The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 356.5ppm. As of 2025 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that various state governments had promised that they would create and enact greenhouse strategies. The Australian Capital Territory, (not a state), was among them, It had in fact, agreed to The Toronto target early on. And so this launch, is in the months leading up to the Rio Earth Summit in June,, the kind of thing that happens.
What I think we can learn from this is that the wheels of bureaucracy necessarily grind slowly, but they do grind, if not scuppered by new political dispensations.
What happened next
There has been fairly good progress (yes, yes, I know, not consumption based, no big industry blah blah).
Twenty two years ago, on this day, January 14th, 2003,
Human-induced global warming was a key factor in the severity of the 2002 drought in Australia, the worst in the country’s history, according to a report issued Tuesday [14 January] by WWF Australia. The report is part of an effort by Australian environmental organizations to convince the Liberal Government of John Howard to reverse its policy and sign the Kyoto climate protocol.
Human Actions Blamed for Worst Australian Drought. Jan 15. http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/jan2003/2003-01-15-02.html SYDNEY, Australia, January 15, 2003 (ENS) –
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 376ppm. As of 2025 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that George Bush and then John Howard had both pulled out of negotiations around Kyoto Protocol, citing economic interests. (But it went deeper than that it was about culture and the way the world should be.) The Millennium drought was causing mayhem, and WWF was oh, sorry, trying to stitch together coalitions to put pressure on governments, especially the federal government.
What I think we can learn from this is that policy entrepreneurs even the centrists, (and you don’t get more centrist, or, in fact, neoliberal and elite etc, than WWF) will have to try multiple times to get any attention. This particular report gained no traction. WWF did further work with the Wentworth group and insurers. It wasn’t until another business friendly coalition back in 2006, that they began to get through. It’s a bit like trying to chop down a tree. You can’t do it in one blow, usually.
What happened next
The emissions kept climbing. The Age of consequences (for rich white people) has begun.
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 419ppm. As of 2024 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that XR had been in the usual death spiral of diminishing returns. That happens to all overblown and overambitious social movement organisations who don’t understand that they’re a symptom rather than a cause. And so in order to grab a little bit more attention and try and stitch together a wider coalition or be part of a wider coalition, they made this clickbaity announcement that they were “quitting.” All they were quitting was the disruptive stuff, which was being taken on by Just Stop Oil anyway.
What we learn is, well, have a look at this article I wrote in the Conversation, then tell me I’m wrong.
What happened next? They didn’t get 100,000 people on a day or anywhere near it. And the main thing in my inbox from Extinction Rebellion is stuff I already knew and emails pleading for more money.
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 context was it turns out that white is not normal. To conceive of white as the normal, everything else as a disappointment is simply wrong. Am I talking about white supremacism and the normative bias around that? Well, yes, of course I am. But I’m also talking about the idea of a white Christmas – that it would snow on Christmas Day. Enough for postcards and all that. And the amazing thing is that you can #BlameDickens. There’s a really good article See, link here, pointing out that when Dickens was writing in the 1840s and 50s, he was harking back to some really severely cold winters including the last time the Thames froze solid, in 1814. Enough for an elephant to walk across.
What we learn is that our memories and norms around what the weather was like are exceptionally unreliable. For all sorts of well-understood reasons about how memory functions – with the peak end bias and so forth.
What happened next denialists keep pointing out that memory is faulty as if that is a knockdown argument.
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-four and thirty years ago, on this day, November 29th, 1990/1994, two climate denialists who really ought to have known better (and did, before idiocy overtook them) were spouting their nonsens.
29 November 1990 Fred Singer The Greenhouse Effect and Global Warming: Fact or Fiction? Tasman Institute Seminar
and
29 November 1994 – Canberra Times piece IPA whining about greenhouse, wheeling out Brian Tucker, who had been head of the CSIRO’s Atmospheric Sciences Division.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 354ppm/359ppm. As of 2024 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context is this: We have two examples of high status dickheads, one American, one Australian, denying the reality of climate change. What were both sort of relatively crucial moments in history. So in 1990, Ros Kelly had just come back from the Second World Climate Conference. The negotiations for a climate treaty were about to begin in earnest within a couple of months. In the second case, there was a battle going on about whether to have a carbon tax. And in both cases, the denialists will have said, “Oh, it’s all a scare. It’s all hysteria. Nothing should be done, needs to be done. And any action that is taken is merely rent seeking and appealing to silly ill informed portions of the electorate.”
