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Four questions about our predicament – two psychologists write about the C02 Newsletter Vol. 2, no 1

The first duo-written commentary on an issue of the CO2 Newsletter! Annie Mitchell and Tony Wainwright, both Chartered Psychologists take a deep dive into why we are where we are..

Annie Mitchell and Tony Wainwright

As Ana Unruh Cohen said in her contribution to this series on people’s responses to William Barbat’s “message in a bottle” CO2 Newsletter, “looking back at the history of climate science and policy can trigger wistful thoughts of “what if?”  And relatable feelings of sadness about what we have lost and anger at fossil fuel and other vested interests that have fought to prevent climate and action”. Reading the well-informed 1980s (and earlier) warnings also triggers in us, as psychologists, curiosity. First, why did vested interests prevail in the 80s and why do they still, despite incontrovertible evidence of the damage caused by fossil fuels, and despite decades of efforts to raise the alarm and mitigate the harm befalling us all? Second, why do not more of our fellow citizens and scientists join in with activists’ efforts to wake us up and bring about urgent change?  Third, what is it in the histories and experience of some of us that draw us, apparently against the tide, to persist in actively demanding change? Fourth, what could lead now to the positive social tipping point we so urgently need?

We’re commenting on CO2 Newsletter Vol 2, No 1, October -November 1980.  Reading it now feels extraordinary because pretty much everything that Barbat notes in his commentary remains the case: both the scientific evidence that global heating is caused by CO2 emissions, and the realisation of the appalling human cost and social injustice of inaction. It is hard not to be moved by reading this newsletter: a voice from over 40 years ago, hoping people would heed his call. It is salutary to realise that atmospheric carbon concentrations since he was writing have gone up by about one third, and the trajectory has been steady, in spite of all the agreements and conferences. Infuriatingly also, as of 2025, global emissions of greenhouse gases have never been higher. Perhaps if these agreements and conferences hadn’t happened it may have been even worse. One sentence jumps out: “Adapting to a highly different climate may be inappropriate to apply to future victims of malnutrition or storm-driven high tides of an elevated ocean. ‘Sacrificed’ may be appropriate if immediate counter measures to the CO2 buildup could [as we now know they could] actually prevent such problems.”.  We, like Barbat, watched the United States’ “me” decade to shift to the “we” decade: but we see, terribly, that decade is now closer to a century and escalating with Make America Great Again ferocity. We believe, along with grass roots organisations like Hope Not Hate, and Common Ground, that we humans (and indeed beings beyond human) have much more in common than that which divides us. We need to have the conversations, share the evidence, and generate the shared social narratives that prove it.

  1. Why do vested interests prevail?

There is no doubt that where there is wealth there is power, and fossil fuels have created more wealth than anything else we can think of. They have also brought enormous benefits to humanity, but at a terrible cost. The cost is not born by the fossil fuel companies; it is, in the woefully inadequate term, an ‘externality’ where the planet pays the price. Even now, there seems to be evidence that these malign forces have undermined the United Nations COP (Conference of the Parties) process so that binding commitments are avoided https://www.transparency.org/en/press/fossil-fuel-interests-are-undermining-un-climate-negotiations-new-transparency-international-report-warns.

Stoddart and colleagues asked in 2021 why haven’t we bent the emissions curve despite 3 decades of climate mitigation?  A common thread across the literature they reviewed was the central role of power, “from a dogmatic political-economic hegemony and influential vested interests to narrow techno-economic mindsets and ideologies of control.” These narrow mindsets serve to perpetuate the very conditions that hold us still now in the worsening climate catastrophe.  And we urgently need, as Stoddart et al put it, new forms of social imaginary for a better future.  Does modern technology’s hypnotic capacity to distract us from beauty, imagination and awe, and from our realisation of our bodily place in the world, account in part for the lethal stranglehold of ideologies of control?

2. Why do not more of our fellow citizens join in with demanding change?  It is understandable that our fellow citizens (and ourselves too because we are all only human) adopt cognitive and emotional defences – including denial, delay, disinterest – against unbearable truths. These psychological defences are hard to shift because they are bolstered by a barrage of misinformation and disinformation promulgated by the media outlets of those who believe their interests are protected by keeping the truth hidden. And who does not wish the truth to be other than it is, when we face existential horror? In his book ‘Don’t even think about it’ George Marshall, founder of Climate Outreach put his finger on it. We are not wired up to deal with climate change – it isn’t the weather, it is what you might call a derivative. It’s the system that controls the weather. In addition, George Marshall worked out that different audiences need to be addressed differently, and just producing lots of charts that predict the end of the world as we know it will just turn people off.

