced. And you can read about it in Guy Pearse’s wonderful PhD thesis that was published two years later 2006 where he talks about the different sectoral trade associations, whether it’s agriculture, insurance, banking, tourism, whatever, as the missing inactions.
What happened next. The Millennium Drought broke in 2008/9. The farmers are still screwed by climate change because one-off events are temporary anomalies, like droughts, pulse disturbances in the system. The thing you really have to watch for are the press disturbances, like the CO2 build-up…
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:
August 4, 1988 – Hawke Cabinet asks for “what can we do?” report on climate.