Gee, that went well didn’t it? And I want to say this again. Fuck you, and burn in hell you pricks.
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 eight years ago, on this day, November 26th, 1966, the UK Conservation Society has its first meeting.
Inaugural General Meeting of the Conservation Society, Herring 2001
Lady Eve Balfour, ‘Inaugural address to the Conservation Society’, 26 November 1966,
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 321ppm. As of 2024 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the great British public were getting a little worried about pollution, species loss, pesticides, you name it. And there had been a letter in The Observer a few months earlier, that kick started the whole thing. And this was the first meeting of the Conservation Society. (Compare it with, for example, Amnesty, which also started with a newspaper article followed by a letter.)
What we learn is that by the mid 1960s, the problems were becoming apparent, and couldn’t be denied really. And groups of citizens were taking it upon themselves to come together to try to inform/lobby governments.
What happened next, the Conservation Society held some useful meetings. In 1968 its president was Lord Ritchie Calder. And he gave a blistering speech called Hell on Earth which had a small mention of the problem of C02 buildup, something that he had been talking about in mildly apocalyptic terms, at least in 1963 and had already mentioned on radio at the beginning of 1968.
And the ConSoc, had its high watermark, probably with Paul Ehrlich’s visit in 1971. But thereafter, the fact that it was a small, relatively small c-conservative organisation, and there were newer, more media-attuned organisations like Friends of the Earth and then Greenpeace meant that ConSoc was on a long, slow decline. However, this can be overplayed. And in the mid 70s, there’s a series of really interesting and useful reports by ConSoc groups in different parts of the UK.
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 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 question is this. Who is the bigger climate criminal – John Howard, Prime Minister of Australia 1996-2007, or Anthony Albanese, same gig from 2022 to ??. It’s not as straightforward as you think.
My answer is below. It’s not clear cut, and I am keen to hear your arguments. In the tweets/replies/comments, etc. Suggested hashtag #HowardOrAlbo
For those to young to remember, and those who have done their best to repress the horror: John Howard did enormous damage to Australia, across a wide range of issues. For these purposes, I’ll stick to climate.
A one paragraph history lesson.
After the shock of the Liberals going to the 1990 Federal election with a stronger emissions reduction target than the ALP, the opponents of meaningful Australian climate action had successfully mobilised in the early 1990s. They prevented any ambitious contribution by Australia to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in 1992. They gutted the Ecologically Sustainable Development process initiated by Bob Hawke, Labor Prime Minister from 1983-1991. They stopped any effective action going into the National Greenhouse Response Strategy (December 1992). In all this they were helped by Labor’s Paul Keating, who rolled Hawke in late 1991. In 1994-5 the opponents of climate action, co-ordinated by the Business Council of Australia and what we now know as the Minerals Council of Australia. They laid the groundwork for Australia to plead for “special treatment” internationally, using farcical economic modelling.
Then John Howard came and dialled it all up not to eleven, but to twelve. He doubled down on the economic modelling, which was all horseshit, literally funded by the oil coal and gas companies. He made promises about renewables in order to buy off the worried Liberals, promises he then did everything to avoid keeping. He arm-twisted and bullshitted his way to an incredibly generous deal at Kyoto (and then pulled out, once his mate George W. Bush had led the way). He did everything he could to slow renewables, including organising a meeting of fossil fuel company CEOs to demand their help (I am not making this up). He twice killed off an Emissions Trading Scheme, the second time – in 2003 – against his united cabinet. On and on and on I could go.
Anthony Albanese is worse.
If we can only send one Prime Minister to the International Court of Justice at the Hague it should be loveable raised-in-social-housing Albo.
Here’s my reasoning.
John Howard has two (weak-ish to laughable) arguments in, ah, “mitigation.”