3. What is in the histories and experience of some of us who do persist in demanding change?

Tony: engagement with environmental issues flowed from growing up in a family where the natural world was something to be enjoyed and studied in equal measure. At school, my teacher, Brian Brookes showed me on field trips to Skokholm and Handa Islands how interconnected the web of life was. He also introduced me to the Shanny a rocky shore fish, when he was warden at Slapton Ley, and the hours spent in rock pools led me to study for my doctoral thesis in experimental psychology, the way the visual systems of fishes and other creatures are adapted to their light environment (see https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4757-0241-5_54#citeas). My broader research work included a strong interest in marine and freshwater environments, and how we should protect them. The issue of climate change only came to my attention some 20 years later when I was by then a clinical psychologist, and when I became involved with the Friends of the Earth 2005 campaign, The Big Ask, which was successful in getting legislation through the UK parliament, the first in the world, with statutory carbon limits and an annual carbon accounting. My interests had been in ecological systems and how they were being impacted by human activity, but it was only after this campaign that my attention was on the effect of CO2 emissions. The way CO2 made the oceans more acidic was quite an eye opener, particularly given my previous work on freshwater and marine animals. 

Annie: my sense of being part of the natural world grew from a childhood in County Durham in an era (the 50s and 60s) in which girls growing up could roam pretty freely: helping on the local farm, climbing trees, wandering across footpaths and fields, camping under the stars, first with the Girl Guides, and later tramping the Lake District with boyfriends and girlfriends, exploring the ways our bodies and minds fitted into the natural world. Perhaps it is hard to fight for the health of the planet and nature unless we have first grown to love it.  And in my story too, it was a school teacher who inspired intellectual curiosity about ecology. Dorrit Smith, a newly qualified biology teacher, was a breath of fresh air in our old-fashioned ex-grammar school that had just turned comprehensive but in which many teachers still wore dusty caps and gowns. She encouraged us to think for ourselves and to question authority, and in doing so set us a project – at a time and place when self-directed projects were an unheard-of educational approach. This project was transformational: we had to research the contribution of Rachel Carson through her newly published book, Silent Spring. From then on, I understood that ecological balance was the basis of flourishing, that corporations could mess up through corporate greed, and, vitally, that women could challenge the established order of things.  These were tremendous lessons for a restless adolescent to take as a basis for life and learning, and I remain grateful for Dorrit’s then-youthful devotion to her pupils.

Everyone who comes to climate and nature activism will have their foundational stories, and we both believe that sharing and honouring these, as XR Scientists have done in their book Scientists on Survival, is a critical part of inspiring ourselves and others to persist with demanding change. 

4. What could lead now to the positive tipping point we so urgently need?  

Here we might take issue with some content in the newsletter:

“Q. Should the public be allowed to help decide what projects are pursued or not pursued?

“A. Generally no, if what you mean is basic scientific research…. 

“Most members of the public usually don’t know enough about any given complicated matter to make meaningful informal judgments. And that includes scientists and engineers who work in unrelated areas…

“… I don’t think John Doe will ever have enough information to justify technological public policymaking by public referenda.

“To make intelligent decisions about science-based technology, we will have to rely on analyses and advice from institutions that the polity trusts.”

We rather believe, along with Rebecca Willis in her book Too hot to handle: the democratic challenge of climate change, that trust requires more democracy and participation, not less. We’re unlikely to reach a positive social tipping point without much greater public knowledge, awareness and engagement. With a strong public mandate for positive progressive change, politicians and businesses would be much more likely to act against the vested interests of money and entrenched power. And on this, it is extremely inspiring in the UK to be part of the momentum movement in support of the Climate Emergency Briefing. A 50 minute film has been created, featuring 10 of the UKs most highly respected climate scientists and security experts, first shown in Westminster to parliamentarians, policy makers and leaders at the end of 2025, and now being screened in hundreds of community and professional venues across the UK, with facilitated post-show conversations to generate deeper engagement and future action.  I , Annie, along with friends and neighbours, have hosted and facilitated screenings in my own community, with more still planned. This is how change can happen: hearing the truth from trusted experts, being held in community with others to process and digest what we hear, and then acting in solidarity with those others to demand the political change that survival in the face of reality requires.  If only this strong public engagement had happened back in the 1980s or earlier: might we have bent the emissions curve by now?  It is too hypothetical to contemplate.

In conclusion, we wonder what Barbat would have thought about the word today? The breakdown of the international consensus – the so-called “World Order” – is so far leading us down a path of might is right and further conflict, and the warning bells are ringing louder than ever before. The urgent need for “a new we order” is very much on the agenda https://globaljusticeproject.wid.world/global-justice-report/

In a book chapter entitled ‘Who are we? Social identity and sustainable healthcare in the Anthropocene’ we tackled this issue of a new ‘we’ order in the context of healthcare, in which both of us have spent our careers. We say: “How can we join together in learning and solidarity with others in protecting all that we love and care for, when people’s lives and conditions are so separate and varied, and political and nationalist forces increasingly work to divide us from one another, under conditions of threat? How can we value and celebrate the varied contributions that we bring from our different perspectives of gender, ethnic background, culture, class, and ability, while also being sensitive to the ways in which the unequal distribution of power and influence shapes whose voices are heard and unheard? How can we do this at the same time as working to halt the retreat to personal identities that divide and polarise us? As the Black critical journalist Gary Younge put it, in his 2011 book Who are we – and should it matter in the 21st century?

