On this day, 6 July, 1972, the Trades Union Council [the peak body for UK unions) held a conference on “Workers and the Environment”
Why this matters.
Without unions on board, you’re probably not going to be able to force state managers into major concessions that last any length of time. But unions and greenies, while they have some common interests (habitable planet, etc) ALSO have sticking points. These needed proper thrashing out, loose coalitions forming blah blah. Conferences like this coulda been a start.
Too late now.
What happened next?
The Unions had other stuff on their plate all through the 70s. And the 80s.And it’s not as if the stereotype of condescending middle-class busybodies who sneer at workers is ENTIRELY made up, now is it? And the carbon dioxide, it accumulates.
“More than 100 British scientists, including two Nobel laureates, have lent their names to an advertising campaign starting this week which says that focusing on nuclear power will worsen global warming by diverting attention from the real causes of the problem.
“The academics, also including 15 Fellows of the Royal Society, reject claims that more nuclear power stations are the answer to the greenhouse effect, and say the Government should concentrate on “real solutions” to global warming….
“The two Nobel laureates taking part in the campaign are Professor Dorothy Hodgkin, emeritus Professor of chemistry at Oxford University, and Professor Maurice Wilkins, emeritus professor of biophysics at London University.”
Nuclear – a technology always in search of legitimacy, given its other problems (waste, security, meltdowns etc).. Its advocates had in fact been talking about coal’s nasty little CO2 problem for a long time.
What happened next?
Nuclear kept promising. Still is – see April 2022 Energy Security Strategy.
On this day, 2nd July 2013, Boris Johnson wrote a column in the Daily Telegraph (he was getting £250k a year for this gig). Its title was “Wind farms couldn’t pull the skin off a rice pudding.” Johnson warned the UK is facing a major energy crisis. That at least he got right.
Offshore wind is of course a huge success story, and on-shore wind would probably have been too, but for the Cameron government making it virtually impossible to get planning permission.
Why this matters.
This sort of ignorant glib opposition is, well, it’s one of the many reasons the species isn’t going to make it.
On this day, June 28 1982 (40 years ago today) Nigel Lawson, as Secretary of State for Energy in the first government of Margaret Thatcher, gave a “landmark speech” on energy policy to the International Association of Energy Economists. I can’t find a copy of it online. Ho hum.
In his seminal speech in 1982, he defined the Government’s role as setting a framework that would ensure the market, rather than the state, provided secure, cost-efficient energy.
This was driven by a desire to create a system where competition worked for families and businesses.
“The changes in prospect,” said Lawson at the time, “will help us ensure that the supplies of fuel we need are available at the lowest practicable cost.”
So, what did these fine words mean? Publicly-owned assets were flogged off and some people got even richer.
Planning became impossible. It was all “fine” (not really, but looked it to some) until we needed to think long-term and strategically about what kind of fuel sources we used to get how much energy and for what purposes. Because privately owned companies are going to want to sell more of their product, not less. This is not rocket-science.
Why this matters.
Well, that period – late 70s, early 80s, , was probably our last best chance to do anything meaningful about climate change. Oh well.
What happened next?
With energy policy? Ha ha ha ha ha.
We now (April 2022) have an “Energy Security Strategy” that doesn’t mention demand reduction, energy efficiency, on-shore wind. Instead it goes Full Fantasy on nuclear, CCS and hydrogen.
Epic thread by Michael Jacobs, that ends thus –
It is almost a textbook case of short-term intra-party political interests, lobbying and ideology outweighing the stated policy objectives of the government. Not hard to explain for a political scientist but depressing nevertheless. Good for my next textbook though. /end
On this day, June 24th, in 2009, the Scottish parliament unanimously passed the Climate Change (Scotland) Act. This enabled the devolved Scottish government, led by the Scottish National Party’s minority administration, to look slightly more progressive than the UK New Labour government at Westminster. This government, then led by Gordon Brown, had passed the Climate Change Act for the whole of the UK in 2008.
Some provisions in the Scottish Act went further than the UK legislation; for example a slightly higher emission reduction target for 2020. This was the result of a parliamentary bidding war (a 42% target reduction in Scotland, compared to 34% for the UK as a whole). Also, there were to be annual targets to sit within 5 year carbon budget periods (the UK Act didn’t have those annual targets).
Sarah Louise Nash has written extensively in the academic journal Environmental Politics about the alliances that were formed in Scotland to shape the Act during a period of increased activist and media attention to climate change (paywall). A key factor was the desire for Scotland to be able to position itself as a global leader at the COP19 summit held in Copenhagen later in 2009, which ended famously in acrimonious failure.
In 2019, during the latest wave of enhanced activist and media concern about the worsening climate crisis, the Climate Change (Scotland) Act was amended to set more stringent emission reduction targets. The UK Government had just altered its legislation to set a net zero target for 2050 (up from an 80% reduction target). Scotland again followed suit and positioned itself as slightly more ambitious by proposing net zero by 2045, with interim targets for 2030 and 2040. The Scottish Green Party abstained on the Bill that introduced the new targets, arguing that an 80% reduction target by 2030 is needed, instead of the Bill’s 75% target (increased from the SNP’s proposed 70%).
Just like in 2009, 2019’s legislative change came before an important global summit that failed to meet inflated expectations. COP26, scheduled to be held in Glasgow in 2020, and delayed due to Covid until 2021, involved Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon trying, with limited success, to get on stage to position Scotland as a world leader, as cringy selfies showcased by the Murdoch Press (Sunday Times) help make apparent.
Nicola Sturgeon poses in red with various leaders at COP26 in Glasgow in 2021.
The lesson to take from this history is that, despite bidding wars for the status of virtue and global leadership on climate change that help to increase legislative ambition, the numbers still fail to add up when the baseline for ‘leadership’ is so disastrously low.