First – he was born in 1939. He was raised to believe that there were no limits to the Earth’s bounty, and that if there WERE limits, well, technology would fix them (1) . He was 30 when the whole eco-doom thing started, and could say “this is a yoof fad”, even while his party, the Liberal Party, created a Minister for the Environment for the first time. I wrote about this in an academic article called “Wind beneath their contempt: Why Australian policymakers oppose solar and wind energy”(Hudson, 2017). There’s a Conversation article about it here.
Second – in the 1990s, even after the Second Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 1995-6 it was possible – if you really really engaged in a lot of motivated reasoning – to believe that climate change was mostly a greenie scare designed to create a dreaded Superstate of regulation. The commies had lost the Cold War and were starting a war about Heat to have another go.
It was nonsense, of course it was, but we all believe nonsensical things, occasionally. And so what if some temperature records were falling? Australia is a land of extremes… Dorothea McKellar yadda yadda yadda. Yes, there’s a Millennium Drought (pray for rain, said Howard, in April 2007), but Australia has always had droughts. Howard could grasp some flimsy bullshit climate “doubt.” It had no substance, but it was there.
Finally, in his defence, too at least Howard never pretended to give a rat’s arse. At least he had enough respect to be open in his contempt for the black armbands, the green armbands etc.
Albo has none of that.
Albo was born in 1963. He was 9 when The Limits to Growth came out. Questions of environmental damage and danger were just there for him growing up. He was 20 when the Franklin Dam was saved by his beloved Labor Party. He was 25 when Bob Hawke came over all “green,” when Australia was freaking out about the hole in the Ozone and the Greenhouse Effect.
Albo? How many impossible bushfires? How many killer heatwaves and temperature records smashed? How many incinerated animals? A billion? Two? Are you waiting till the number gets to 5 billion, Albo?
What are you planning as your excuse, in ten years, Albo? I’d really like to know. Oh and, btw, that sound you hear? It’s your old boss, Tom Uren, spinning in his grave.
Whatever your excuse is, it won’t fool anyone. Except maybe you? And maybe in the Alboverse that’s all that matters. Top “leadership”, mate.
Meanwhile, Albo has told us how much he cares. Albo has been making a song and dance about how much he cares for two decades.
The Senate Inquiry into the Energy White Paper has concluded the Energy White Paper will delay critical action on climate change for another twenty years [All Our Yesterdays post here]
And the ALP is forever telling the Greens they are irresponsible (2). Because Labor has suuuuch a good record of following through.
On that subject, a quick digression about one of Albo’s enablers.
Health Minister Mark “The Climate Wars” Butler, sat there like a Trappist monk, watching Albo shit over the portfolio that was his “passion”. Mate your silence is heard. People remember your book, all the lovely words. People hear it and draw conclusions about the quantity and the quality of your sincerity and your courage. You think anyone will be impressed when you mumble something about Caucus rules and Party loyalty? How about some loyalty to the community you claim to represent? The city you are supposed to speak for? How about, I don’t know, even some species loyalty? Mene mene tekel upharsin, eh?
So Howard IS a climate criminal. He should be sitting in the dock by the North Sea. But Albo belongs alongside him, and I think in front of him. Albo has no excuses. Not the excuse of outlook, not knowledge. Albo is the guy in the Kudelka cartoon from last weekend.
Basically, this. As per Richard Denniss’s quotetweet
Australia has relied on rorting rules rather than cutting carbon emissions for decades…
Carbon offsets, carbon capture & storage, clean coal…& now nuclear…any magical future solution can be used to justify subsidising fossil fuel expansion in the present
Yep. This is bipartisan. But the chickens are coming home to roost (or are they among the incinerated billions of animals?) And Australia’s “ambition” is utterly inadequate, as per Bill Hare’s May 2024 Conversation article and Carbon ActionTracker work.
[Btw, the disclaimer at the bottom, in reference to Royce Kurmelovs, applies equally to Dennis and Hare.]
But before you go out and save the world, inquiring minds would like to know – in your opinion – Albo or John Howard? Who is the bigger climate criminal?
