Nineteen years ago, on this day, May 23rd, 2006 David Attenborough was interviewed on Ten O’Clock news about his acceptance of climate science, ahead of the showing of a two part documentary.
Are We Changing Planet Earth? and Can We Save Planet Earth? are two programmes that form a documentary about global warming, presented by David Attenborough. They were first broadcast in the United Kingdom on 24 May and 1 June 2006 respectively.
Part of a themed season by the BBC entitled “Climate Chaos”, the programmes were produced in conjunction with the Discovery Channel and the Open University.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 382ppm. As of 2025 it is 430ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was Attenborough had maintained a studied silence on the question of carbon dioxide build-up. This had been spotted by the likes of George Monbiot –
Since 1985, when I worked in the department that has made most of his programmes, I have pressed the BBC to reveal environmental realities, often with dismal results. In 1995 I spent several months with a producer, developing a novel and imaginative proposal for an environmental series. The producer returned from his meeting with the channel controller in a state of shock. “He just looked at the title and asked ‘Is this environment?’ I said yes. He said, ‘I’ve spent two years trying to get environment off this fucking channel. Why the fuck are you bringing me environment?’”
I later discovered that this response was typical. The controllers weren’t indifferent. They were actively hostile. If you ask me whether the BBC or ExxonMobil has done more to frustrate environmental action in this country, I would say the BBC.
We all knew that only one person had the power to break this dam. For decades David Attenborough, a former channel controller widely seen as the living embodiment of the BBC, has been able to make any programme he wants. So where, we kept asking, was he? At last, in 2000, he presented an environmental series: State of the Planet.
It was an interesting and watchable series, but it left us with nowhere to go and nothing to do. Only in the last few seconds of the final episode was there a hint that structural forces might be at play: “Real success can only come if there’s a change in our societies, in our economics and in our politics.” But what change? What economics? What politics? He had given us no clues.
What I think we can learn from this is that we have been so poorly served by the mass media. But then, the mass media is not there to raise the awareness of the masses, now, is it?
As of May 2025 Attenborough, at 99, is still going.
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.
Earl of Halsbury (this chap – who introduced the amendment that became, well, Section 28) said the following
Take, for example, the problem of the glasshouse effect and so on—the rise of carbon dioxide —when nothing we do in this country can make very much difference to the carbon dioxide content in the world, but of course what the world does can make quite a big difference to the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere over this country. But the latest and most refined mathematical calculations—these have reached me only in the last few weeks, so they are stop press news—indicate that the atmospheric effects are a good deal more sophisticated than was originally thought. We may be going to be faced, for example, with much more in the way of local, than global, effects; there will be droughts in places where we are no longer accustomed to having droughts, and there will be floods where we are not accustomed to having floods. But all that lies a long way in the future.
Plant photosynthesis is at an optimum when the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere is three times what it is. Maybe that is what the long-term historical average has always been and plants have adapted to it. Maybe we are merely living in a carbon dioxide world at the present time. The great storehouse of carbon dioxide is the sea, and the sea and the atmosphere interchange carbon dioxide—nobody knows the details. If the sea warms up, it emits carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and if it cools down it absorbs carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Having absorbed it, it can fix some of it as coral, future limestone rocks and so on. If we want to know more about that we must study not the atmosphere but oceanography because the two interreact and we shall never understand the atmosphere until we understand the oceans or vice versa. It may be a rather strange conclusion to say that if you want to know about the glasshouse effect, do not bother about measuring the carbon dioxide of the atmosphere but study oceanography. It is an example of how one adjusts one’s priorities if one thinks in the right timescale.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 341ppm. As of 2025 it is 430ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was the Labour government had set up the “Commission on Energy and the Environment” in 1977. It decided its first report would be on Coal. Brian Flowers, its chair, was persuaded by John Mason to soft-pedal on the carbon dioxide atmosphere issue. By the time the report finally came out, the Conservatives were in charge, and CENE basically got buried. This parliamentary debate is against that backdrop.
