Forty-six years ago, on this day, November 21st, 1978, people in Sydney got a news broadcast about Trouble Ahead…
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 335ppm. As of 2024 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the CSIRO had started to make serious noises about CO2. There’d been a documentary called A Change of Climate in 1976. There’d been, more importantly for these purposes, a conference being held on Phillip Island in Victoria. That was CSIRO Australian Academy of Science and someone else. And so it was a nice little hook for the journo, alongside some modelling work released.
What we learned is that by 1978, the carbon dioxide issue was being explained to people in Sydney. Whether they were paying much attention or not, is another question.
What happened next? CO2 kept appearing in the newspapers with perhaps a little bit more frequency. In 1980 the Canberra Times covered the conference hosted by the Australian Academy of Science. In 1983, the Australian covered the EPA’s report. But it wasn’t really till 1986/87/88 (especially ‘88) that the issue started getting serious traction. Meanwhile, the emissions kept climbing.
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 six years ago, on this day, November 19th, 1998, the Democrats were unhappy that coal baron Ralph Hillman is now environment ambassador.
CANBERRA, Nov 19, AAP – The Australian Democrats today damned the appointment of economist and trade expert Ralph Hillman as Australia’s new ambassador for the environment.
Democrats environment spokeswoman Lyn Alison said the announcement that Mr Hillman would replace Meg McDonald as ambassador this month was a cynical decision.
“Mr Hillman has no obvious qualifications to be an advocate for the environment, he is more likely to work against the interests of the environmental movement,” Senator Alison said in a statement.
“The key credential Mr Hillman brings to the position is his hard-headed economic rationalism and experience in foreign affairs. This makes him just the ticket for a government that doesn’t take the environment seriously.”
But the Australian Conservation Foundation said it would work with Mr Hillman.
“We believe it is a very important job,” ACF campaigns director Michael Krockenberger told AAP.
“It is especially so as Australia faces a lot of international pressure on the environment on issues like climate change and looking after world heritage areas threatened by issues such as uranium mining in Kakadu National Park and oil shale mining at the Great Barrier Reef,” he said.
Anon, 1998. FED – Democrats damn appointment of environment ambassador. Australian Associated Press, November 19
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 367ppm. As of 2024 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that Australian Prime Minister John Howard could afford to relax a bit, having won a famous victory at Kyoto, carving out a tremendously generous deal. And now he could display his sense of humour. The post of ambassador for the environment was created under Bob Hawke in 1989 {link]. And Howard was now appointing the head of the Australian Coal Association as the ambassador for the environment. Oh how he must have chuckled.
What we learn is that John Howard had a sense of humour when he was “owning the libs.” Any post can be emptied of its meaning, when a new government comes along and can’t be bothered spending political capital abolishing it, just render it utterly meaningless by appointing someone who is clearly not going to do the job the way it was meant.
What happened next. And so it came to pass.
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 years ago, on this day, November 17th, 1994,
“The fly in the ointment is the increasing insistence of our scientists that it can’t go on much longer. Just the latest unwelcome reminder of this came last week at a seminar on “Consumption and the Environment”, organised by the Australian National University’s Centre for Continuing Education on behalf of the Department of Environment, Sport and Territories.”
Gittins, R. 1994. When more is no longer sustainable. Sydney Morning Herald, 23 November, p.21.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 359ppm. As of 2024 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that by now we’ve had all of this nonsense about green consumerism and the “Green Consumer Guide” and all the rest of it. But populations are growing, wants and “needs” are growing. Advertising was continuing at a very great pace. And therefore, obviously comes the question of when does consumption en masse start to be unsustainable? And if you’ve heard of a guy called William Jevons, you will know that efficiency is not the be all and end all. And so it’s unsurprising, albeit depressing, that people were having these conversations all those years ago.
For the avoidance of doubt: the best consumption for most of us is less consumption. Obviously, when I say most of us, I mean most of us wealthy people in Europe. There are other places in the world where they desperately need to consume more, more health care, more protein, and more contraceptives, etc. That won’t happen. We are going to be the bacteria that eats everything in the petri dish. But that metaphor hides culpability.
What we learn: We knew. We did not act. We are doomed.
What happened next? We kept hyper-consuming.
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 years ago, on this day, November 15th, 2004, New South Wales Premier Bob Carr responded to a CSIRO report with some astute observations about what was coming… (back when the ABC still had a backbone and a Lateline).
Australian Broadcasting Corporation TV PROGRAM TRANSCRIPT
Broadcast: 15/11/2004
TONY JONES: And for anyone who tuned in a bit late, we should point out Mike Bailey’s potential weather outlook was for November 15 in the year 2030.
Well, to discuss the issues raised in that report we spoke to the NSW Premier, Bob Carr, earlier today.
