Forty four years ago, on this day, April 27, 1979, the “Green Party” (then known as the Ecology Party”) had its first TV broadcast ahead of 1979 General Election.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 338.8ppm. As of 2023 it is 420ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that we had just been through the “winter of discontent”, because Jim Callaghan had not called an election for December 1978, thinking that things would improve. They didn’t. Thatcher was going to win this election quite handily. The Ecology Party was new – it had been founded in 1973, first known as People.
The Green Party has a longer history than folks might think. It’s been trying to fight the good fight with limited success, thanks in part to the first-past-the-post system in the United Kingdom, they lack proportional representation as per Germany.
What happened next
The Ecology Party became the Green Party, the Green Party finally got an MP, the redoubtable Caroline Lucas.
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 four years ago, on this day, April 11, 1989, the flash-in-the-pan UK environment group “Ark” released a report about potential sea level rise that tanked its credibility
1989 Ark Sea-level rise report, “by 2050″…
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 355.7ppm. As of 2023 it is 420ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was
Ark, launched in December 1988, was trying to outflank the existing outfits like Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth. It needed big claims to grab attention… Ooops.
What I think we can learn from this
It is hard to join a “cartel” and big big claims may grab attention, but they can also come with a big big downside.
What happened next
Ark crashed and sank, within months.
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.
Ten years ago, on this day, April 8, 2013, Margaret Thatcher died. There were, inevitably, a large number of misguided encomia about her “role” in climate advocacy. See for example this.
Well ,two things
Thatcher was clearly aware of climate change as a possible threat as early as June 1979, because she was trying to wedge environmentalists on the question of nuclear power.
Her chief scientific advisor John Ashworth tried to alert her and she responded with incredulity and “you want me to worry about the weather?”
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 398.6ppm. As of 2023 it is 420ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was
Thatcher’s legacy was and is heavily fought over. In her memoirs she complained that the greenhouse issue had been captured by socialists. Which comes as a surprise to the actual socialists, but there you have it…
What I think we can learn from this
Two things. First, the dynamics of credit claiming (see Jan 1st 1988 post) with Big Brother’s benevolence being retconned
“She believed, for instance, having learnt it at school, that the Party had invented aeroplanes. (In his own schooldays, Winston remembered, in the late fifties, it was only the helicopter that the Party claimed to have invented; a dozen years later, when Julia was at school, it was already claiming the aeroplane; one generation more, and it would be claiming the steam engine.)”
Second – Those who know better having to keep schtum to maintain access and influence e.g. Tickell, John Ashworth.
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.
Forty three years ago, on this day, April 8, 1980, UK civil servant Crispin Tickell had a stonking article in the Times. The conclusion to it (spoilers!”) is below.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 340.9ppm. As of 2023 it is 420ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was
Tickell had become aware of the climate issue in a serious way while on a sabbatical year at Harvard in the mid-1970s, and wrote a book on the subject. He had, as a civil servant, tried to get the G7 interested (there had been some mention in Tokyo in 1979, and the upcoming one in Venice had C02 on the agenda), but it wasn’t until the mid-80s that he was able to get any particular traction with Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
This particular article in the Times was in response to a February 12th 1980 report in the Times (link) about the first UK government report – “Climatic Change’, which had been grudgingly released the day before.
What I think we can learn from this
There were smart people who knew about this, and who tried to get leaders to take it seriously. That they failed is on the leaders, not them. Chief Scientific Advisor John Ashworth had tried to brief Margaret Thatcher. She said, with incredulity “you want me to worry about the weather?”
What happened next
Tickell kept beavering away (he had another article, in August of 1982 in the Times). Thatcher would only admit that maybe she should worry about the weather in 1988….
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 two years ago, on this day, April 5, 1971, a UK scientist gave an overview of “pollution in context to an assembled audience of the great and the good (and the mediocre and middling)
POLLUTION IN CONTEXT by MARTIN IV. HOLDGATE , PhD Director of the Central Unit of Environmental Pollution , Department of the Environment,* delivered on Monday 5th April 1971 Journal of the Royal Society of Arts, Vol. 119, No. 5180 (JULY 1971), pp. 529-542
Published by: Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce
1. Naturalness One broad classification can be based on ‘naturalness’. Some substances that can be ‘pollutants’ occur naturally, and are widely dispersed in the world. Some are essential to life. Carbon dioxide is a good example: it is the foundation of photosynthesis by which green plants using solar energy create sugars. Without CO2 in the air, life as we know it could not exist on this planet. And much CO2 enters the air naturally through the respiration of living things and organic decay. Since 1890, man, burning fossil fuels (which are themselves a residue of undecomposed organic carbon that escaped conversion to CO2 long ago) has raised the CO2 level of the atmosphere from around 290 to 320 parts per million but in that same period the natural input has certainly greatly exceeded the artificial
(Holdgate, 1971: 530)
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 327.8ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was
Everyone was talking about pollution – air, water, noise, you name it. Doomwatch was on the tellie, and the European Year of Conservation had just finished, with the big UN conference in Stockholm just over a year away.
What I think we can learn from this
Again, none of this is a secret. “We” “knew.” And then pushed it out of our minds, and then it had to be pushed back in. Then was pushed out again.
This has a name – the Issue Attention Cycle, as per Downs in 1972. But Robert Heilbroner had predicted this would be the case as early as April 1970…
What happened next
The attention died down, as people got bored/used to things, and then other (economic) problems came along.
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...
Twenty years ago, on this day, March 31, 1998, there were two climate events on opposite sides of the world about just how business was going to save us all.
