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On this day September 16 1969, Sir Macfarlane Burnet, an extremely eminent Australian scientist pointed to carbon dioxide as a serious potential problem. Yes, 1969.

Call to keep world at 2,000m

MELBOURNE, Monday. — The world population should be adjusted and maintained at perhaps 2,000 million, distinguished scientist Sir Macfarlane Burnet said today.

It was one of five minimum requirements that he set down for a “stable human eco-system” or an harmonious world.

Sir Macfarlane was delivering a paper at the Felton Bequests Symposium at the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons in Melbourne.

Sir Macfarlane said the other requirements included a stabilisation of the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to avoid the possibility of disastrous climatic change.

The theme of the symposium was the influence of scientific advances on the future of mankind. It was arranged by the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in honour of Sir Macfarlane’s 70th birthday.

Anon, 1969. Call to keep world at 2000m. Canberra Times, 16 September, p.3.

On this day the PPM was 323 ish. Now it is 420ish- but see here for the latest.

The context is that by the late 1960s smart people were paying attention to – and starting to get worried about – carbon dioxide build-up. Burnet was not alone in this.

Why this matters.

Let no-one tell you this was a sudden surprise in 1988 (and even if it were, we’ve had a generation to start taking action).

What happened next?

More and more people became aware of the problems.  But awareness is not political and economic power, and those who were doing nicely from the sale of deliciously cheap and abundant fossil fuels saw no reason to stop. And every reason to stop those who wanted them to stop. So that’s what they did, very well, for a very long time. Eternity, effectively.

On this day, September 5, 2005, then Labor opposition spokesperson for the environment Anthony Albanese (where have I read that name recently?) introduced a private member’s bill

And oh, look, he’s all in favour of climate triggers…

https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/download/legislation/bills/r2416_first/toc_pdf/05140b01.pdf;fileType=application%2Fpdf

On this day the level of atmospheric carbon dioxide was 376.89 ppm Now it is 421ish- but see here for the latest.

The context is that the Liberal National government of John Howard was enthusiastically boosting fossil exports, doing everything it could to slow renewables and to scupper international action.  Labor were trying to make political capital out of this (and Albanese also – to be fair – seems like a decent human being who understands, on some level, what is at stake for our species).

Why this matters. 

It doesn’t, does it? “We knew.” That can be our obituary. Smart enough to understand the dumb things we were doing, not smart enough to stop doing the dumb things.

What happened next?

We kept digging and burning, burning and digging. A small subset of that “we” got seriously rich doing it.

August 30, 1971 – Bob Carr (ex- NSW premier) ‘gets’ climate change

On this day 30 August 1971, Bob Carr (future Premier of New South Wales and Foreign Minister] watches television. No, seriously. That’s the post. 

Oh, alright. Here are some slabs from his memoir “My Reading Life”

On Monday 30 August 1971 I watched biologist Professor Paul R. Ehrlich from Stanford University on the ABC’s Monday Conference. I was twenty-three. Ehrlich was interviewed by Robert Moore and questioned by a studio audience. It was my first encounter with environmentalism as opposed to a single environmental concern. Here was someone describing things I had long suspected were true but which had lain unformed in my consciousness…

(Carr, 2008:354)      

Reading the thirty-three pages of transcript today, my attention spikes when an unnamed audience member asks:

“There was a paper in the New Scientist a few months ago by a physicist who estimated that we could only afford to increase the temperature of the earth’s surface by 3.5 degrees or we would probably flood most of the earth with the water which is now in ice, and we’ve already increased it by one degree, and if we keep producing energy and power from any source, no matter how much the resources we have, you can’t just do it, surely this is relevant?”

Ehrlich’s reply deserves to be weighed word by word, because here was the first emergence in mass media – and I did not see its significance – of the notion of global warming. Remember, this is 1971 and we were looking at this issue ‘through a glass darkly’. Let me quote Ehrlich’s reply – and emphasise the key phrases that pointed to catastrophe.

“The whole question of atmospheric dynamics and what’s happening to the climate is a very difficult one, and certainly it’s absolutely correct. If we continue on the long-range energy course we’re on, sooner or later we’ll melt the polar icecaps and we’ll all be swimming around at least in the coastal area. Unfortunately, it’s not that simple though because you see a great deal of material is being added to the atmosphere in the form of smog which tends to cool the planet, and unfortunately even beyond this we don’t understand enough about atmospheric dynamics though for instance the general warming trend in the planet may very well make Sydney colder, ad the disaster of all this is that when you change the climate you hurt agriculture. It doesn’t even matter [page break] if you change it for the better because agriculturalists like everybody else are conservative. You look around in New South Wales, you know, when you have one of these once in a million year droughts that you have every nine years […] So the whole question of atmospheric dynamics is under detailed study now by large groups of people – everybody’s scared – the recent study from MIT said we haven’t ruined the biosphere yet (it just came out about three weeks ago) but we’re right on the verge and we had better be very careful, but unfortunately we don’t have enough scientific evidence yet to know exactly what’s going to happen first.”

(Carr, 2008:354-5)

[The level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 325.43 ppm. Now it is 421ish- but see here for the latest.]

Why this matters. 

We knew. We know we knew.

What happened next?

Australia kept digging up and exporting fossil fuels. Some people did very nicely indeed out of it, thank you. Future generations? Not so much.

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…