“Identity is not seeking a role in politics. It is already there. For better, for worse, and usually for both, it is an integral part of how we relate to people as individuals and as groups. The choice is whether we want to succumb to its perils among moral panic and division or leverage its potential though solidarity in search of common, and higher, ground.”(Younge, 2011, p. 231)

Finally, in a recent paper, Tony wrote about the implications of the polycrisis for psychologists, entitled ‘A Warning’. Which sums up in some ways the main message of our reflections: “We are at a critical juncture for the future of humanity. I don’t use these words lightly, but they echo the various presentations at the Emergency Briefing for Parliamentarians (National Emergency Briefing on the Climate and Nature Crisis, 2025) last year on the climate crisis. We cannot continue business as usual when there are such clear indications of a catastrophic future. As psychologists we need to work out what ‘not business as usual’ looks like.”

Wainwright, T. and Mitchell. A. (2024) Who are we? Sustainable Healthcare in the Anthropocene. Chapter 5. In J. Braithwaite, Y. Zurynski, & C. K-Lynn Smith (Eds.), Routledge Handbook of Climate Change and Health System Sustainability Routledge.

Biographies

Annie Mitchell is a BPS Chartered Psychologist and former clinical psychologist born in 1953. She teaches, mentors and facilitates trainee clinical psychologists and medical students in the Southwest of England. She’s active with Psychologists for Social Change and has campaigned for climate and nature action.

Tony Wainwright is a BPS Chartered Psychologist and former clinical psychologist born in 1946. He has been a teacher and supervisor of trainee clinical psychologists over many years in the Southwest of England. He has had a long-standing interest in the natural world, and has campaigned for human rights and planetary health.

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CO2 Newsletter CO2 Newsletter editorial

“Potential impacts of the CO2 buildup appear to represent by far the largest, most serious, man caused environmental problem that the world will face in the not-too-distant future.” William Barbat, in 1980…

Here is the editorial geologist William Barbat wrote to accompany the first issue of Volume 2 of his CO2 Newsletter.

Whether the divisiveness of the previous decade will end with the November 4 elections in the US. remains to be seen. Some express hope the ‘me’ decade is ending and the ‘we’ decade is beginning, which would help greatly is combating the CO2 problem.

Potential impacts of the CO2 buildup appear to represent by far the largest, most serious, man caused environmental problem that the world will face in the not-too-distant future. Because the threat of famines from climate change and of mass migrations due both to hunger and the potential sea level rise will impact almost everybody, the CO2 problem should be expected to bring together opposing factions on environmental and energy problems. Any delay in closing ranks to halt the CO2 buildup is seen by some knowledgeable workers as leading to more human grief.

With the population of developing countries doubling every 20 years and with the world’s food reserves actually shrinking at a disturbing rate, the threat to agricultural productivity posed by a continuing CO2 buildup translates into potential large scale, long term famine. Some climatologists have speculated that food productivity may actually increase in Russia, China and Canada with global warming. Warming would lengthen the growing season at high latitudes and possibly increase monsoonal and sub Arctic rainfall, but the continental interior portions of these countries may simultaneously dry up. Moreover, the decline in world grain production just in the last year (due in large part to the heat wave in the US) is equivalent to the entire wheat production of two Canadas, as an article in the Wall Street Journal recently pointed out. If the political leaders of any nation choose to ignore the CO2 buildup because they perceive benefits accruing to them from global warming, a distressing surprise may await their people

What factors allowed the CO2 problem to be ignored over the last decade when most other environmental problems received much attention and massive funding? And what factors led to the present de facto moratorium on nuclear reactor orders in the US. when this appears to be the only feasible large-scale substitute for fossil energy available for some time? Some answers might be:

Firstly, the earth was then experiencing a cooling trend that began in the 1940s. Also, quantification of the CO2 greenhouse effect and the effect of dust and smoke were being contested, and some workers strongly asserted that deforestation was possibly as great a villain as fossil-fuel combustion, which would imply that a CO2 perturbation would not be expected to last long after the CO2 outpourings ended.

Secondly, the environmental ‘crusade’ was largely directed against the business community, which had embraced nuclear fission for its perceived economic and environmental benefits. Environmental discussions often became sociopolitical monologues. Formal scientific training and disciplined scientific investigation were not always regarded as necessary basis for technical expertise. Environmental priorities tended to be ranked more by immediate visibility, symbolism, or emotional response rather than measurable impacts on people’s lives. Anti-civil acts were supposed to represent the suppressed will of the public, even if the acts were contrary to the public’s will as expressed by election results.

Most indicators now show that the post-1940 cooling trend was a cyclical swing which ended on schedule and that this bottoming out occurred about 0.2°C higher than the last such bottoming out of global temperatures in 1880-90.

The general consensus now seems to be that deforestation is nowhere near as great a source of CO2 as fossil fuel combustion at present, if it is a net source at all. The general expectation, then, is for a CO2 perturbation to last for many centuries.

