The Climate Change Committee (CCC) has again called on the government to strengthen efforts to meet domestic climate targets, warning that “mixed messages” on the UK’s decarbonisation plans risk damaging the country’s leadership position at UN climate talks.
The independent advisory body will today publish a review of the UK’s role at last year’s COP28 Climate Summit in Dubai, which praises efforts to deliver a broadly ambitious new international accord, but warns urgent action is now required to deliver on the goals set under the UAE Consensus.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 422ppm. As of 2025 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that a year ago, the Climate Change Committee, created in 2008 as part of the whole “Climate Change Act” thing, gave its latest advice to Sunak’s government (as if Sunak’s government was listening! As if Starmer’s will).
What will be more interesting is what advice it gives Starmer’s government about the seventh carbon budget. This is set to be released on February 26th. Heathrow expansion?!
What I think we can learn from this is that quasi-independent bodies like the Climate Change Committee can offer all the advice they like, and politicians will, by and large, ignore them unless the advice is going to suit the interests of big business. Oh, call me a cynic.
What happened next
Well, it was only a year ago. Nothing much has happened in British politics since then.
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.
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.
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.
Three posts today about something that happened on Monday 9th October 2006
Australian scientists and charities produced a report “Australia Responds: Helping Our Neighbours Fight Climate Change” – see this blog post
The Australian Labor Party piggy-backed its own statement about climate refugees – see this blog post
Therefore someone born on that day in the South Pacific would be turning 18. Happy Birthday (a letter to them here)
The only thing left to talk about, imo, is what is to be done now, by people of good intentions and determination?
I offer – for what it is worth, a few suggestions about what white middle-class people like me, with training and education, might usefully do. I am happy to be told I am wrong, but please be specific. I am happy to be told what I have missed – as per the organisations, I will add advice.
Then I link to organisations working on this stuff. I have no idea if they’re any good. The list is NOT exhaustive. If you know of other good organisations, please share and I will add them.
What is to be done
Educate yourselves and others about climate change – not the science (bare bones is enough there) but the politics, the techniques used by those who want to slow or stop action, the pathologies that affect social movements and civil society in their (so-far not all that impressive) efforts to make states and corporations be less ecocidal. Or do the ecocide slower.
One resource (I don’t do false modesty – is the AOY site. It’s ramshackle, under-signposted but not actually THAT hard to use. There’s a search box.
Another resource (I don’t do false modesty; it’s a passive-aggressive extortion bid for attention and reassurance) is ME. I am MORE than happy to come on podcasts, do workshops etc. I am, on my day, a good communicator and also designer/executor of formats that are genuinely participatory and energising. Hit me up
You need to know about – the history (at least a little) of Australia’s international criminality on climate change, which is ABSOLUTELY 100% bipartisan. There is net zero significant different between LNP and ALP on this.
Take sustained action. Sorry, but that means being involved, at least a little bit, in a group.
Groups suck. They are riven with (usually undeclared) turf wars, brittle egos, dysfunction etc. They waste time on pointless meetings
But if you try to do stuff on your own you will be a) less effective and b) very likely shorter-lived in your efforts.
Groups suck. But suck it up…
Try to be a less-terrible ally.
People of colour, poor people etc have got far more immediate (and, gasp) important things to be doing than helping well-meaning white people be less-terrible allies. It’s exhausting emotionally, it means they have less time for the stuff they need to do.
There already exist LOADS of resources for white people to get stuck into. Here’s a brief. Please suggest additions. Please USE these resources. Please step into discomfort (together) and stay there.
Liu, Helena. “White allyship.” In Redeeming Leadership, pp. 141-156. Bristol University Press, 2020
If you have academic training and access to resources, do two things
First, share the skills you have – research, writing, etc – with people who want to take on those tasks. Don’t be a chokepoint, for your own particular needs
Secondly, expose lies and tell the truth. Study the rich. There is so much to be done, so few doing it.
Organisations
[NB This is from a google search. If someone else who actually knows first-hand has made a better list, I will take this down and point to their work]
This workshop will explore how we can build solidarity with climate impacted and marginalized communities, by understanding the ways that systems of oppression impact our activism, everyday lives and those of our communities.
On Saturday 6th (well, Sunday 7th am Australia time) I was uploading already written and proofed blog posts to the website. I had enough attention left in me to realise that at least a year ago I had fouled up my database, and the upcoming post for “October 9” was utterly invalid. To see if I could easily Close The Gap,I went to my SHED (Secret Huge Eco Database) to see what I had for that date.
I found something old that I knew about but had never really understood its implications. Or maybe, to be extra-fair to myself – the implications weren’t apparent when I entered it.
This has led to, shall we say “a flurry of activity.”