Dr Robbie Watt is an academic at University of Manchester, a core group member of Climate Emergency Manchester and an all-round lovely bloke. He has another guest post on All Our Yesterdays, here.
On this day 22nd June, 1976, the Times (pre-Murdoch) ran a story with the headline “World’s temperature likely to rise”’, buried at the bottom of page 9.
“A warning that significant rises in global temperature are probable over the next century has been issued here [Geneva] by the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO).
This would be the consequence of a build-up of atmospheric carbon dioxide – which has already risen by 10 per cent in the past 50 years – because of increased use of oil and coal fuels.”
WMO were, it turns out, having a spat with the “Ice Age is coming” folks…
Why this matters.
We. Knew. Enough. To. Be. Worried. And taking action, by the late 1970s. This was not a deep dark state secret. This was in the fricking newspapers.
What happened next?
Sank without trace. In 1979 the WMO held the First World Climate Conference, also in Geneva. Momentum, but not enough to survive the arrival of the Thatchers and Reagans of this world…
On June 20 1977 the mockumentary (as we would now call it) “Alternative 3” was broadcast. It was supposed to go out on April 1st, but a strike scuppered that. So, the documentary, which – well, let’s go to Wikipedia –
Purporting to be an investigation into the UK’s contemporary “brain drain“, Alternative 3 uncovered a plan to make the Moon and Mars habitable in the event of climate change and a terminal environmental catastrophe on Earth…
It was claimed that scientists had determined that the Earth‘s surface would be unable to support life for much longer, due to pollution leading to catastrophic climate change. Physicist “Dr Carl Gerstein” (played by Richard Marner) claimed to have proposed in 1957 that there were three alternatives to this problem. The first alternative was the drastic reduction of the human population on Earth. The second alternative was the construction of vast underground shelters to house government officials and a cross section of the population until the climate had stabilised, a solution reminiscent of the finale of Dr Strangelove. The third alternative, the so-called “Alternative 3”, was to populate Mars via a way station on the Moon.[6]
Why this matters.
Atmospheric consequences were well enough known in the mid 70s to be the stuff of parody. I have a copy of the book – it’s WILD
What happened next?
There are still people out there who believe it.
It’s a bit like the (wonderful) Report from Iron Mountain, by Leonard Lewin.
On this day, June 18 1976 the UK Meteorological Office’s director, John S. Sawyer, replied to a request from the Cabinet Office. Two days earlier they’d asked for his take on Reid Bryson, a prominent US atmospheric scientist. Bryson was predicting imminent climate change (but NOT from the build up of carbon dioxide, which he considered a non-issue.
Sawyer was scathing – Bryson was “completely misleading and alarmist”.
The context is that by the mid-70s, with a series of “weird weather events” (including the 1976 drought, then underway), policymakers were beginning to wonder if something was up with the weather.
In 1976, the Cabinet Office wrote to the Meteorological Office’s director of research, John S. Sawyer, asking for his views on Bryson’s work. Bryson is ‘‘completely misleading and alarmist,’’ replied Sawyer only two days later, and, he continued, ‘‘the evidence that a permanent climatic change of significant magnitude is in train is at best exceedingly sketchy.’’42
J. S. Sawyer to D. C. Thomas, 18 Jun 1976, KEW, CAB 164/1379 Martin-Nielson, 2018 Computing the Climate
Why this matters.
We need to remember that it wasn’t a straight line, that carbon dioxide build-up was only one of the ways that scientists thought the weather could change. That uncertainty can be hard to recollect in the aftermath of 1985 onwards…
What happened next?
Bryson refused to accept that carbon dioxide was driving observed climatic changes. These things happen – people don’t like to admit they backed the wrong horse.
A report on climatic change finally got presented to Margaret Thatcher in 1980. Apparently her response was incredulity and “you want me to worry about the weather.” And this, from a chemist.
On this day, June 16, in 1972 the UN Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm, concluded. Four years in the making it had acted as a magnet for lots of various concerns. It also acted as a punctuation point – the end of the first big wave of public concern about environmental matters (the next wave wouldn’t really get going until the mid-late 80s).
What did Stockholm give us? Well, the United Nations Environment Program, albeit at a much lower size and heft than some wanted. UNEP proved crucial as an institutional ally for the World Meteorological Organisation and various groups of scientists trying to get carbon dioxide build up properly on and then up the agenda.
But on the same day, and more interesting,, was the release of the song “Five Years” by David Bowie (it had been recorded in November 1971).
Pushing thru the market square So many mothers sighing News had just come over, We had five years left to cry in
News guy wept and told us Earth was really dying Cried so much his face was wet Then I knew he was not lying
Why this matters.
Stockholm, Bowie – yeah. Well, here we are. Fears of imminent (ecological) catastrophe have been with us before (that does not automatically mean that the latest rash of fears is unwarranted).
What happened next?
Stockholm became the major example of “how you do international environment conferences” I think, and the template has been replayed and replayed.
On June 13 June 2008 climate activists involved in the whole “camp for climate action” thing stopped a train heading to Drax power station in Yorkshire (the site of the first Camp for Climate Action, in August-September 2006).
They shovelled coal off it before the police arrived and arrested them all.
“Twenty nine people were convicted in July following a four-day jury trial at Leeds crown court. Today, at the same court, Judge James Spencer QC, ordered five, who had previous convictions, to do 60 hours unpaid work and three were ordered to pay £1,000 in costs and £500 compensation to Network Rail. The judge said the loss to the company had been almost £37,000. Twenty one members of the group were given conditional discharges for 12 months.”
And in January 2014… those convictions were quashed because the driver for the activists had been… undercover cop Mark Kennedy.