From more than a decade of intensive studies and model analyses, the thermal sensitivity of the earth to CO2 doubling had been narrowed generally to about 2 to 3 warming. In recent months, new participants in the debates proposed a sensitivity of about one tenth that. It is difficult to imagine how 19th century scientists as Fourier, Tyndall, Ångström, and Arrhenius could have been so cognizant of the atmosphere’s greenhouse effect if a CO2 doubling would cause only 0.26°C average global surface warming. Even if true, such warming would reproduce temperatures of the 1930s, a warmth level which is credited with causing widespread drought in the U.S. and southern Eurasia. To halt the CO2 buildup before such a doubling occurs is seen as requiring a very rapid conversion to non fossil energy sources starting now. The current debate over the 0.26 figure might be resolved if the heretofore unpublished supporting material would be published for all to see.

Possibly a different choice of descriptive terms in many cases would help unify the scientific community and permit clearer communications with the public. If atmospheric heat absorption would be referred to as the ‘hothouse’ effect, as Fourier introduced it, rather than ‘greenhouse’ effect, any misunderstandings about impacts on agricultural productivity might be avoided.

‘Adapting’ to a highly different climate may be inappropriate to apply to future victims of malnutrition or storm-driven high tides of an elevated ocean. ‘Sacrificed’ may be appropriate if immediate counter measures to the CO2 buildup could actually prevent such problems.

The cost of instituting countermeasures may not refer to excess overall expenditures but to initial investments. In some cases, merely terminating subsidies and eliminating income tax credits, tax exempt bonds, and energy-investment tax credits for CO2 producing systems and reducing the regulatory cost and punitive restraints on nuclear energy would produce savings to the public while allowing fossil energy to be phased out as a natural industrial phenomenon, just as wood energy was supplanted by fossil fuels.

A bright side of the scientific political scene is provided by the newly started evaluation of the policy-related issues of the CO2 problem under the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), as organized by William Nierenberg, director of Scripps Institution of Oceanography. At long last, a systematic analysis of the policy options and tradeoffs has been started, including the options of deferral and inaction. Ironically, the birth of this study derives from the Synfuels Act, which also provides massive subsidies for the most CO2 productive energy system available.

What is still lacking is a specific plan to show how the energy substitution scenarios of F. Niehaus and David Rose could be translated into reality in order to halt the CO2 buildup at optional ceiling values. These are the only CO2 limiting scenarios advanced so far which do not call for a virtual cessation of energy use worldwide. It would be beneficial to have for comparison specific scenarios which call for large-scale reduction of energy use, showing who is expected to give up what. Also, a specific scenario of the supplanting of fossil fuels with energy sources other than nuclear (wind, solar, hydroelectric) would be helpful to the public. People could see just what substitutions and cutbacks would be required to them specifically. The people of the world should then be allowed to select the preferred course of action or adaption without intimidation, coercion, or obfuscation.

With a more unified scientific effort, with CO2 limiting scenarios clearly set out in comparison with any other possible courses, and with better means of passing this knowledge to the public, we might soon progress toward practical solutions.

Citation   Barbat, W. (1980) Editorial. CO2 Newsletter, Vol. 2, no.1, p.2

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CO2 Newsletter CO2 Newsletter commentary Guest post

“Are scientists people?” Revd Dr Hannah Malcolm on the CO2 newsletter Vol. 2, no. 2

There’s a story we have told which goes something like this. Once upon a time, everybody was stupid, superstitious, and prone to poor judgement. Then, out of the unwashed masses, a new and brilliant breed of human emerged: the modern scientist. They could see further and with greater clarity than pretty much anyone else, and had a particular calling; to reveal – and thus subdue – anything which fell into the category of ‘nature’. Their endeavours would no doubt be for the good of humanity, but humanity in general could hardly be trusted to participate – after all, most of them can’t count very high. They would simply have to leave the scientists to it if they wanted their nasty, brutish lives to see any improvement.[1] Thus, a split reality was born. Over here is the scientist, their data, and the closest we can get to unfiltered truth. Over there is everything else.

Rev Dr Hannah Malcolm

To be fair, this story is probably about 50% true. I know I hit the universe’s jackpot when it comes to the time and place of my birth, and a lot of that is thanks to the work of myriad scientific discoveries, the majority of which I never think about long enough to question. And of course, there are plenty of scientists who do their best not to separate scientific research from the messy rest of humanity. But the divide is nevertheless real, and I’m not convinced it’s actually doing scientists any favours.

The editorial in Vol. 2, no.2 of the CO2 Newsletter complains about precisely the effects of this split reality; the findings of climate science simply aren’t landing in public, despite the best efforts of some very earnest people. This is partly because some public officials don’t want to know. But it is also partly because some scientists refuse to join everybody else at the table. There is the meteorologist who opposes the use of his work by policy makers, or a report by SRI International which argues for delaying the release of information until a more ‘credible’ case can be brought. In the climate conversations of the 1980s, a healthy number of scientists (enough to spark a debate) seemed to believe that there are research findings which ought to remain private even when they are at least partially publicly funded; it is better that the public do not know, and they – the scientists – are uniquely qualified to make such a judgement.

