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On this day, August 14, 1971, police cars pulled up at various houses in middle-class Stanford and “arrested” a bunch of young men.

These fake arrests happened with the arrestees consent, because they’d agreed to take part in what was supposed to be a two week experiment. Half the participants were randomly selected to be prisoners, the others guards. The experimenters thought they’d have to study video tapes, tease out nuance…

Ha ha ha ha.

After 6 days the experiment had to be ended because the guards had – basically – gone completely fascist apeshit.

Turns out humans are a lot more susceptible to some gnarly ways of thinking and being than they want to believe.

That insight will be a great comfort as the Great Acceleration leads us all to accelerate off the Great Cliff onto the rocks of the Great Post-Anthropocene below.

On this day the PPM was 325.43 ppm. Now it is 421ish- but see here for the latest.

Why this matters. 

Obedience, conformity, hatred of “The Other” – all just below the surface, as Dr Bernie Rieux rieuxfully warned us….

What happened next?

No long-term studies on the effects on the young men, but it profoundly affected the grad student, Craig Haney, who went on to do enormous amounts of advocacy work around Death Row inmates, and criminology. I was lucky enough to do a class of his (Social Psychology) at University of California at Santa Cruz, 20 years after the Stanford study.

On this day, June 9, 1989, Australian Labor Party heavyweight and Environment Minister Graham Richardson faced off with (then-powerful) trade union figures.

The ALP were facing a very tight election soon. Bob Hawke was ageing, Paul Keating was wanting the top job. The economy was not good (interest rates very high) and the Liberals looked credible and were making green noises. The Tasmanian election of May 1989 had seen a huge green vote.

So, it was crucial to get this right. But what about the workers??

AN ODDLY portentous scene was played out behind the closed doors of the ALP national executive’s last meeting in Canberra on June 9 by two of the party’s toughest right-wing figures: the Federal Environment Minister, Graham Richardson, and the AWU general secretary, Errol Hodder.

Hodder, who had left the executive meeting briefly, returned to be told that while he was away Richardson had spoken of how the union movement had to reassess its position on the environment, and that someone present had said that the ACTU’s attitude on the issue was “stupid”.

Never backward in coming forward, Hodder leapt up to make a strong defence of the union movement’s reaction to the growing importance of the environmental debate.

What he said, in essence, was that the unions were well aware of the significance of the issue but the Government had to recognise a few things too. A tree might be a pretty thing to look at, but the view paled when you’d been put out of a job and you’d a mortgage to pay and a family to feed.

Clark, P. 1989. Unions may as well be talking to the trees. Sydney Morning Herald, 20 June, p13

Why this matters. 

Have we squared this circle yet? Really? Maybe the red-green alliance we need is at hand. I will believe it when I see it. Here’s a picture of “Richo” back in the day.

What happened next?

In order to win the next election the ALP promised an “Ecologically Sustainable Development” process. And then filed the results in the circular file, obvs (more on that in August…)

Within a few months, the ACTU had changed its tune –

Moffet, L. 1989. ACTU turns a decided shade of green. Australian Financial Review, 26 September.

The ACTU has signalled it is changing its colours and turning green by making its first major policy statement on environmental issues.

The statement – to be debated at the ACTU Congress this morning -represents a concerted attempt by the organisation to overcome public opinion that the union movement is full of pro-logging rednecks.

The ACTU hopes that by tapping into the groundswell of concern over environmental matters it will prove its relevance to the community and boost its membership numbers. ACTU delegates privately conceded yesterday that the union movement had allowed itself to become an irrelevant voice in public debate on environmental issues.

Personal disclaimer/pre-emptive statement

The “right” has been extremely successful at driving wedges between environmentalists and trades unionists, with caricatures of each. Without organisation by working class people, it is not going to be possible to do anything meaningful about climate change. It just isn’t. Unfortunately, given how hard the struggle for them to even get to organise (laws designed to make it impossible to unionise), “abstract” issues like, oh, the fate of the planet, often don’t resonate. I have, in my looong life, seen moments for red-green co-operation squandered, gulfs of mutual-incomprehension and antipathy grow. We need to do better…

On this day, April 10, in 2010, there was an attempt at a “party at the pumps” by Rising Tide. This was in the UK this was an attempt to use the reclaim the streets, street party blockade protesting that had worked so well in the late 90s, and arguably in the early noughties at point sources of carbon, ie petrol sates stations, (but they’re not actually point sources of carbon production, like power stations, they’re far more local.)

This did not “work”.  (Though for the counter view, see this – 

And it will continue probably not to work. This is an attempt at modifying an existing repertoire, and that’s praiseworthy. But on the whole, we don’t have the numbers for that. So what if they gave a party and nobody came? The cops also turned out in numbers. 

https://risingtide.org.uk/content/april-10th-party-pumps

Why this matters. 

Modifying a repertoire can work. Or it can fail.

What happened next?

Rising Tide and Climate Camp both gave up the ghost. For the following decade, there was “Reclaim the Power”. Now we’ve had Extinction Rebellion and “Just Stop Oil”.  And soon???

On this day in 1996 at a meeting of the “Ad Hoc group, for the Berlin Mandate” – I will explain – Trinidad and Tobago threw shade at Australia for its definitions of equity. 

So in 1995, at the first “Conference of the Parties” (COP), the Berlin Mandate had been agreed, and it said that rich countries would have to come up with a deal for the third COP which was to be held in Kyoto. The rich countries would agree to some preliminary emissions cuts. 

The word “equity” was then fought over, and Trinidad and Tobago members of AOSIS, were not impressed with the Australian Government’s attempt to define equity in ways that would suit them.

To quote from the Earth Negotiation Bulletin – 

“TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO said Brazil’s proposal on QELROs provided a logical way forward and Germany’s proposal provided impetus to the work of the AGBM. He said the gas-by-gas approach is the simplest and most effective, and expressed surprise at Australia’s idea of equity. Each country could propose an idea of equity that suits its own needs.”

Why this matters. 

We need to remember that poor countries have been calling for justice, and rich countries have been telling them to go fuck themselves  for a very long time. Indeed, a lot earlier than 1996. 

What happened next?

The Berlin Mandate got to Kyoto. And a very weak deal was made, that both United States and Australia then pulled out of. The Kyoto Protocol finally became law without those two countries. In 2005. Negotiations then began to replace it, which led to the so-called Bali Roadmap to Copenhagen. And Copenhagen failed. And here we are 13 years later, having reverted to the Japanese concept of “pledge and review,” which is all we’re going to do. And those small island states are completely fucked.