In the UK there was the launch of the Marshall Report
Climate change : a strategic issue for business : report presented to the Prime Minister, 31 March 1998 / Advisory Committee on Business and the Environment
In Australia there was “Greenhouse Beyond Kyoto: Issues, Opportunities and Challenges” Bureau of Resource Sciences, 31 March – 1st April 1998
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 367.ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was
There are two events on either side of the planet worth mentioning in the same blog post.
The first is the release of a Blair government-era report. Treasurer Gordon Brown had commissioned Bob Marshall to talk to fellow business people about climate and climate policy. This process had been dominated, of course, by BP. Early proposals for carbon pricing had been minimised – more “death of a thousand cuts” until eventually you end up merely with a levy that is easily gamed and supplies ideological cover without driving any change.
On the other side of the planet, you have the beginning of a three day conference about Kyoto and beyond in Australia. And there’s a similar dynamic really, if we think about it. Business is hoping to shape and minimise what is happening and the government in Australia is more nakedly on their side than it In the UK, partly because Australia is a quarry with the state attached. And partly because Prime Minister John Howard is such a prick.
What I think we can learn from this
Business never sleeps, it is always in the words of Adam Smith, him what wrote the Wealth of Nations ‘People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the publick, or in some contrivance to raise prices‘.
What happened next
UK climate policy staggered on. Between 2003 and 2009 Climate and Energy Policy were kind of knitted together for various reasons and have stayed entangled. In Australia, they haven’t been entangled nearly as well, imho. There has been enormous tumult and heat, but not much light for various reasons.
And the emissions have kept climbing….
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 359ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that coal was clearly going to continue to be burned. So how to do it cleaner? What are the options? Is sequestration in the deep oceans possible? Can you improve the gasification? There had also two years previously been a big event sponsored by the Australian Coal Association in Sydney.
What I think we can learn from this
They’ve been banging on about clean coal for donkey’s years.
Rearguard actions by dinosaur technologies can “work”
What happened next
Technologies were proposed. They were rapidly prototyped, the business models sorted, the regulatory issues sorted. The technologies then shared and everyone in the world started burning coal cleanly. And we all lived happily ever after. Except for the mining accidents, and the mercury, and all the rest of it…
And then I woke up…
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
Tilley, J. 1993. IEA carbon dioxide disposal symposium Oxford, United Kingdom 29th–31st March 1993 IEA Perspectives on global climate change issues. Energy Conversion and Management Volume 34, Issues 9–11, September–November 1993, Pages 711-718
Fifty seven years ago, on this day, March 27, 1966, a letter by Douglas McEwan launching the Conservation Society appears in the Observer newspaper.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 322.4ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that a previous letter by a woman called Edith Freeman. Freeman had led to the creation of the Conservation Society in the context of enormous concerns about air quality species loss, both within the UK and internationally increased population. There were a series of books such as Silent Spring, but also UK books
You also had the rise of the motorway, the increase in concerns about air, water and noise pollution… So a Conservation Society to tackle these issues and to offer advice to civil servants and politicians seemed like a good idea at the time.
What I think we can learn from this
We need to understand that groups come and go suiting an ideological setting
There’s a comparison with Amnesty which is still going. It also started from I think, an article about Portugal and torture and then a letter saying “something should be done.”
What happened next
The Torrey Canyon incident of 1967 proved the Conservation Society’s point. The Conservation Society’s high watermark period was really 1968 to 1971. But then, new groups like Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth were formed that were slightly more radical and sexier. And the Conservation Society continued for another 20 years until 1987 and was then wound up, its message about “population explosion” no longer on the money. In the meantime, it produced a lot of useful reports which are still achingly relevant, and some of which have been covered on this site.
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 years ago, on this day, March 26, 1993, there was a House of Commons debate In reply to a question on the subject, the Government confirmed that they would be ratifying the UNFCCC.-
“At this week’s [EC] Environment Council [22-23 March 1993] all member states agreed to take the measures necessary to enable them to ratify the convention not later than the end of 1993. This matches the UK’s earlier commitment, along with our Group Seven partners, to ratify the convention by the end of 1993.”
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 358.6ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that in 1992, nations had come together and held hands in Rio, and signed a massively watered down treaty. John Major had offered to host the follow up to Rio because at this point, it wasn’t clear that the treaty would receive enough ratifications quickly enough to start holding its official meetings. So the UK still wanted to be seen as a leader on international climate policy.
What I think we can learn from this
Sometimes things happen quicker than people think (like UNFCCC ratification)
What happened next
The Global Forum in Manchester, which was a serious egg-on-face for the Labour Council…
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 years ago, on this day, March 23, 1993, the UK government released its “The Prospects for Coal” White Paper
Main conclusions were:
subsidy to be offered to bring extra tonnage down to world market prices,
no pit to be closed without being offered to the private sector,
no changes to the gas and nuclear sectors,
increased investment in clean coal technology,
regeneration package for mining areas increased to £200 million
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 358.6ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had defeated the miners’unions using the police, MI5, the media and so on. Coal mines were being closed, left and right. And mining communities were being torn apart. It was unclear what if any future coal had in the energy mix. And of course, by this time, greenhouse gas concerns were present. And so the white paper comes out in that backdrop and the hope is that there will be such a thing as “clean coal.”
And by 1993 the IEA was organising symposia on clean coal and sequestration and set forth why we needed it (AOY links).
What I think we can learn from this
Technologies that are on the backfoot especially if they are long lasting, don’t go down without a fight as a real rearguard action. And Bruno Turnheim wrote an entire PhD thesis about this.
What happened next
Coal continued to dwindle, looked like it might possibly make a comeback, and then didn’t.
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..
