Category: Japan

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Japan

August 6, 1945 – Hiroshima

Seventy nine years ago, on this day, August 6th, 1945,

Hiroshima. Roughly 100,000 Japanese people killed.

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 310ppm. As of 2024 it is 424ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that the Americans were wondering about what to do about Japan. Number one, physical invasion (“Operation Olympic”) was going to be “mildly costly” let’s say, in terms of casualties. And number two, Stalin said he was coming into the Pacific War, three months after Germany’s surrender, and that three months was almost up. So if you can do something, do it quick. And crucially, Truman was well up for it. Attlee, who was UK Prime Minister by this time, was too – he later said that no one told him about the radioactive implications. They just told him it was a bigger bomb. 

What we should learn is, I suppose you can make a “moral” case for using an atomic bomb to kill 100,000 human beings, civilians. in Hiroshima, which was not a military target. I mean, how they’d already firestormed Tokyo. If you want to make that “moral” argument, go ahead and fill your boots. I think the one that you really can’t do that for is Nagasaki two days later.

 Fun fact – Kyoto was on a short list of four places to get nuked.

What happened next? Well, first we got the bomb. And that was good because we love peace and motherhood. Then Russia got the bomb, but that’s okay, because the balance of powers maintained that way. And here we 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.

Also on this day: 

August 6, 1990 – another climate documentary shown…

August 6, 1992 – Australian environmentalists and businesses united… in disgust at Federal bureaucrats #auspol #climate

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Japan

August 2, 1991- Pledge and Review…

Thirty three years ago, on this day, August 2nd, 1991,

The Japanese float the idea of a “Pledge and Review” solution to the climate policy blockage.

Grubb, M and Steen, Nicola (1991) Pledge and Review Processes: Possible Components of a Climate Convention, Report of a Workshop held 2 August 1991, London: Royal Institute of International Affairs.

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 356ppm. As of 2024 it is 4xxppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that the negotiations towards the text of a Treaty that could be signed at the June 1992 Rio Earth Summit were basically stalled (thanks primarily, but not entirely, to US intransigence). And so all sorts of log-jam breaking schemes were being proposed.

What we learn is that where we are now, we’ve been before (especially with this – see below).

What happened next. Pledge and Review was dismissed as something that simply would not deliver the required ambition, something that would allow bullshitting and loopholes. Then it was dusted off, twenty plus years later, and became the basis for the “Paris Agreement.” And it turns out it allows bullshitting and loopholes. Who knew?

What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.

Also on this day: 

 August 2, 1970 – LA Times runs #climate change front page story

August 2, 1994 – Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating says greenies should ignore “amorphous issue of greenhouse”

August 2, 2007 – Russia plants a flag on the Arctic sea-bed.

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Japan Ozone

September 10, 1973- Ozone concerns on display in Kyoto…

Fifty years ago, on this day, September 10, 1973 

During the early 1970s, the space shuttle was being developed by NASA in the United States. The first significant elaboration of the chlorine-ozone layer hypothesis was offered at a scientific gathering in Kyoto, Japan on 10,11 and 12 September 1973, when Richard Stolarski and Ralph Cicerone, both from the University of Michigan, presented the findings from their research.

(Rowlands,1995: 48 [Cicerone in 2001 was head of NAS, when Dubya Bush asked for review of IPCC]

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 329.4ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that while the question of Ozone depletion caused by SSTs (supersonic transports) such as Concorde had already been a “hot” scientific and political issue it was going to be less of one with the shuttle because by definition they were not going to be many of them. But it was part of the general upsurge of awareness about global atmospheric consequences of human activity and Kyoto, well… 26 years later Kyoto would be by the first test of the climate treaty.

What I think we can learn from this stuff has a long history. I don’t particularly rate this blog post though so rough cicerone pops up elsewhere you could make something about that.

What happened next

The shuttle programme finally got underway officially in 1981 but two shuttles were lost which is about in line with what you’d expect given how is all put together and designed. Was it worth the Enormous cost to put some clowns in on the moon as it were is there really a good case for humans in space it’s not at all clear to me that it’s worth it.

