On this day in 1986 the Melbourne newspaper The Age ran a decent and entirely prescient spread about the coming crisis.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 346ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that after the pivotal Villach conference in September 1985, scientists were pulling every lever they could. They had cred and salience because of the Ozone Hole. The CSIRO (Australian Science Body) was, with the help of the Commission for the Future, getting its public-facing act together. More immediately, the Age had run a brief front page story on 19 June.
What we can learn
The predictions were right, give or take
What happened next
Opportunities to hold hands, proclaim our virtue and … emissions. Lots of emissions
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 three years ago, on this day, June 20, 2000, business was getting what it wanted…
It’s quite plain who has the Government’s ear on greenhouse issues, writes Andrew Clennell.
At 4pm on June 20 on a busy parliamentary sitting day in Senate committee room 1S3, the big players in industry put their views to Government on greenhouse. A single sheet of paper was placed on the table. Now, as the Government takes its place in talks on global warming in The Hague, we can appreciate the full significance of that piece of paper. Policy on greenhouse coincides with business’s June wish list. See also his piece – Clennell, A. 2000. Industrialists Urge Caution On Gases Plan. Sydney Morning Herald, 21 June, p.5.
A contingent of industry leaders asked the Federal Government last night to state clearly that it would not ratify the Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse gases unless the United States did so first, and to pledge that Australian jobs would not be sacrificed.
Representatives from BP Amoco, Rio Tinto, the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry and Alcoa Generation met the Industry Minister, Senator Minchin, the Environment Minister, Senator Hill, and the Deputy Prime Minister, Mr Anderson, and ministerial advisers from three other offices to discuss Australia’s greenhouse policy.
On the red leather chairs at the rectangular table were three ministers Robert Hill (Environment), Nick Minchin (Industry) and John Anderson (Deputy PM) and advisers from their offices and from the offices of the Treasurer, the Finance Minister and the Forestry Minister.
Facing them were BP’s Australian head, Greg Bourne, miner Rio Tinto’s managing director, Barry Cusack, and heads of the major lobby groups the Business Council, the Minerals Council, and the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry among others.
Clennell, A. 2000. Taking Care Of Business. Sydney Morning Herald, 14 November, p.15.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 371.8ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was
Xxx John Howard was now 4 years as prime minister and facing another election soon. He had displayed just how willing he was to stop environmental policy if it hurt the interests of the fossil fuel industry, and what the above Google shows is the detail of how lobbyists helped make that happen.
What I think we can learn from this
We can learn that even though business is structurally lucky and in a mutually supportive relationship with the state apparatus usually, it never really takes anything for granted and so, the lobbying and smoothing of the wheels continues non-stop.
What happened next
Howard made sure that the Kyoto protocol was not brought forward for ratification and prevented an emissions trading scheme from being started. ronically this would have helped some forms of business but he also was unrelentingly unremittingly hostile to renewables.
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.
Fourteen years ago, on this day, June 19, 2009, the leader of the Liberal Party gets in a snit because business is – gasp – happy enough with the weak policy being proposed by the Australian Labor Party (then in government).
MALCOLM Turnbull has attacked big business for “snuggling up” to Labor, demanding business publicly back the Coalition strategy of amending and then passing the government’s emissions trading laws.
In a blunt exchange with about 30 chief executives at a Business Council of Australia breakfast at Parliament House on Wednesday, [17]Mr Turnbull attacked business for being “intimidated” into supporting the government and for failing to publicly push for amendments to the laws.
Taylor, L. 2009. Opposition tells industry: don’t `snuggle up’ to Labor — Turnbull puts heat on business. The Australian, 19 June, p.1.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 389.7ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was
Malcolm Turnbull as the new Liberal Party leader needed to attack Labor, get business on side and not lose his own support. This was always going to be tricky given the competing and frankly irreconcilable demands.
What I think we can learn from this
A political party has explicit ideological needs, whereas business needs to cuddle up to whoever is in government and to keep selling stuff to people even when they’re having one of the periodic fits of “Let’s save the Planet.” Therefore business is going to take a more rational clear-eyed reality-based focus. This can be hard for a political party – especially one which takes business support for granted – to understand.
