Category: United Kingdom

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Denial United Kingdom

August 12, 1990 – Channel 4 shows crackpot documentary “The Greenhouse Conspiracy”

On this day, August 12, in 1990 a crackpot documentary was broadcast on Channel 4. The “Greenhouse Conspiracy” criticised the theory of global warming and asserted that scientists critical of global warming theory were denied funding. Lindzen, Pat Michaels, Roy Spencer, Sherwood Idso etc the usual suspects. Directed produced and presented by Hilary Lawson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilary_Lawson

And, of course, he got to write a 3000 word piece in the Sunday Times (the Murdoch press already spewing shite about climate change, something they have – mostly – kept doing over the last 30 years).

I wonder if Lawson admits he got that one a bit wrong?

Video here

Transcript here

https://web.archive.org/web/20080527135745/http://fufor.twoday.net/stories/3428768/

On this day the atmospheric C02 was 353 ppm.  Now it is 421ish- but see here for the latest.

Why this matters. 

To be totally fair, at this stage, such a documentary MIGHT have been makeable in good faith. Maybe. Hmmm. The denial has kept on keeping on.

What happened next?

Oh, the smear merchants kept at it, and still keep at it. “The Great Global Warming Swindle” in 2007 was probably the last time they were effective, in documentaries, but the theft and misrepresentation of emails from UEA in late 2009 (so-called Climategate) was also pretty potent.

The ABC, to its credit, did not bow to the IPA sorts who campaigned for it to be shown. It ended up being screened on SBS…

Categories
Activism United Kingdom

August 4, 2008 – Police pepper spray #climate campers

On this day, August 4, 2008, the forces of law and order provided law. And order. Forcefully.

At the Third Climate Camp

“Police used pepper spray on the crowd at the Climate Camp 2008. It was around 6am Monday 4th August and campers had been woken to the alarm of ‘cops on site’. They were trying to seize vehicles that campers had parked at a top gate of the camp. It was denied later the same day by Sir Ian Blair that any pepper spray would have been used, but this footage clearly shows its unnecessary use.

This was the same Climate Camp where the Met put it about that police had suffered injuries and been hospitalised. A Labour Minister said 70 police had been injured.

The right wing media picked this up (of course) and ran stories about crazed violent eco-anarchists.  

But guess what, it turned out that NONE OF THIS WAS TRUE.

The Liberal Democrats put in a Freedom of Information Act request. The answer 

“showed that no officers in the £5.9m police operation at Kingsnorth power station in Kent during August had been injured by protesters. Instead, police records showed that their medical unit had dealt mostly with toothache, diarrhoea, cut fingers and “possible bee stings”.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2008/dec/16/kingsnorth-environment-police-inquiry-injuries

And, of course

Vernon Coaker, the Home Office minister, told MPs at Commons question time yesterday [December 15]: “I was informed that 70 police officers were hurt and naturally assumed that they had been hurt in direct contact as a result of the protest. That clearly wasn’t the case and I apologise if that caused anybody to be misled.”

“If”. Yeah, sweet non-apology apology. Stay classy, Vern.

On this day the PPM was 384.32 ppm. As of August 2021  it is 421ish- but see here for the latest.

Why this matters. 

The media love a good beat-up. And most are in a symbiotic relationship with our lords and masters.

What happened next?

Climate Camp imploded (it wasn’t just down to the undercover cops, btw). Various groups kept the NVDA flame alive. Extinction Rebellion came along in 2018 and learnt absolutely nothing from the history. Nothing. Nada. Nowt.  

Oh well.

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United Kingdom

July 30, 1989 – UK Conservative politician warns “we have at most 25 years to take action.”

On this day, July 30  1989 Conservative Politician Sir Ian Lloyd was quoted in The Sunday Times as saying ‘we have, at the most, a quarter of a century to make the assessments and take action. The life of the planet may be at stake.’

Wikipedia has him saying “civilisation is clinging by our fingernails to the cliff”. 

The man led an interesting life.

Also from wikipedia.

“He was a member of the Select committee on Technology for 10 years, and then chairman of the Select Committee on Energy for 10 years. He drove the establishment of the Parliamentary Information Technology Committee (Pitcom), and the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology (POST)”

for which academic (and other) researches owe him a debt of gratitude.

Lloyd was a prescient guy who, well, later started wittering on about pyramids of uncertainty, and Bjorn Lomborg. It happens. It’s sad when it does, but it happens. See obituary here.

Why this matters. 

Did the rhetoric help us resist our own death grip? No, it didn’t. It never does.

What happened next?

We tightened the death grip on ourselves.

Categories
Coal Denial United Kingdom United States of America

July 28, 1990 – American #climate denial comes to London

On this day, July 28 1990, journalist John Gribbin (author of several books about climate change published in the 1970s and 1980s) had a nice snippet to help us build the picture of the international efforts to scupper climate action, back in the crucial 1988 to 1992 period.;

“last month, when members of the George C. Marshall Institute, a privately funded think tank based in Washington DC, were flown in to present their maverick views on climate change, it came as no surprise to find that the room at the Hyde Park Hotel in which they gave their talks… had actually been booked by British Coal’ (John Gribbin, Why caution is wrong on global warming’. 