Further reading
I have focussed on two “personalities.” There is always the danger of a morality tale, ignoring the awesome power of the networks of determined, clever and remorseless individuals and groups that have played and won the game called “capture the state.” The reading below (especially the Royce Kurmelovs’ book, to be spoken of in the same breath as Guy Pearse’s work) should help with that.
Even Tony Abbott , born 1957, kinda sorta has that excuse (though he and his best mate Malcolm Turnbull are the same age)
I am not now, and never have been a member of the Green Party of anywhere. Or any political party. And as for the Greens, I am not always a fan of how they do bread and butter politics. Here and here. And here, I guess.
DISCLAIMER
I helped Royce with bits of research and we continue to collaborate. For clarity, he had no foreknowledge of this article, nothing to do with it. Same goes for two other ppl whose work I drew on – Richard Dennis’s and Bill Hare. Didn’t consult them in this, no idea if they will applaud or be horrified. My views alone.
Two hundred years ago, on this day, October 21st, 1824, Joseph Aspdin got a patent…
By 1817, he had set up in business on his own in central Leeds. He must have experimented with cement manufacture during the next few years, because on 21 October 1824 he was granted the British Patent BP 5022 entitled An Improvement in the Mode of Producing an Artificial Stone, in which he coined the term “Portland cement” by analogy with the Portland stone,[3] an oolitic limestone that is quarried on the channel coast of England, on the Isle of Portland in Dorset. See below for the text of the patent. [Wikipedia]
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 270ishppm. As of 2024 it is 422ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the Industrial Revolution (not called that at the time!) was in full swing, all sorts of wondrous chemical and physics innovations were happening. often led by empiricists, rather than theoreticians because we didn’t even have an atomic theory of matter at that point, or not one that we liked.
Why this matters is that cement has an astonishing carbon footprint. 8% of global emissions? I haven’t had time to track down a source better than CBS. But ballpark,that seems right-ish] And we’re not going to be net zero if we’re still making lots of things out of steel and cement using current techniques. Whether you can muck around with the clinker or you need CCS, who knows? We’ll find out. My money is that climate change will continue to be an unmitigated disaster.
What happened next we went head over heels in love with cement.
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 long-anticipated shift from “climate change is a leftie anti-progress hoax” to “it’s too late to do anything except geo-engineer the planet” is underway.
Speaking on the far-right television programme GB News on Wednesday 16th October s, former Conservative minister Jacob Rees-Mogg on Wednesday 16th October said the following
“When it comes to climate change, most of the public discourse surrounds hair shirt measures to cut emissions and phase out fossil fuels. But is this really where our focus ought to be?
“Perhaps, instead of being obsessed by futile attempts to stop climate change, a goal that’s looking increasingly out of reach, we should turn our attention to the virtues of green technologies and innovative developments to tackle some of the most practical and immediate challenges.”
[continues ad nauseam]
For once failing to meet the award-winning standards for fierce scrutiny, historical awareness and political balance for which GN News is globally respected [yes, that is SARCASM] the journalist in question failed to ask Rees-Mogg the following questions
a) Had he ever peddled climate skepticism (e.g. in a 2013 opinion piece in the Telegraph), despite his political hero Margaret Thatcher having made several ‘time to save the world’ speeches in 1988-1990
b) Had he tried to stop his mate Michael Gove in an (ultimately unsuccessful) effort to remove climate change from the National Curriculum.
c) Had he ever tried to stop his former boss, Prime Minister David Cameron from “cutting the green crap” like house insulation, greener transport etc, that would have led to lower bills (and probably lower emissions)
d) Is this not simply a classic ‘reverse-ferret’ – changing position so quickly that everyone will be too busy feeling their head spin to ask obvious questions about intelligence, integrity and the rest of it (that nobody expects from politicians anymore anyway).
The answers are, of course. Yes, no., no, and yes.
This switch from “not happening” to “too late to do anything” is time-honoured, and across many issues. See this 1986 clip from the classic BBC sitcom Yes Prime Minister. “The standard Foreign Office four stage procedure”
It’s been happening around climate, intermittently, since the late 2000s.