What happened next
Turnbull tried to take the carbon pricing issue off the table sending his Chief of staff Chris Kenny to talk with Rhodes chief of staff but no dice road was enjoying Turnbull’s agony too much. See Paul Kelly’s book Triumph and Demise for the gory details. Turnbull then lost his position as Liberal party leader to Tony Abbott, who came out swinging against doing anything on climate change.
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 398ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was
The carbon tax battle had been lost. And now the anti-climate anti-Gillard sorts were doing their best to keep the flame alive with an anti wind power rally. But you can’t reheat a souffle. And this one was an embarrassment because people on the whole, like wind power, (especially if they don’t have to have their house immediately underneath a turbine).
What I think we can learn from this
Some technologies catch the public mind and are considered nice and good, and others are not. It’s not entirely fair. And neither is life.
What happened next
The anti-wind turbine people kind of more or less, folded up their tent and switched to other sorts of stuff, but then they could afford to do that because by September of 2013, their guy was in power and he hated the damn things. (See my 2017 paper ‘wind beneath their contempt’)
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 394ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that Monckton was on one of his periodic tours of Australia, lapping up the attention that he was getting for his swivel eyed lunacy contesting the science of climate change with half baked nonsense. And unfortunately for him, he got high on his own supply, and went too far. With an allegation that Schellnhuber was a Nazi, or that Ross Garnaut was a Nazi. This then created a reputational issue for his sponsors and the Liberal Party, then led by Tony Abbott, and pressure was clearly applied, and Monckton apologised. For what that was worth, not that anyone particularly believed it.
What I think we can learn from this
What we can learn is that culture warriors often get triggered, have peaks and go below you and go too fast, and then have to try to claw back their position. See, another example of this would be the Heartland Institute and its Unabomber billboards.
At a climate conference in Melbourne, in July, the Lyndon LaRouche lunatics held up a noose and called Schellnhuber a Nazi. It was so classy.
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, June 11, 2003, AEI + IPA vs, well, life on earth.
On June 11, 2003, AEI and an Australian think tank, Institute for Public Affairs (IPA), cosponsored a conference titled “Non-governmental Organizations: The Growing Power of an Unelected Few,” held at the AEI offices in Washington, D.C. The conference laid the ground for the launch of “NGO Watch” – a website and political campaign cosponsored by AEI and The Federalist Society.
(Hardistry and Furdon 2004)
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 378.4ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the American Enterprise Institute and the Institute for Public Affairs were both long-lived think tanks which had been captured by the neoliberals in the 70s and 80s. And were now launching a full frontal assault on civil society and NGOs. In order to get the ignorant rabble in line.
What I think we can learn from this is that there is a never-ending war for public perception and the power struggle to make sure that the state is insulated from popular pressure and can be a trough for favoured industries and research and development, and also function to continue to batter the proles until they submit.
And the “DDT is good for you” myth never goes away.
What happened next
As you’d have predicted, the IPA then set about trying to attack and smother civil society organisations in the United in Australia. It set up a fake environmental group in 2005 in order to try to confuse people, because that’s who these scum buckets are.
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.
Fifty years ago, on this day, June 8, 1973, the Australian Treasury, in a paper about the environment, even mentioned climate change.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 332ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was this – Australia and the climate issue – it goes back to 1969, MacFarlane Burnett, Nugget Coombs and so forth. By 1970 the issue was popping up in newspapers and in books. Coombs was looking at Steady state economy.
What I think we can learn from this.
The. Problem. Is. Not. Information. The. Problem. Is. Power.
What happened next
Treasury kept pretty schtum, as best I can tell. By the late 1980s they were muttering about potential carbon pricing. This morphed into emissions trading in the mid-late 1990s. And we all know how THAT ended…
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 one years ago, on this day, June 5, 2002, climate thug (among other kinds of thug) John Howard told parliament he would not be submitting the Kyoto Protocol for ratification
‘It is not in Australia’s interests to ratify. The protocol would cost us jobs and damage our industry.’