Barbat’s editorial suggests that this communication problem stems from the recent ‘politicisation’ of environmental sciences. But what if the opposite is true – what if the problem is that science has not historically been political enough? The attempt to purify science via the closed doors of the laboratory has not protected scientific research from the influence of humans being human. Instead, it has given a free pass to everybody who would like to ignore scientific research when it is convenient to them. Now, when a climate scientist tries to protest the actions of a political party funded by a fossil fuel corporation, they can be told to ‘stick to the science’ (or have the truth of their research rejected entirely) because they have transgressed the invisible science/politics line.

Have we learnt anything since 1981? Perhaps a little. The growing enthusiasm for citizen science projects is good, exciting, and might offer us a route into genuinely public scientific conversations about the future of the earth. Scientists have also started to change their tune. A few years ago, science communicator Joe Duggan ran a project called ‘Is This How You Feel’, asking climate scientists to – well – talk about their feelings. His premise was simple; climate scientists ‘are not robots… they are real people’.[2] Many of the contributions are moving calls to greater public engagement. But it’s striking to note that some of the scientists involved still felt the need to separate their research from the rest of their experiences. Here’s a quote from one professor at a leading British university:

“As a climate scientist I feel privileged to be alive when things are changing so fast… as a research scientist that is exciting! As a human-being, and especially as a parent, I feel concerned that we are doing damage to the planet. I don’t want to leave a mess for my children, or anyone else’s children, to clear-up.”

When scientists do their research, are they still human beings? Perhaps – in the year of our Lord 2026 – we might want to insist that scientists are people, too, and that their work belongs at the public table with everybody else.

Bio

Revd Dr Hannah Malcolm is a priest in the Church of England. Her academic research is concerned with felt human responses to anthropogenic loss and their relation to moral reasoning. She sits on the board of the climate charity Operation Noah, best known for their campaign for church divestment. Her first monograph on theology and ecological grief is due to be published later this year. 

[1] Special thanks are due to Robert Boyle and Francis Bacon for getting the ball rolling on this one. For really good commentaries on this story, see Bruno Latour and Hannah Arendt.

[2] https://www.isthishowyoufeel.com/this-is-how-scientists-feel.html

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CO2 Newsletter

CO2 Newsletter Vol. 2 no. 2 is now up!

The eighth edition of the CO2 Newsletter, (Vol. 2, no. 2), published bi-monthly by American geologist William N. Barbat between 1979 and 1982, is now up. You can download a pdf and see the full text here.

The eight page issue has a front page story pointing out that “Polar Ice Caps: ‘Sword of Damocles’ to a Warming World.”  The sword of Damocles is a Greek myth, where a sword, aimed at Damocles’ throat, is suspended by a very thin (and getting thinner) thread. It’s means a massive danger that might happen at any time. Like, er, now.

And here is the first two paragraphs

While the debate continues whether a warmer world climate will be better or worse on the whole, the anticipated destruction of glacial ice which is now perched above sea level can only bring a worldwide loss of coastal land areas.

The West Antarctic Ice Sheet is considered to be the most vulnerable to a warming of the oceans and atmosphere in polar regions because the large ice streams which are grounded far below sea level are protected and buttressed by ice shelves whose temperatures are not far below freezing in summer.

The rest of the issue is the usual (as in superlative) mix of editorial, excerpts from recent reports and also a piece on hard versus soft energy paths.

Please do share these newsletters. They are horrifying indictments of our species’ inability to organise itself to respond to clear and present threats. Oh well, here we are fifty years later, at the beginning of the Fafocene.

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CO2 Newsletter

C02 Newsletter Vol. 2, no. 1 – “hottest summers result in lowest summer rain fall in the five ‘Wheat Belt’ states”

The seventh edition of the CO2 Newsletter, (Vol. 2, no. 1) published bi-monthly by American geologist William N. Barbat between 1979 and 1982 is live. You can download a pdf and see the full text here.

The eight page issue has a front page story pointing out that “Hottest summers result in lowest summer rainfall in the five ‘Wheat Belt’ states” Barbat does a good job (as ever) in being fair and balanced. At one point he notes

Projections of cyclic global temperatures with an added CO2 greenhouse effect (at 2 to 3° C global temperature rise for a CO2 doubling) give an expectation of global temperatures warmer than the dustbowl era before 2000 (e). Good analogies are not available to predict what climatic effect a continued CO2 increase and further global warming might produce eventually, other than past global warmings have generally been accompanied by a widening and slight poleward shift of the semi- tropical arid belts.

There’s also an editorial, feedback from readers, excerpts from recent reports and a concluding article “A need for rational answers about energy.”

It remains heart-breaking, of course. Barbat’s editorial begins

Whether the divisiveness of the previous decade will end with the November 4 elections in the US. remains to be seen. Some express hope the ‘me’ decade is ending and the ‘we’ decade is beginning, which would help greatly is combating the CO2 problem.

Potential impacts of the CO2 buildup appear to represent by far the largest, most serious, man caused environmental problem that the world will face in the not-too-distant future. Because the threat of famines from climate change and of mass migrations due both to hunger and the potential sea level rise will impact almost everybody, the CO2 problem should be expected to bring together opposing factions on environmental and energy problems. Any delay in closing ranks to halt the CO2 buildup is seen by some knowledgeable workers as leading to more human grief.