Can you believe this stuff? Plenty of people can, because they need to…
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 399ppm. As of 2024 it is 422ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the Paris COP – the one that everyone was building as “putting it all back together, (again)” was coming up. And therefore, you get all sorts of business groups trying to gee themselves up and provide cover for the danger of potential regulation. So alongside “We Mean Business”, you’ve got the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative, for example.
What we learn is that when there’s a “big event” coming up, you get all sorts of proactive or should I say pre-emptive efforts by business to create bodies that sound cool, and will be quote-worthy, so that journalists who are having to report on potentially-dangerous-to-their-career-stuff have some both-sides-isms quotes tht they can chuck in, for “balance”. You want a for instance? Well like the inability of capitalism to cope with the shit that it is causing. The journos can get a React Quote from some nice-sounding business lobby, rather than just have to state the bare facts that we are doomed and the people doing the dooming don’t give a shit.
It’s also useful for junior policy wonks and rightwing politicians – they can point to these outfits and say soothingly (if only to themselves!) “the system responds.”
What happened next? We Mean Businesses is still going. I think it’s sponsoring various news services to build a cuddly name for itself (quite a clever thing to do, btw).
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-three years ago, on this day, September 6th, 1991,
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 355ppm. As of 2024 it is 420ishppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that everyone in science of climate science and so forth, was aware of the whole greenhouse issue. And here was some nice science about the atmosphere of Titan, one of the moons of Saturn, and the greenhouse and reverse greenhouse or anti greenhouse effect on Titan.
It didn’t, to my knowledge, have any bearing whatsoever on the politics of the time. That’s not why I’m talking about it; this site is already far too much about the politics and could do with a bit more science. So here we are.
What happened next? People kept staring through telescopes figuring out the universe. Often quite expensive telescopes.
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 “What to do about C02?” documentary, directed by Russell Porter, is 40 years old. The tweet about it did well, and I contacted Russell to say that people were watching his (excellent) documentary.
“I used to say in my teaching that a good documentary film should work for any audience anywhere, beyond its own time and place.
“TV current affairs and news programmes on the same subjects are by definition ephemeral – they usually disappear after their initial broadcast.
“The challenge for documentarians is to find the universal truths behind the specific context, and I think the enduring appeal of these CSIRO films demonstrates this point.
“But as I said in the interview, I doubt this kind of film could be made today, certainly not within an institutional context.
“For a start the national institutions like CSIRO no longer have the luxury of their own production and distribution facilities.
“Secondly, the integrity of the institutions themselves has been fatally compromised by the imposition of Thatcherite privatisations and the need to “make profit” at the expense of all other values.
“The current revelations and legal / personal disasters relating to UK sub-post masters as a result of privatised corporate greed, lies and cover-ups is a case in point.
“It is revealing that there was no official reaction to these monumental injustices until the ITV broadcast of a compelling dramatised documentary. “Mr Bates Vs. The Post Office”.“
NB He wants to make clear that
it is just my personal view rather than anything formally connected to CSIRO. I haven’t had anything to do with the organisation since 1988
I say – one of the crucial losses in the last 40 years (not that before then was by any means perfect) has been the stupefaation and demoralisation of those opposed to escalating murder and mayhem against all other species, and future generations of humans. Our sense-making has been attacked, mostly successfully. And here we are.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 359ppm. As of 2024 it is 426ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that Senator John Faulkner was a relatively new Federal Environment Minister, and was going to be making various launches of policy documents. John Coulter had been around talking and thinking about environmental issues since the early 70s. And as a Senator for the Democrats, was well entitled to offer some free advice.
What we learn is that there have been decent parliamentarians and I should say that I think both Coulter and Faulkner were decent parliamentarians trying to grapple with these issues.
What happened next? I don’t know if Faulkner took on board anything that Coulter said, there was then the battle over carbon tax. On Friday, February 10 1995 Faulkner ran up the white flag and instead we got the frankly ridiculous Greenhouse Challenge. And here we are. The emissions kept rising.
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 390ppm. As of 2024 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was the clue is in the name, Deepwater and Horizon, both implying that we’re having to go further and further to find oil, that the energy return on investment is lowering and it’s getting riskier. And so it did. The context was that we’ve been extracting oil. If you don’t count Burma for 170 years, we’re very good at it. If by good you want to overlook the inevitable leaks, and the inevitable tanker disasters, these normal accidents.
What we learn Is that accidents happen. Normal accidents happen…
What happened next, BP tried to dodge the blame with a certain amount of success. The marine environments were devastated. people’s livelihoods were devastated. But we’ve moved on… other disasters we can expect. And there’s the Onion story, clearly inspired by Deepwater Horizon…
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.