Bob Carr, thanks for joining us.
Clive Hamilton from the Australian Institute said today that no other developed country will be as severely affected by global warming as Australia.
Do you agree with him?
BOB CARR, NSW PREMIER: I do. I think of all nations, Bangladesh, or some of the small island states would only be worse affected but we stand, for example, to have even more erratic rainfall.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 378ppm. As of November 2024 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the Millennium Drought was ongoing. The Liberal government of John Howard Government was showing itself to be utterly hostile to any action on climate change. And in fact, was at this point, heavily boosting coal and natural gas exports and for domestic use. Bob Carr was still premier of New South Wales and had done what he could to get carbon offsetting and carbon trading going in his own state, and also to get the other states on board for a bottom up emissions trading scheme.
What we learn is that these issues were being discussed and debated by top people, in the right places 20 years ago, or longer.
What happened next? Bob Carr stopped being premier at about that time shortly after, and later became Julia Gillard’s Foreign Affairs Minister. The emissions kept climbing of course, as did the atmospheric concentrations.
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 US and China governments make joint announcement on emission reductions: The two nations announce bilateral cooperation to adopt a binding protocol at the Paris COP meeting in 2015. US will aim cut emissions by 26-28% below 2005 levels by 2025 and China pledged to peak emissions around 2030.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 399ppm. As of 2024 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that Tony Abbott as Australian Prime Minister and host of a G20 meeting in Brisbane had very publicly kept climate change off the agenda literally. So what Obama and Xi did – this is back when Xi wasn’t yet nuts – was making a bilateral deal as a way of pointing out to Abbott, who was the boss/
What we learn was that it’s fun to make fun of Tony Abbott.
What happened next, well it turned out that US/China deal was consequential in terms of getting things moving a bit for investors and governments and so forth. It took a hit when Trump pulled the US out of the Paris Agreement. Biden has been mostly mending fences on this stuff, doing statecraft, which is what you’d expect of a president. But yeah, sometimes stuff that initially seems like a gimmick turns out to be really important.
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-nine years ago, on this day, November 13th, 1995,
Asked yesterday [13 November] for an update on Australia’s domestic performance, Dr Hamilton told the Herald that he still could not identify any savings. “I’d like to be able to,” he said.
Dr Hamilton said a major reason for the Government’s failure was that the advice from the bureaucracy was “very skewed” and came from sections that shared a world view with the coal, oil and gas industry.
Gilchrist, G. 1995. Greenhouse Gas Policy Has Failed. Sydney Morning Herald, 14 November, p.4.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 361ppm. As of 2024 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that there had been a battle over whether to have a carbon tax. The carbon tax had been defeated in February and the consolation prize, the booby prize, was the Greenhouse Challenge, entirely voluntary, self-reporting… all that nonsense, no punishment for failing to hit targets. You know the drill. And this made it entirely obvious that the Toronto target for reducing emissions by 20% by 2005 was no longer even worth pretending about.
What we learned is that unless you can keep the pressure on the politicians, they will pretend they never made those promises. And then, when it’s no longer possible to meet those promises, they’ll say, “Well, we must be pragmatic.” You know the rest. “I’m not here to pick over yesterday’s failings. I’m not stuck in the past. I’m looking to the future.” They are taught this in “Being Corrupt Spineless Dickheads 101.”
What happened next, the Greenhouse Challenge kept being used to soothe enough of the people who needed soothing. Not all of them by any means but enough. It was replaced by a Greenhouse Challenge Plus, which must be hard to keep a straight face to. And then, alongside this, emissions trading schemes were proposed and defeated. And the emissions kept rising.
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.
In what follows, I explain what’s a COP – hopefully telling you some things you don’t already know, offer a history of South Australian awareness of climate change, and then make some brief idle speculations on how Adelaide’s bid might fair – could it do a Bradbury?
Oh no, it’s the COPs!
COPs are the “Conferences of the Parties.” While there are plenty of parties at COPs, in this case the “parties” refers to the countries (almost the whole world) which have signed up to the UNFCCC;, which was one of the international treaties signed at the pivotal “Earth Summit” in 1992, held in Rio de Janeiro.
The first COP was in Berlin in March-April 1995 (a young Angela Merkel was a key player). There have been 28 since, and COP29 is starting today, in Azerbaijan
The basic problem is that the original treaty never specified targets and timetables for emissions reductions by rich countries. The French and most European countries were keen, but Uncle Sam said “nope. Do that and we won’t come.”. That has meant a series of efforts to get emissions cuts agreed – Kyoto 1997 (agreed, but USA and Australia pulled out), Copenhagen 2009 (ended in tears and little else) and Paris in 2015 (warm words, no teeth). In the meantime, the burning of oil, coal and gas has soared. This means that the amount of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has gone way up (and is increasing faster and faster, as the things that take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere give up the ghost – or as the scientists call it – ‘sink failure’).