As ever, if you have comments, suggestions, memories of reading the Newsletter when it was first published, do get in touch.

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CO2 Newsletter CO2 Newsletter commentary

“It could be posts on social media today”: Ana Unruh Cohen on  the August-September 1980 CO2 Newsletter (Vol 1, No 6)

Ana Unruh Cohen, DPhil, is a climate scientist and policy expert who has served in various roles in Congress, the White House, and NGOs during her 25-year career kindly agreed to write a commentary on the CO2 Newsletter, Vol. 1, no. 6. You can read other commentaries – and issues – here.

It is April in Washington, DC as I review the ‘message in a bottle’ from 1980 that has washed up on my screen thanks to the diligence of Marc Hudson of All Our Yesterdays. Fittingly much of the August-September 1980 CO2 Newsletter Vol 1, No 6 is devoted to an April hearing that same year in the Senate Committee on Energy and Resources.

Twenty-five years ago—in the fall of 2001—I arrived in DC as a freshly-minted DPhil in Earth science ready for a new challenge in the halls of Congress. After almost 5 years in the UK in the somewhat cloistered life of a graduate student, I was aware of the climate politics playing out on the international stage around the Kyoto Protocol and what had come up in the 2000 U.S. presidential election campaign between Al Gore and the ultimate winner George W. Bush. I was ready to dive in with my climate knowledge and eager to find a way to advance climate policy. I had no idea that more than 20 years before Senators were hearing similar warnings about the risks of climate change and the need to shift our energy generation from fossil fuels to carbon-free sources like solar and nuclear power. During my time in DC, historians have done more work on the development of climate science and climate policy that has sparked my own curiosity. But it wasn’t until I opened this volume of the CO2 Newsletter that I learned about the April 1980 Senate hearing.

Opponents of policies that would curb fossil fuel use and address climate change try to make the concern about global heating seem like something new—or for those that call it a hoax, something newly made up—but as the CO2 Newsletter documents back in the spring of 1980 Senators were asking “what we politicians and Congress need to do” about the CO2 problem. This wasn’t a hearing to just explore the science though. The senators already understood that climate impacts and energy decisions were two sides of the same coin. They heard from climate science luminaries George Woodwell, Wally Broecker, and William Kellogg, but also about energy policy from Gordon MacDonald of the MITRE Corporation and David Rose of MIT. That day the senators heard predictions that proved accurate like it taking between 10 to 20 years before warming due to carbon dioxide would be detected against natural fluctuations. Fifteen years later, in 1995, the second IPCC Assessment Report concluded that “the balance of evidence suggests there is a discernible human influence on global climate.” Dr. Woodwell suggested the CO2 problem might be “the preeminent international issue in management of resources during the early decades of the next century.” The gathering of world leaders in Paris 2015 to hammer out the UNFCCC Paris Agreement lends weight to that prediction. 

In surveying the world in 2026, I’d argue that it is the most prevalent international resources issue, impacting energy, agricultural, biodiversity, immigration, and economic development around the world. One of the predictions from the 1980 hearing is still open: will the CO2 content of the atmosphere reach 500-600 ppm sometime in the first half of the 21st century? The answer to that depends on the twin focus of the Senate hearing, energy generation.

The energy debate in the Senate hearing, and captured in the rest of the CO2 Newsletter,  feels as if it could be posts on social media today—the promise of nuclear power, the risks of nuclear proliferation, the need for domestic energy security, the elevation of natural gas as a cleaner fossil fuel, and the energy paradigm shift of solar power. In 1980 the U.S. was recovering from the economic consequences of the OPEC oil embargo. Sadly in 2026, the world is suffering from the economic consequences of the U.S. joining Israel in bombing Iran and Iran’s subsequent retaliation to close the Strait of Hormuz to almost all ships. Both events force re-evaluation of energy policy for economic security that have implications for the CO2 problem.

Luckily, we now have lithium-ion batteries, and their competitors, rapidly expanding the scope of possibility for both energy security and curbing carbon dioxide pollution. Batteries are noticeably absent from the Senate hearing; understandably so since the first commercial lithium-ion batteries were not sold until 1991. They are opening up alternatives in transportation the Senators and the expert witnesses did not foresee and answering concerns about solar variability that were raised in the spring of 1980. The world is in a race to avoid the potential catastrophic impacts of the climate crisis that the CO2 Newsletter records. Coupling battery technology with wind and solar gives us some hope of avoiding the worst while enhancing energy security.

While the reporting on the Senate hearing captured most of my attention, this issue of the CO2 Newsletter reports on other important climate issues that we are still grappling with today including attribution of weather events, the melting of the Greenland ice sheet, and a report from the U.S. National Academy of Sciences on the “Economic and Social Aspects of Carbon Dioxide Increase” led by future Nobel-prize winning economist Thomas Schelling.