What I think we can learn from this
Official reports and commissions of the Great and the Good might be worth reading or then again, they might not be worth a bucket of warm spit. It depends both on the official terms of reference and the unspoken (but still official!) ones.
What happened next CENE disappeared. The climate issue it ignored did not.
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 six years ago, on this day, May 9th, 1989 that nice young Tony Blair has an opinion piece in the Guardian. It includes the immortal lines
“From the moment Mrs Thatcher took up the greenhouse effect she has been at risk. Market forces cannot solve it. Indeed, they may have caused it.”
And later
“It is wholly impractical to solve the greenhouse effect through increased reliance on nuclear power.”
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 353ppm. As of 2025 it is 430ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that Margarat Thatcher had performed an astonishing reverse-ferret in September 1988, and brought “the greenhouse effect” onto the political agenda. Then,her bluff was called by various NGOs, who threw down a thirty point “green gauntlet” in November. It was obvious she was all mouth and no trousers. Labour had to have a response, and this was it…
What I think we can learn from this is political parties are always seeking out – or responding to – “issues” thrown up by social movements, the media.
What happened next. A few weeks later Blair would be rubbishing the idea of any carbon taxes.
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.
References
Blair, T. 1989. People switch on to the age of the green light-bulb. The Guardian, May 9, p.9
Seventeen years ago, on this day, May 8th, 2008, the two year flirtation with carbon rationing came to an end…
Ministers have scrapped radical plans to test a carbon rationing scheme that would have forced citizens to carry a carbon card to swipe every time they bought petrol or paid an electricity bill.
The plan was announced by David Miliband, former environment secretary, in 2006 as a way to cut greenhouse gas emissions and tackle global warming. But officials from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) said today that the idea was too expensive and would be unpopular.
Defra said a feasibility study found that carbon rationing was “an idea ahead of its time in terms of its public acceptability and the technology to bring down costs.” While there were “no insurmountable technical obstacles”, the study found such a scheme would cost £1-2bn each year and would be perceived as unfair.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 385ppm. As of 2025 it is 430ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that in 2006 the climate issue had “broken through” again (Al Gore’s film, Kyoto-sequel preparations, Hurricane Katrina, EUETS, Climate Camp etc etc) and the British state had started looking at what it could do (still in the context of a target of a 60 per cent reduction by 2050 target). Carbon rationing was in the mix, though it’s not clear to me how seriously.
What I think we can learn from this is that you can know it’s an emergency and still be unable to act, to be paralysed by complexity, indecision, powerlessness. Welcome to the Anthropocene.
What happened nextThe whole carbon rationing thing kinda disappeared. The best thing it left us was two really good young adult fiction novels by Saci Lloyd – the Carbon Diaries 2015 and Carbon Diaries 2017.
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.
Former Prime Minister Tony “I actually belong at The Hague” Blair has offered us all some more of his ineffable and ineluctable pearls of wisdom. This time, on climate change. Apparently phasing out fossil fuels is doomed to fail and impractical (we will come back to this).
Labour politicians, most who did not serve under him, are predictably irritated, though Keir Starmer, in a surprise move, says that black is white, ignorance is strength etc and that Blair is aligned with Labour policy (on carbon capture).
Liberals will talk patronisingly and cod-Freudianly about “Relevance Deprivation Syndrome” – of Blair as an antinomian ha-been who once bestrode the world stage like a Poundstore colossus, chumming it up with George and Silvio and is now reduced to palling around with petrostate assholes instead (because, you know, George and Silvio were so much, well ‘classier’.)
Radicals will say “why does the media give this has-been oxygen? Are they just trolling us? Blair is a GODDAM WAR CRIMINAL.”
Reform bosses will say “more of this please, especially ahead of the local elections and that by-election.”
Everyone in between will just sigh, roll their eyes and doomscroll right on past to other less outraging sources of outrage.
I’m writing this simply because I spent a little time this morning working on the indexing (currently slipshod af) of my All Our Yesterdays site, and since Blair popped up a bit, I thought I’d write something brief about Blair, climate and carbon capture and storage and close out with my usual quote about “practicality.”