Of course, by the time Adelaide finds out if its bid is successful, the whole COP circus might be grinding to a halt, if Donald Trump repeats what he did last time round, and withdraws from negotiations.
Why Adelaide?
Anthony Albanese announced that Australia would bid to co-host COP31 with South Pacific Island nations in November 2022 (giving up on the idea of hosting it in 2024)]. It isn’t automatically capital cities that host the COP. For example when the UK hosted in 2021 Glasgow got the gig in any case. Let’s start with the obvious reason why Adelaide might not succeed; it’s not on the Pacific Coast. However, unlike Sydney and Brisbane which are, Adelaide is not the capital of a state with an enormous coal export industry that has enraged the South Pacific Island states – “awks” as the kids used to say.
A history lesson
South Australians have always known that the weather matters, and is unpredictable. Go north of the Goyder line and you’ll see the abandoned buildings of those who thought they could buck the system. Over the last 55 years though, awareness has grown of man-made problems.
In March 1970 a newly-elected Labor politician, Richard Gun, referred to carbon dioxide build up in his maiden speech (see this article on the Guardian website by Royce Kurmelovs).
In July 1970 as alarm at “ecology” (as it was then called) reached an early peak, a group of business leaders at an Adelaide luncheon were told the following
“And so the sprawling city, the maimed country, and even the air we breathe and the sea that gives us life, combine into what can only be described as a coming nightmare unless we as a people are prepared to become violently Australia-conscious and to replan, decentralise, preserve, prohibit and police. We won’t correct the situation unless first as individuals and secondly as a nation we are prepared to think, to take care and to spend money.”
But this was not a protestor who’d stormed the stage. It was in fact Bede Callaghan, managing director of the Commonwealth Banking Corporation
Already in February of that year the Liberal government of Steele Hall created a committee (of course!) on the environment. It held hearings and in May 1972 produced the “Jordan report,” which included a mention of C02, though largely a dismissive one.
And yes, it included a section – albeit understandably equivocal – on carbon dioxide.
A South Australian senator, Don Jessop mentions it in Federal parliament, in November 1973
“It is quite apparent to world scientists that the silent pollutant, carbon dioxide, is increasing in the atmosphere and will cause us great concern in the future.
And while the warnings and alarms continued through the 1970s and 1980s, with visiting professors (including pro-nuclear ones), ABC documentaries, CSIRO documentaries, and mentions of the problem by groups such as Environmentalists for Full Employment.
It is fair to say that policymaker awareness only took off in the second half of the 1980s.
In 1985 atmospheric scientists met in Villach, a city in Austria. They realised they had underestimated the impact of gases other than carbon dioxide, and that the heating they had expected to arrive in several decades was likely to come much faster. They left Villach determined to warn policymakers. The Australian result of this was that CSIRO started briefing politicians, including the Australian Environment Council. After its June 1986 meeting, South Australia’s environment minister, Don Hopgood, went public with a stark warning about sea-level rise,
The following years saw a flurry of scientific and public/political conferences, promises, exhortations and committees, all about “the Greenhouse Effect.” Internationally this culminated with the climate treaty in Rio in June 1992. South Australia had set up committees and programmes, but all this was basically swept away with the disaster of the failure of the State Bank of South Australia, Premier John Bannon’s resignation and the enormous defeat Labor experienced. The incoming Liberals paid lipservice at most, finding it easier not to kill anything off officially but let it instead die by neglect.
Climate change played little part in the debates over electricity generation that took up the second half of the 1990s. However, a determined group of policy wonks were beavering away, keen to promote renewables and action on climate. The return of Labor in 2002 was a turning point. The first (tiny by today’s standards) wind farm went live the following year. Over the years, Premier Mike Rann skilfully found wiggle-room as the Federal government was forced to continue to offer policy support. As Tristan Edis put it in a 2014 article
“The way it works is SA public servants assess the likely amount of renewable energy that will be installed in the state within the next few years as a result of the federal government’s Renewable Energy Target. Then, the South Australian government take this projection of what will be achieved under business as usual a few years from now, and duly claim it as an ambitious target that they are setting for themselves, but push out the year a bit so they claim they’ve reached it ahead of schedule.”
But Rann had been attending to the broader cultural issues as well. He invited US climate scientist Stephen Schneider to be South Australia thinker in residence in 2006. Schneider’s message – that the Millennium Drought was a harbinger of problems to come and we’d better get preparing now, resonated.
