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Thirty three years ago, on this day, February 12th, 1992, Liberal Party John Hewson decides to give up on pretending to give a shit about “the environment”.

The federal coalition will reconsider its radical position on curbing emission of greenhouse gasses.

The Opposition Leader, Dr Hewson, said yesterday that he had asked the environment spokesman, Mr Chaney, to review the Opposition’s policy of endorsing a target of a 20 per cent reduction in these emissions by 2000.

Grattan, M. 1992. Coalition To Rethink Greenhouse Policy. The Age, 13 February, p.3.

[Here ends the competitive consensus!!]

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 356ppm. As of 2025 it is 426ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was the Libs had gone to the 1990 election trying to win over small g green voters because (big G green voters didn’t exist) and were unsuccessful and believed that they were stabbed in the back. The new Liberal leader John Hewon, was looking forward to the 1993 election, which he must have felt fairly confident that he was going to win, given the recession that we had to have, which had Paul Keating’s name all over it. Keating was by now installed as prime minister, and so Hewson was looking to, in the words of a later conservative leader, cut the green crap. 

This was noticed, at the time, by the way. See this

“According to the director of science and technology policy at Murdoch University, Fightback would result in a six per cent increase in car use immediately, and 28 per cent in a few years.

The table shows that Australia is the third worst polluter in the OECD region and that our poor performance is very much related to low fossil-fuel prices.

If Australia is to get its carbon emissions down to a level comparable with other OECD countries, some form of carbon tax will have to be introduced.

International pressure to move in this direction is likely to intensify over the next decade.”

Davidson, K. 1993. Hewson Error Of Emission.The Age, 11 February, p.13. 

What I think we can learn from this is the Libs had a policy. It didn’t serve them with the electorate. They ditched it, and they never got it back, and this was the moment when Hewson ditched it.

What happened next Hewson lost the unlosable election in part thanks to a birthday cake and how much his flat tax would cost.  But now goes around bleating on about the environment and saying Market Forces are gonna fix it. Australia has been so badly let down by its political and economic “elite”. Buncha idiots at absolute best.

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.

Merry Christmas/Atheistmas. Have a read of this – “How Dickens Made Christmas White”

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20181217-how-dickens-made-white-christmas-a-myth

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.

Also on this day: 

December 25, 1988 Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands says “the earth is slowly dying”

December 25, 1989 – business press pushback about Global Warning “panic” begins…

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.

Also on this day: 

November 26, 1996 – Australian climate modelling is ridiculed

November 26, 1998 – “National Greenhouse Strategy” (re)-launched

November 26, 2008 – pre-CPRS meeting (yawn)

November 26, 2008 – Climate Change Act becomes law