Blair and hot air
First of several fun facts – Tony Blair was born on May 6 1953, which was the day that newspapers around the world (US, Australia etc) carried news of a warning by Canadian physicist Gilbert Plass that the build-up of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, thanks to the burning of fossil fuels, would mean a rise in global temperatures, melting ice-caps and all the rest of it. For the next thirty five years, scientists would beaver away. Ultimately, Plass was right….
Tony Blair was a new keen MP when the climate issue “broke through” in 1988. These were the days of Neil Kinnock as Labour leader. Already it was obvious that Blair – by all accounts not exactly the sharpest tool in the box – was doing what all his fellow politicians were doing – seeing the climate issue (existential, super-wicked) as another opportunity for political games.
The Thatcher government, thanks to her speech in September 1988 to the Royal Society, was having to grapple with what to do about the “greenhouse effect.” There were some within the civil service and government saying “well, you know, we tax things we think are bad, to discourage them… soooo….” This was not a popular view within government, and either to kill it or boost it, somebody leaked it to the media. It was covered on the front page of the Independent on June 1 1989. And, well
In the aftermath of John Smith’s sudden death, Blair became Labour leader thanks to The Infamous Dinner. Climate change was really not an “issue” for the electorate in 1995-1997 (though of course it could and should have been, but this is the world we live in.
Blair’s deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott, was at the Kyoto COP in December 1997 and much was made of the UK promise to go “beyond” Kyoto in terms of carbon emissions cuts. The simple reality was that these were, to paraphrase Dire Straits, “Reductions for Nothing” – they were an artefact of a) the “dash for gas” (i.e. the partial phasing out coal-burning for electricity generation – though that phase out is clear in retrospect – until early 2010s the plan was for coal to stick around and b) deindustrialisation – factories getting exported to India, China etc.
Blair managed not to hold businesses feet to the fire on a climate levy, and generally continued with lipservice and all the rest of it. Sometimes uttered some Fine Words like these at the Sustainable Development summit in September 2002
Mr President and colleagues. We know the problems. A child in Africa dies every three seconds from famine, disease or conflict. We know that if climate change is not stopped, all parts of the world will suffer. Some will even be destroyed, and we know the solution – sustainable development. So the issue for this summit is the political will.
But it wasn’t until 2004 that Blair really started leaning into the pieties. What happened? Well, there was the small matter of the attack on Iraq that wasn’t going so well, and the impending G8 summit, the one the UK was hosting. Rather like Richard Nixon going “green” in 1969 to try to change the topic from Vietnam All The Time, Blair wanted to have a different mood music for his various crusades.
What is now plain is that the emission of greenhouse gases, associated with industrialisation and strong economic growth from a world population that has increased sixfold in 200 years, is causing global warming at a rate that began as significant, has become alarming and is simply unsustainable in the long-term. And by long-term I do not mean centuries ahead. I mean within the lifetime of my children certainly; and possibly within my own. And by unsustainable, I do not mean a phenomenon causing problems of adjustment. I mean a challenge so far-reaching in its impact and irreversible in its destructive power, that it alters radically human existence.
As best I can tell,it’s the first time carbon capture and storage got a run from him.
“And carbon sequestration: literally capturing carbon and storing it in the ground, also has real potential. BP are already involved in an Algerian project which aims to store 17 million tonnes of CO2.”
[Fun fact – BP had to end the Algerian jaunt because the carbon didn’t stay stored]
So Blair got his wish – the 2005 G8 Gleneagles was about “Make Poverty History” and some long-forgotten promises on climate – and the launch of all the tosh about carbon capture and storage.
Blair by then was on borrowed time, and his pivot towards nuclear, cloaked as climate concern, came as no surprise.
Praktisch
Blair is one of those “politics is the art of the possible” kinda guys. Always happy to remind you that some things are impossible and unrealistic- feeding people, decent housing, preparing for climate change while others – starting wars, ignoring climate change – are the normal behaviour of ‘responsible’ people.
‘Responsible’ people like him. They have known about climate change for four decades. We are living in the world they are responsible for. They are going to be – inevitably now I think – quite literally the death of us all.