The next Labor Premier, Jay Weatherill, accelerated Rann’s trajectory. The 2016 blackout was perhaps pivotal. Two events stand out – First, Weatherill dishing it out to Federal Environment Minister Josh Frydenberg and the latter just having to take it.
Second- the big battery of Elon Musk, back when progressives could look past some of his, shall we say, foibles.
By the time Labor lost power, the energy transition had such momentum – and powerful people making money from it and popular support, that the state Liberals basically ignored their Federal counterparts.
Labor has returned to power, with even bolder targets. It seems now somewhat starry-eyed about hydrogen, and alarmingly willing to do whatever Santos wants, before being asked.
What will happen?
Who knows? I’ve learned not to make confident predictions about anything other than “higher concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere next year.”
We will all find out in a couple of weeks. Will Edis v2.0 work? It already has in once sense: Win or lose, Adelaide raises its profile and plays the ‘inward green investment’ vibes game. It’s a smart move from a political party that has shown alertness to the opportunities national and international policy games present niche actors.
My friend Royce Kurmelovs (you should buy his book Slick: Australia’s toxic relationship with Big Oil, which has been lauded by critics and is short-listed for a Big Award) has a typically stonkingly good article on the Guardian Australia website.
It’s based on two things. First, an interview he did recently with Richard Gun, who was the first Australian politician to say – in Federal Parliament at least — that carbon dioxide build-up was a very serious problem. Gun said this in his maiden speech, in March 1970. Full disclosure, as stated in the Guardian article, it was me who pointed Royce to this fact).
Second, it takes details from Royce’s book Slick (have you bought it yet? Have you?) about a chemistry professor called Harry Bloom who, a year before Gun’s speech, had told Australian senators pretty much the same thing. The article adds further context to the portion in Slick (which you should buy).
What do we learn?
a) People knew enough to be worried (and in some cases quite emphatically so) a very very long time ago.
b) (Therefore) the problem is only in part about ‘information deficit’.
Thirty years ago, on this day, November 10th, 1994,
Victorians should not rely on the state’s new competitive electricity companies to meet environmental aims, a senior power industry official has warned.
In a paper to be delivered in Sydney today, Dr Harry Schaap says the competitive system that Victoria and Australia are entering will no longer be able to devote so many resources to environmental challenges.
Dr Schaap is the manager of environmental affairs for Generation Victoria, owner of the state’s power stations, and one of two electricity industry representatives on the Council of Australian Governments’ National Greenhouse Advisory Panel. He will speak today at the annual conference of the Electricity Supply Association of Australia.
His comments may focus renewed attention on the possible environmental costs of Victoria’s electricity reforms and coming privatisation.
1994 Walker, D. 1994. Environment May Suffer In New Power Climate – Expert. The Age, 10 November, p.5.
[Faulkner too – see below]
The Federal Minister for the Environment, John Faulkner, has warned the electricity industry that its strides towards greater competitiveness may be working against a better environment, with cheaper prices encouraging consumers to use and waste more energy.
He also raised the threat of environmental levies — which could include a carbon tax — as a method of ensuring the industry cleans up its act.
Senator Faulkner’s speech to the Electricity Supply Association of Australia conference in Sydney on Thursday [10th November] came on the same day as a court challenge by Greenpeace over the construction of a new power station in the Hunter Valley was rejected.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 359ppm. As of 2024 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was Australia had ratified the UNFCCC treaty, which was to have its first meeting in Berlin in March of the following year (1995). Federal Environment minister John Faulkner was hoping he could go and boast about a carbon tax. Meanwhile, the electricity system was being privatised, and environmental regulations and goals were being stripped out of the privatisation plans. Of course.
What I think we can learn from this Today’s failures are consequences of failures thirty years previous. Cheerful thought, eh?
What happened next We failed. The carbon tax failed. The electricity system was privatised and emissions from it stayed sky high. Policy did not drive a rapid decarbonisation, which is what was required.
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 388ppm. As of 2024 it is 4xxppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that there was about to be a vote on Kevin Rudd’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. And alongside that, there was also peak hype for Carbon Capture and Storage, which was being attacked by clued-up elements of the environment movement as an expensive distraction and boondoggle that wasn’t going to fix climate change. It was being attacked by the denialists as an expensive boondoggle that was not going to fix a non-existent problem. What’s a little bit interesting here is that a relatively senior Liberal, was willing to come out and say the same. Perhaps dog whistling to the denialists perhaps simply because it was the truth, that CCS is a pipe dream.
What we learn is that there’s lots of people criticising CCS, and CCS’s answer would have been to deliver the goods. But the technology is incredibly expensive. There’s not really a market for it. And it hasn’t worked.
What happened next? Well, the CPRS fell over and then so did CCS. The Liberals got back into power in 2013 and abolished the carbon price. And the rest is history…
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.