Rowland and Molina were doing their thing – 

By December [1973], Rowland and Molina had completed their calculations, and in June 1974 their paper was published in Nature. The results of their research were startling, but as Rowland recalled afterward, “There was no moment when I yelled ‘Eureka!’ I just came home one night and told my wife, ‘The work is going every well, but it looks like the end of the world.’”

(Oppenheimer & Boyle, 1990: 44) 

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.

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Japan United Kingdom United States of America

July 26, 1967 – Allen Ginsberg tells Gary Snyder it’s “a general lemming situation”

On this day, Allen Ginsberg wrote to his friend Gary Snyder, about what he’d heard at the ‘Dialectics of Liberation’ conference, from Gregory Bateson.

Ginsberg’s letter of 26 July 1967, sent from New York to Kyoto where Snyder was then living, in which he notes, in a telegraphic style the poets sometimes used in their correspondence:

 Now International Dialectics of Liberation—[Stokely] Carmichael angry and yelling, I stayed calm and kept chanting prajnaparamita. Gregory Bateson says auto CO2 layer gives planet half-life: 10-30 years before 5 degree temp rise irreversible melt polar ice caps, 400 feet water inundate everything below Grass Valley 58—to say nothing of young pines in Canada dying radiation—death of rivers—general lemming situation. (Ginsberg in Morgan, 2008, p. 418)

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 322.5ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that Bateson had been reading Barry Commoner’s “Science and Survival” published the previous year.  The book was extremely influential in its own way, and helped get people switched on to the carbon threat.

What I think we can learn from this is that about the carbon dioxide build up,there was ‘common knowledge’ from earlier than folks realise…

What happened next

Ginsberg was on TV in September, and gave one of the first warnings about the greenhouse effect.

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.

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International processes Japan United Kingdom

June 29, 1979 – Thatcher uses carbon dioxide build-up to shill for nuclear power

Forty four years ago, on this day, June 29, 1979, at the G7 meeting in Tokyo, new UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher gave a radio interview to journalist Bob Friend where she explicitly mentioned the greenhouse effect, in order to defend/extend nuclear (this during G7 meeting in Tokyo).

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 339ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that an interdepartmental committee set up by the Labour government was in process of delivering its findings. The Thatcher government wanted to bury it. Meanwhile Thatcher was a big fan of new nuclear… Thatcher had been briefed about the reality of climate change by her Chief Scientific Advisor, John Ashworth and according to an interview with him she responded with incredulity and the statement ‘you want me to worry about the weather?’

What I think we can learn from this

Thatcher knew about the greenhouse effect and was willing to use it as a wedge issue against anti-nuclear greens.

What happened next

The G7 communique name-checked climate change, which then largely disappeared from these sorts of meetings for ten years. It would be 1988 before she started talking sense possibly after Crispin Tickell finally got through to her.

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.

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Japan

June 1, 2011 – Japanese office workers into short sleeves to save the planet

Twelve years ago, on this day, June 1, 2011, the Japanese Government

 “marked the start of the Ministry of the Environment’s Super Cool Biz campaign, with “full-page newspaper ads and photos of ministry workers smiling rather self-consciously at their desks wearing polo shirts and colorful Okinawa kariyushi shirts.” “ [Wikipedia]

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 392.3ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that Japan, after the 1973 oil shock, had already eaten lots of the low hanging fruit with regards to energy efficiency. Therefore, further reducing carbon emissions was simply not that easy to do. So these sorts of behavioral efforts – I don’t want to call them gimmicks – became more attractive to policymakers. And my (pitifully inadequate) understanding of Japanese culture is that it’s quite interested in public displays of conformity and dressing the part. So wearing short sleeves had been a social faux pas. And, therefore, government campaigns to make it less of a faux pas were kind of necessary. 

What I think we can learn from this is that cultures change slowly, usually. And we needed a lot more cultural change to reduce our emissions. We didn’t do that. We are not doing that. We won’t do it. And therefore our culture will change. But not in ways that we are particularly going to like, but those are the consequences of our actions.