And so I will close out with a quote, one I use often, but probably not often enough, from a wonderful memoir about World War 2. The author, an American doctor serving in Europe in late 1944, encounters a young German, called Manfred. Manfred had offered his services to the Allies, who put him in a German army uniform, parachuted him behind the German lines. His job was to gather as much useful military intelligence as he could, get captured by the advancing American troops and then spill everything he knew. Given that the Gestapo and Abwehr etc knew about this, and were on the look out for the Manfreds, this was, ah, mildly brave.
Manfred hears some of the American troops talking about “being practical” and starts muttering to himself. The author of the book, asks-
“… the word praktisch had been a two-syllable club he’d been beaten with by fellow students and teachers and businessmen and clergy all through the nightmare years. “Stop being such a god-damned idealist! Be practical!”“Practical means I know right from wrong but I’m too fucking scared to do what’s right so I commit crimes or permit crimes and I say I’m only being practical. Practical means coward. Practical frequently means stupid. Someone is too goddamn dumb to realize the consequences of what he’s doing and he hides under practical. It also means corrupt: I know what I ought to do but I’m being paid to do something different so I call it practical. Practical is an umbrella for everything lousy people do.”
There is a thing called the Keeling Curve (see my tattoo of it here).
It measures the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
When Blair was born, 6 May 1953 the C02 level was about 310ppm (we didn’t have the Keeling Curve then – it starts in 1958. We have ice cores, though…)
When Blair took office in 1997 the C02 level was 363ppm
When Blair left office in 2007 the C02 level was 384ppm
Today it is 430ish, and climbing fast. It could have been different. If Blair had had courage, or principles – which he would only have had if forced to by unflinching social movements capable of pushing back against State and Corporate power – then it might have been different
Things I will read someday, if only to understand Blair more
Leo Abse- “Blair the man behind the smile”
There’s also these – https://www.theguardian.com/books/2007/may/05/biography.politicalbooks
Sixty six years ago, on this day, April 28th, 1959 a doctor, Gordon Fair, talks about carbon dioxide as a possible long term public health issue during his Chadwick lecture,
,
28 April 1959 NEW FACTORS IN MAN’S MANAGEMENT OF HIS ENVIRONMENT *
Especially Fluoridation, Air Pollution and Radiation
Professor of Public Health Engineering, Harvard University, U.S.A.
I am deeply grateful to the Chadwick Trust for its invitation to deliver a Chadwick Lecture at the 66th Annual Congress of the Royal Society of Health. Although the prevention of local or metropolitan air pollution is the most immediate concern of health authorities, the threat of possible future world-wide effects must not be overlooked. Most real is the accumulation in the atmosphere of the radioactive by-products of nuclear fission (see part IV of this paper) which could endanger life in all parts of the globe. More speculative is the possibility that the combustion of fuels and wastes may eventually build up the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere so fast as to influence world climate by creating the so-called “green-house effect”
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 316ppm. As of 2025 it is 427ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that already in the United States, carbon dioxide buildup was being spoken of by public health personnel alerted to it as part of the general problem of air pollution, but also just reading a newspaper. If you were a scientifically trained intelligent person in the 1950s who was reading American scientists and paying attention to science journalism in mainstream newspapers, you would have been aware of the potential problem of carbon dioxide buildup.
What I think we can learn from this is that people have been talking about carbon dioxide buildup for longer than most of the five or six people reading this website will have been alive. And we have never managed to even get a cursory grip on what is a slippery, growing and ever more slippery problem that has always been wicked, then became super wicked and is now probably “hyper wicked”, whatever that means.
What happened next People kept talking about carbon dioxide build up as an issue and by the late 60s, it was more significantly on the agendas of biologists, clean air, folk, etc. For all the good that did.
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.
On this day, 24 years ago, a Blair minister tries to tell the actual experts that they are wrong….