Looking back at the history of climate science and policy can trigger wistful thoughts of “what-if?” And relatable feelings of sadness about what we have lost and anger at fossil fuel and other vested interests that have fought to prevent climate action. Although it can be hard, we need to take the long-known climate science coupled with ever improving clean energy technologies and ask “what now?” We can never surrender our fight to curb carbon pollution and for clean energy to provide a future for all the people and amazing inhabitants of this one Earth. 

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CO2 Newsletter

“Can CO2-induced warming be detected yet?” C02 Newsletter Vol 1. no. 6, from 1980…

The sixth edition of the CO2 Newsletter, published bi-monthly by American geologist William N. Barbat between 1979 and 1982 is live. You can download a pdf and see the full text here.

The eight page issue has a front page story asking “Can CO2-induced warming be detected yet?” Barbat does a good job (as ever) in being fair and balanced. At one point he notes

“Madden and Ramanthan theorized that a CO2-induced warming may have been delayed a decade by ocean thermal inertia or has been compensated by a cooling due to other factors. They noted, however, that “uncertainties remain because our current knowledge of climate does not allow us to distinguish between changes due to CO2 and those not to CO2. In order to prove or disprove the existence of the theoretically predicted effects of increasing levels of CO2, it may be necessary to monitor several variables and formulate arguments based on physical as well as statistical grounds to minimize the effect of the many uncertainties involved.”


There’s also an editorial, (highlighting the April 1980 Senate hearings) feedback from readers, excerpts from recent reports and a concluding article “A need for rational answers about energy.”

It remains heart-breaking, of course. Barbat’s editorial begins

“The hearings of April 3, 1980, before the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources on the Effects of Carbon Dioxide Buildup in the Atmosphere represent a step forward in introducing the CO2 problem into U.S. energy policy. Prominent scientists familiar with the CO2 problem were asked “what we politicians and Congress need to do” by Senator Dale Bumpers. Senator Paul E, Tsongas noted that “Current U.S. energy policy has long-term implications, and what we are going to have to figure out is how bad will those impacts be.”

In a day or two, another excellent commentary on the newsletter will be published. Also, I will do a better job of highlighting the individual articles/nuggets in the issue over the coming weeks, before Vol. 2, no. 1 is published.

As ever, if you have comments, suggestions, memories of reading the Newsletter when it was first published, do get in touch.

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CO2 Newsletter CO2 Newsletter articles

Front page news – “Broecker’s 6 meter rise does not appear unreasonable” – C02 Newsletter Vol. 1, no. 5

Here’s the front page story on the CO2 Newsletter for June-July 1980. You can find out more about the newsletter here.

We knew. We knew. Brave diligent people like William Barbat tried to amplify the science, connect the dots, connect the policymakers, the publics and the evidence.

A sense of urgency was introduced to the CO2-greenhouse problem July 30, 1979, when Wallace Broecker (Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory) explained to the U.S. Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs, “We have good evidence that during the peak of the last interglacial period, the sea level did indeed stand 6 meters (20 feet) higher than it does now, and we don’t think the temperature of the globe was any more than 1 degree Celsius warmer than now.”

A 1 degree C warming is generally expected to be reached shortly after the turn of the century if the CO2 buildup continues as in the past, The energy scenario of F. Niehaus (International Atomic Energy Agency) which might halt a CO2-induced global warming just short of 1 degree C, as shown in the inset, would call for a rapid phase-out of fossil mostly by nuclear, This scenario was presented at the same Senate hearing. 

Broecker’s 6 meter rise (point ‘a’) does not appear unreasonable on a plot of temperatures vs. sea elevations ranging from ice ages to no-icecap conditions. Global average temperatures of 4 degrees to 5 degrees C cooler than now are shown for the ice ages, as used by Svante Arrhenius in his CO2 greenhouse model of 1896. Corresponding to these periods of maximum glacial advance are vestiges of shorelines 85 to 130 meters lower than now as shown by bar +b’. (Lag in destruction of the Laurentide ice sheet precludes

other equilibrium values for conditions cooler than now.)

An approximation of the pre-glacial global temperature as shown here 5. degrees C greater than now (point ‘c’) is derived from Eocene and early Oligocene subtropical and tropical sea-surface temperatures in the literature. These sea temperatures were based on oxygen isotope measurements made on shells of pelagic foraminifera which grew at that time,

Arrhenius had also judged that the average Arctic temperatures prior to the existence of ice sheets in that hemisphere were about 8 to 9 degrees C warmer than modern temperatures, based on observations of vegetation and animal life. Allowing for 3X to 4X polar amplification, this would correspond to an average global temperature 2 degrees to 3 degrees C warmer than now, which essentially matches the consensus of estimates for global warming which may accompany a CO2 doubling, Such a doubling is expected to be reached about 2025-2050 if growth of CO2 production continues its historical rise.

Because the West Antarctic icecap is believed by John Mercer (Institute of Polar Studies, Ohio State) to have formed at cooler temperatures than the Greenland icecap, the potential sea elevation corresponding to the absence of the Greenland ice is shown here as the sum of the rise if both icecaps were absent, that is, 12 meters higher than present. This 12 meter height – if valid can be considered to be a minimum value, for it is likely that the East Antarctic ice cap was smaller than its present size when global temperature was 2 degrees to 3 degrees C warmer.