New Scientist, 127,  28 July 1990, p. 18)

The “George C. Marshall Institute” had been set up in 1984 to slow down environmental regulation (slippery slope to Pol Pot and Stalin, don’t you know) for a while. They became an early and important node of organised climate resistance. They were – and this is gonna shock you – funded by fossil fuel companies.

You can read more about these ass-hats in Oreskes and Conway’s “The Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming.”

Why this matters. 

The transatlantic links have not weakened. They have, in fact, strengthened.

What happened next?

The UK accelerated the decline off its coal industry, and imported lots of natural gas. This made it seem like they were making progress on emissions reductions. So that’s nice.

Categories
Activism United Kingdom

July 22, 1966 – “The Conservation Society” holds launch event

On this day, July 22, 1966, the Inaugural meeting of the “Conservation Society”

There’s this corking article if you’re interested-

Herring, H. (2001) The Conservation Society: Harbinger of the 1970s Environment Movement in the UK. Environment and History 7, 4 pp. 381-401.

Why this matters. 

We need to remember that organizations come and go, and are creatures of their time, and can be “trapped” – by their own cognitive and emotional settings, by others expectations and perceptions of them. A little like humans themselves, donchathink?

What happened next?

The Conservation Society was influential and important in the late 60s – we will come back to the 1968 lecture by Ritchie Calder. Its apogee was 1971-2, when it hosted a conference with Paul Ehrlich as a guest speaker. Its decline in influence through the 1970s and 80s (it was wound up in 1987) was tied to the rise of groups like Friends of the Earth and The Ecology Party (aka The Green Party), not tied to population concerns and not perceived as old, white and conservative.

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United Kingdom

July 15, 2005 – The “Stern Review” into #climate is announced…

On this day, 15 July, in 2005  the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown announced that he had asked Sir Nicholas Stern to lead a major review of the economics of climate change, to understand more comprehensively the nature of the economic challenges and how they can be met, in the UK and globally.

Stern produced the report- released in late 2006, and this was for a while used as a “don’t worry, there’s now a report that shows business it should act, so, you know, business will defo act” kind of thing. And some nice diagrams.


Stern paid a flying visit to Australia, and the embattled Prime Minister John Howard dismissed him for being (checks notes) English. Yeah, it all got that crazy.

Why this matters. 

These reports come and go. We should remember that when the next one comes along, as it soon will.

But the pictures were nice. This one got “traction.”

What happened next?

Yeah. You know what happened next. The UK Climate Change Act (2008). The stunning success that was the 2009 Copenhagen COP. The rapid decarbonisation of essential industry. The transformation of economies and societies to adapt to inevitable change, and mitigation to minimise the damage, reparations for those affected. The land of milk and honey, the sunny uplands. Er, yeah, nah.

Categories
International processes United Kingdom United States of America

July 8, 1991 – UK Prime Minister chides US on #climate change

On this day, July 8, 1991 the United Kingdom Prime Minister John Major gave his first, brief speech about environment/global warming, at a Sunday Times.Environmental Conference.

He came about as close as any UK Prime Minister/Satrap of the 51st State can to saying “Hey, America, get your act together.” 

All he could really bring himself to say was “The United States accounts for 23 percent, the world looks to them for decisive leadership on this issue as on others.”

The full text is here

Mr Major’s Speech at the Sunday Times Environmental Conference – 8 July 1991

“Personally, I have always thought it wrong to call it the greenhouse effect, I dislike the term, I dislike it because the image is too cosy, too domestic and far too complacent. Begonias and petunias it most certainly is not, the threat of global warming is real, the spread of deserts, changed weather patterns with potentially more storms and hurricanes, perhaps more flooding of low lying areas and possibly even the disappearance of some island states.”

The context was that the UK was about to host the G7 meeting, and the USA was digging its heels in during the negotiations for a climate treaty, slowing things down so that only the most minimal deal could be reached.

A recent trip to the US by UK Environment Minister Michael  Heseltine had failed to break logjams, and Heseltine had publicly slapped down a senior US official who was trash-talking him.

Why this matters. 

We always need to remember that the architecture of international law – the UNFCCC – was shaped by United States hostility to global action.

What happened next?

Major, at Rio the following year, offered to host the follow-up event, to show the UK “mattered”.  And the winner was… Manchester. Ooops.

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United Kingdom

July 6, 1972 – “Workers and the Environment” conference in London…

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.

Categories
United Kingdom

July 5, 1989 – Nuclear tries to regain some credibility, latching on to greenhouse

On this day, July 5, in  1989 

“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.”

Brown, P. 1989. Nuclear power is not the answer: scientists. Canberra Times, 5 July, p.1

Why this matters. 

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.

Categories
Renewable energy United Kingdom

July 2, 2013 – Ignorant man who became prime minister disses wind farms

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.

What happened next?

Offshore wind took off.

Boris Johnson became Prime Minister.