“In the event, the initial auctions led to claims that reductions in emissions were not additional and an acrimonious controversy developed between the ENDS Report (which pointed this out) and the Secretary of State, Margaret Beckett. (Dieter Helm 2003) 14 Margaret Beckett letter to ENDS report contesting their point about additionality in the proposed emissions trading scheme”
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 373.5ppm. As of 2025 it is 427ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the Blair government was doing as little as possible about climate, still coasting on the emissions reductions from the closure of coal plants (and de-industrialisation). At this stage, climate was just another issue to be managed with the usual trickery and fakery (so much has changed in the intervening two decades!)
What we learn. What was that Nick Tomalin said? They lie, they lie, they lie.
What happened next. In 2003, thanks to a RCEP report (RIP RCEP), the climate and energy policies began to seriously entwine, as they should have from 1988 onwards. The trickery and fakery continued obvs. I mean, what do you expect?
Two years ago, on this day, April 20th, 2023, the Scum , sorry “The Sun” “newspaper” published a hit job on XR co-founder Gail Bradbrook (whose ‘what next’ essay you can read here). The “journalists” sprang a version of the hypocrite zealot trap on her because – gasp – she drives a car and she buys food.
The context was that the Sun in 2007 had come within a whisker of endorsing strong climate action. Then head office had got cold feet. The split between the Murdochs on the climate issue among others, is famous, but until that is resolved, with the Dirty Digger being dug six foot under, the Scum will continue to be knuckle dragging on climate.
This is not to say that you have to endorse XR as a loyalty test.
What we learn is that activists are always vulnerable to this sort of hat job. It is the hypocrite zealot trap. If you are anything approaching a normal human being in terms of your travel, your eating, your ”lifestyle” you will be accused of being a hypocrite because by raising your voice to say ‘we all need to change’ you’re lecturing other people about how they should live their lives.,
Whereas, if you are consistent, if you’re a vegan who doesn’t get in internal combustion engine cars, etc, then you are a zealot, but you’re still a hypocrite. If you’ve ever, for example, used or been able to been saved by the NHS.
So this is a classic attempt to play the man, not the ball, or in this case, the woman, by people who, on some level, must know that their opponents are right and that they are wrong. They can’t cope with it so they revel in this sort of nonsense.
It also should be said that it’s kind of a cyber equivalent of sticking someone’s corpse on a pike or their dead body and a gibbet. It’s to send a message to other people who were thinking about maybe sticking their head above the parapet. This is what will happen to you.
What happened next
The state corporate attacks on climate activism continued, and escalated. By early 2025 their war of attrition had ‘succeeded.’
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.
It seems like a million years, but five years ago today, just as the first lockdown was underway, the Business Energy and Industrial Strategy. Secretary of State, Kwasi Kwarteng wrote a dismissive letter to some Labour politician who was chairing a select committee, saying, well – read it and weep
That select committee chair was… Rachel Reeves.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 414ppm. As of 2025 it is 427ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that while, in theory, carbon capture and storage was official government policy nothing much was happening.
What I think we can learn from this is that it’s fun to keep the receipts for politicians. What they say in opposition is one thing. What they do if and when they’re in government is something else, quite often. That’s extremely banal, but there you have it.
What happened next Kwarteng was the shortest ever lived Chancellor of the Exchequer, I think, bar one who died on the job. He was thrown under the bus by Liz Truss. Reeves is now Chancellor, and CCS is probably toast – let’s see what happens in June…
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 years ago, on this day, March 18th 1970, the Ministry of (for) Transport told some other civil servants tasked with looking at pollution “nothing to see here”.
The National Archives – AB 48 dash 940
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 324ppm. As of 2025 it is 427ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that there was a mad rush among the civil service to “support” the drafting and publication of the very first Environment White Paper
Feb 13 1970 the NonNuclear Committee had asked Roberts to talk to Ministry of Environment (see AB 48/940 jpg 67)
What I think we can learn from this is that civil servants go native, and are looking to support whatever industry they are supposed to be “regulating.”
What happened next
Car fumes as a problem for “the greenhouse effect” were getting attention within a couple of years (see Alistair Aird’s The Automotive Nightmare). They were in the frame in 1988. And here we are, the fat end of 40 years later, still in thrall to cars (oh, and EVs? They’re not the panacea some would have you believe…)
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.