No estimates have been published yet for how fast the Greenland ice sheet might disappear with a CO2 -induced warming, and much controversy still surrounds estimates of how fast the West Antarctic ice sheet may disappear due to a lack of precedents. If the CO2 buildup continues unabated, the  expected warming over the next half century may take place in about one-tenth the time that a similar temperature rise occurred about 10,3000 degrees before present, during which time sea level was about 0.2 to 0.3 meters per decade according to the compilations of Rhodes Fairbridge.

To illustrate the seriousness of a potential equilibrium with the warmness of a CO2 doubling, the Jefferson Memorial is depicted on the same elevation scale. For other comparisons, the absence of icecaps would correspond to sea level at the clock face of London’s Big Ben and up to the roadway of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge.

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CO2 Newsletter

“A sense of urgency was introduced to the CO2-greenhouse problem” -CO2 Newsletter Vol. 1 no. 5

The fifth issue of the CO2 Newsletter, published bi-monthly by American geologist William N. Barbat between 1979 and 1982, is live. You can download a pdf and see the full text here.

The eight page issue has a front page story on testimony by Wally Broecker (famous oceanographer) in July 1979.

A sense of urgency was introduced to the CO2-greenhouse problem July 30, 1979, when Wallace Broecker (Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory) explained to the U.S. Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs, “We have good evidence that during the peak of the last interglacial period, the sea level did indeed stand 6 meters (20 feet) higher than it does now, and we don’t think the temperature of the globe was any more than 1 degree Celsius warmer than now.”

There’s also an editorial, feedback from readers (including people at the UK Climatic Research Unit), excerpts from recent reports and a concluding article “Some Functions and Merits of Energy.”

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CO2 Newsletter CO2 Newsletter commentary

“It is not knowledge we lack. What is missing is the courage to understand what we know and to draw conclusions.” Arwa Aburawa on the CO2 Newsletter…

Arwa Aburawa – photo by Edward Sogunro

Arwa Aburawa is a filmmaker whose work focuses on race, the environment, and the enduring legacies of colonialism.  www.arwaaburawa.co.uk

In his book ‘Exterminate All the Brutes’ (1), the writer Sven Lindqvist carefully and meticulously traces the European colonial legacy of extermination and genocide as he treks across North Africa. And yet, he starts the book with a simple quote: 

You already know enough. 

So do I. 

It is not knowledge we lack. 

What is missing is the courage to understand what we know and to draw conclusions. 

As I look over the previous editions of the CO2 newsletter that Marc wants to explore and examine, I know his work is guided by one quest: to carefully and meticulously trace how long we’ve known about the carbon dioxide and global warming problem. 

And yet, we all know that the answer, sadly, is much too long. 

Kevin Anderson states that since the newsletter’s publication, “humanity has become extraordinarily adept at observing and quantifying the world it is reshaping. With increasing accuracy, we can measure, model, and project the climate system, supported by ever more sensitive instruments, richer datasets, and stronger scientific confidence. Yet this growing clarity has not led to restraint or correction.” Michiel van den Broeke, reflecting on an article on glacial melts in the third edition states that it was “remarkably accurate.” So all the newsletters reveal, in great detail, is how even back in the 1980s we knew enough. 

You did. And so did I. So it is not knowledge we lack. 

But courage to understand what we know and to draw conclusions. 

What does it mean to understand what we know and draw conclusions in this context? 

It means to take action. To transform ourselves and our societies.

It’s to ask the same question the writers of this newsletter asked, to ask the same question Dr Abi Perrin asked, the same question that Marc’s work is ultimately shaped by: When should the studying stop and political action begin?(2)

The newsletter once again gives us another answer; long ago. 

And yet here we are. So once again we are forced to look for the courage to ask why we have failed to take action and draw conclusions about that too.

When Lindqvist asks himself to draw conclusions and confront a reality he already knew – the roots of European colonialism, white supremacy, and genocide – he asks himself to really know and understand his society. To understand what is at the heart of his world and what drives it.

We must find a way to do the same thing. To confront the murderous, genocidal, white supremacist society which continues to accept the horrendous consequences of the climate crisis. A society where billionaire elites fight information, fact and science not with countering information but with a steady stream of confusion and distraction to destabilize us and rob us of any real clarity of what we might do next.

Ruth Wilson Gilmore defined racism as a premature exposure to death(2). I think that its also a fitting definition for the climate crisis and global warming. Colonialism never went away. It is here with us right now. It’s mutated, evolved into the same world which has failed to act on the climate crisis, 

And so it’s time, once again, to look for that courage Lindqvist talked about, and draw conclusions. 

References

Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California by Ruth Wilson Gilmore

The End of the World is Never the End of Everything

Footnote

(1) A book Marc introduced me to many, many years ago now

(2) I think it’s rather telling that the first option mentioned in the newsletter as a course of action  for  Energy and environmental planners in the U.S. was to “Postpone the decision to halt the CO, buildup (inaction itself may be a form or action)”