What happened next

The Japanese are still wearing short sleeves in the office, I think. See this from 2020..

What is Cool Biz in Japan?

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.

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Japan

 March 1, 1954 – Lucky Dragon incident gives the world the word “fall out”

Sixty nine years ago, on this day, March 1, 1954, some folks got unlucky on the “Lucky Dragon”.

Aside from ratcheting up anxieties about the Cold War, peacetime tests of hydrogen bombs changed the way scientists around the world thought about the earth itself. It began when radioactive ash from a 1954 American nuclear test fell out of the sky and blanketed a Japanese fishing vessel, the Fukuryu Maru (Lucky Dragon). The crew was hospitalised, one man died, the fish market collapsed – and the chairman of the US Atomic Energy Commission, Lewis Strauss, unwisely blamed the Japanese for having been at the wrong place at the wrong time. The international incident introduced a new word to people around the world: fallout.

(Hamblin, 2013: 94-5)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daigo_Fukury%C5%AB_Maru

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 313ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that the Americans and the Russians were, for separate reasons, blowing up atomic and hydrogen bombs in the atmosphere; for the lulz, and the military posturing, and the priesthood of defence intellectuals, etc. The Pacific is big, but not so big that some Japanese fishing boats didn’t wander into a fallout cloud as we would now call it.

What I think we can learn from this

It’s how the world got the word fallout, both as a literal and metaphorical device. It made people aware that the radiation could get everywhere. It probably was in the back of Neville Shute’s mind as part of the inspiration for On The Beach. And of course, once strontium 90 started accumulating in mother’s milk and baby’s teeth, everyone got the idea that technology could now have an influence, not just on a local, but on a global scale. (check out Project Sunshine)

What happened next

In the short-term, this was one more thing that was nudging Roger Revelle towards looking at carbon dioxide-

“Moreover, in 1954 fallout from an American thermonuclear test injured the crew of a Japanese fishing vessel and the entire Japanese nation became panicky about the safety of eating fish. Besieged by public anxieties, the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) stepped up its program of research on where fallout ends up in the environment.69 Revelle became involved in the problem as chair of a National Academy of Sciences committee assigned to study the effects of radioactive material on fisheries. Revelle himself was interested chiefly in the disposal of wastes. But he was also in touch with Libby, now at the AEC and heading its study of fallout, in connection with the contamination of surface waters by isotopes from bomb tests. Research on ocean mixing had become a topic of international importance “

Weart, 1997:343

In 1963, there was a test ban treaty. And so the boys with their toys started to do it underground. 

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

Hamblin, J. Arming Mother Nature

Weart, S. 1977

Categories
International processes Japan

June 29, 1979 – G7 says climate change matters. Yes, 1979.

On this day, June 1979, the declaration at the end of the G7 Meeting in Tokyo contained this gem.

3. We pledge our countries to increase as far as possible coal use, production, and trade, without damage to the environment. We will endeavor to substitute coal for oil in the industrial and electrical sectors, encourage the improvement of coal transport, maintain positive attitudes toward investment for coal projects, pledge not to interrupt coal trade under long-term contracts unless required to do so by a national emergency, and maintain, by measures which do not obstruct coal imports, those levels of domestic coal production which are desirable for reasons of energy, regional and social policy. “We need to expand alternative sources of energy, especially those which will help to prevent further pollution, particularly increases of carbon dioxide and sulphur oxides in the atmosphere.” http://www.g7.utoronto.ca/summit/1979tokyo/communique.html

The G7 had started in the mid-70s, initially as a one-off meeting hosted by the French. Everyone was in a panic about the economy (stagflation), the uppityness (and yes, I mean that – freighted with all the horrors of white supremacism) of people of colour in the Majority World, and also the unruliness of the locals (strikes etc).

Why this matters. 

Promises been going on a long time, haven’t they?

What happened next?

Climate was not there on the agenda in Venice 1980, and once Reagan came in, that was it – it would be another ten years before the G7 pretended to be green.