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 375.7ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that Howard had long been hostile to environmental and especially global warming issues. Since taking office, he had expended a lot of diplomatic energy and capital in 1997 to carve out an absurdly generous deal for Australia. It had already been leaked in September 1988, that the Cabinet had agreed not to ratify Kyoto, unless the United States did. So Howard’s announcement came as no surprise to anyone. But it was a colourful insouciant arrogant kick in the teeth to do it on World Environment Day, the kind of thing that makes Howard the turd that he is.
What I think we can learn from this is that these sorts of announcements are timed, in part, to throw red meat to supporters, but also to demoralise those who are pushing for stronger action. Because if you can demoralise them if they don’t turn up to the next battle, it’s easier for you to win. And hopefully you can set up a virtuous circle where they are forced from the field. That’s the theory. And often it works – but on climate, there’s always new people waking up and getting frantically concerned because well, the issue is frantically concerning (although most of them burn out quick, and retreat to lick their wounds, because there aren’t the groups that can help them sustain themselves).
What happened next
Howard continued to cause mayhem and irreparable damage.
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
Veil of Kyoto rather good on “gesture politics”
Haworth and Foxall, 2010. The Veil of Kyoto and the politics of greenhouse gas mitigation in Australia. Political Geography Volume 29, Issue 3, March 2010, Pages 167-176.
Thirty two years ago, on this day, June 5, 1990, the ACT government said yes to a 20 per cent cut in emissions by 2005…
“The target was part of the ACT Strategy to respond to the Greenhouse Effect launched by the ACT Chief Minister, Trevor Kaine, on June 5.
Mr Kaine said yesterday that the Commonwealth had been “dragging their feet a little” on the issue. “But it’s important that they’ve now done it and the issue, now that they’ve made the decision and set the targets, is: are they in fact going to put it into effect,” Mr Kaine said. The Federal Government would be watched closely to ensure that it did not attempt to withdraw from the decision, he said.”
Lamberton, 1990,13 October Canberra Times
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 356.4ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that in 1988, the “Toronto target” had been proposed at a conference called “The Changing Climate.” It was for a 20 per cent reduction in emissions by 2005. The ACT has no industry, just lots of hot air from federal politicians.
What I think we can learn from this
So a critic could say that it’s relatively straightforward to make cuts, if you don’t have coal-fired power plants with all factories within your borders, because you simply do efficiency gains, insulation, etc. And that’s true. But what else is a service economy supposed to do? Say “Oh, nothing to do with us.” And then you can call them hypocrites if they don’t do anything. So the ACT government pursued this. I think they were successful.
The fact that various state governments and territory governments said yes to the Toronto target, put additional pressure on the federal government, which is another reason why you would do one of these things. The problem was not the targets. The problem is whether you’re going to take action to make it happen.
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, June 4, 1998, NSW premier Bob Carr puts pen to paper. As per Hansard –
“It is amazing how up to the mark the Hon. R. S. L. Jones is. This very day, Thursday, 4 June, the New South Wales Premier, the Hon. Bob Carr, signed the first carbon credit trade in Australia as part of an innovative program tackling greenhouse gas emissions and creating new jobs in New South Wales. Today the international finance company Bankers Trust and resource consultants Margules Groome Poyry certified the trade. This is the first time in Australia that major players in the finance and resource sectors have backed a carbon sink plantation in Australia.”
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 368ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that Bob Carr as New South Wales Prime Minister premier was wanting to put New South Wales on the map for carbon trading. Global carbon trading looked like it was going to be a “thing”, and NSW has a lot of trees… Carr had been aware of the problem of climate change since 1971, because he saw Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich on an Australian TV show.
What I think we can learn from this
Within the system, we have smart people who are willing to see the system as basically reformable and tweakable. Will with luck and skill gain promotion. And they will try to implement various (neoliberal market based) wheezes. Sometimes they succeed in bringing the schemes to fruition, but the schemes never will (or “have not yet” if you are a true believer) delivered on their promise.
What happened next
The whole question of a carbon trading scheme fell over. But Carr persisted. And it was his attempt to stitch together all of the states having emissions trading schemes that would then combine that forced John Howard’s hand in 2005/6. Carr stepped down as New South Wales premier in 2005, and was briefly a senator in the federal parliament, and Julia Gillard’s Foreign Minister
And the emissions? Well, they have kept increasing and the atmospheric concentrations have kept increasing. Obviously.
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.
