Thirty six years ago, on this day, July 6th,1988, an oil drilling platform in the North Sea blows up.
The Piper Alpha drilling platform in the North Sea is destroyed by explosions and fires. One hundred sixty-seven oil workers are killed, making it the world’s worst offshore oil disaster in terms of direct loss of life.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 350ppm. As of 2024 it is 426ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that Piper Alpha had a bad safety reputation. Workers had been complaining and… boom.
What we learn is that energy extraction is a dangerous business. Whether it’s coal mines, oil platforms, small coal mines are definitely more dangerous. And accidents happen. Normal accidents in the world words of Charles Perrow.
What happened next? There were the usual prolonged battles over blame and compensation. At this point, in Britain, this was the third big infrastructure horror show after the Kings Cross fire and also The Herald of Free Enterprise. It did feel like things were falling apart. And then of course, the following year, Exxon Valdez.
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.
Eleven years ago, on this day, July 5th, 2013, Michael Gove had to back down on one of his more prickish gambits.
Michael Gove has abandoned plans to drop climate change from the geography national curriculum.
The education secretary’s decision represents a victory for Ed Davey, the energy and climate change secretary, who has waged a sustained battle in Whitehall to ensure the topic’s retention.
The move to omit it from the new curriculum took on a symbolic status. Gove insisted it was part of his drive to slim an unwieldy curriculum down, to give teachers greater freedom to show their initiative.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 397ppm. As of 2024 it is 426ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the “Conservatives” hate anything that reminds people that the status quo that they are trying to conserve is already killing some, and is going to kill everyone. And so they would like to de-educate the young.
What we learn here is that these sorts of decisions can be defeated. If there’s a broad enough coalition and there’s enough outrage. And the politician doesn’t think the game is worth the candle. Fine. But Read on to what happened next.
What happened next on climate is it ostensibly allegedly stayed within the national curriculum. But look, what else got torched? Have a look at this article from the Morning Star on the ninth of December 2023, pointing out what Gove was able to remove from the curriculum. I don’t know, maybe there was a similar effort to push back. But it won’t have had as many educated white people behind it, as the climate campaign did. I’m not saying that all white people are racist, or that all the people who campaigned on the climate curriculum issue are hypocrites at all. I’m just saying that for some issues people who care about them are able to mobilise this kind of cultural capital, social capital, and on other issues it’s that much harder.
And I can see how people pushing on other issues might notice that we were silent when they needed help. I personally don’t recall being involved. And this is to my shame in either campaign. But at this point I wasn’t in a good headspace and I was focusing on Manchester City Council, those are my excuses.
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 five years ago, on this day, July 4th, 1989, a committee delivers its findings.
Energy Committee, Sixth Report, Energy Implications of the Greenhouse Effect, Volumes 1,2, 3, together with the proceedings of the Committee, HMSO,
As someone wrote.
When a report is described at its launch by one of its authors as ‘possibly the most important issued since Parliamentary departmental Select Committees began a decade ago’, it is scarcely surprising if those approaching it to study its comments do so with a mixture of anticipation and trepidation. Having duly read not just the 65pages of the main report, but also trawled with increasing fascination through the two supplementary volumes of evidence presented (both written and oral), running to some 158 and 164 pages respectively, I have come to a simple conclusion. The topic under consideration is acknowledged by world leaders to be possibly the greatest threat to civilization-as-we-know-it; this is parliament’s latest work on the topic: ergo, it must by definition rank as ‘most important’.
Warren, A. (1989). The UK energy select committee greenhouse report. Energy Policy, 17(5), 452–454. doi:10.1016/0301-4215(89)90067-0
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 353ppm. As of 2024 it is 426ppm, but check here for daily measures.
An energy committee receives a report!! Hold The Front Page. Stop the press!
The context is that by the end of 1988, politicians were setting up task forces and committees. The IPCC had its first meeting in November of ‘88, for example, but also domestically, most of this was channelled through the frame of energy, because energy was at that stage the number one issue (agriculture, aviation, industry would all start to be looked at later).
What we learn is what else you’re going to do, of course, you’re gonna set up a committee fact finding. That in and of itself, isn’t the problem. It’s whether you then keep pushing or whether you use the fact that you set up a committee to send activists to sleep as an excuse not to do anything more. And that, sadly, is what we did. And it seems impossible for social movement organisations to effectively follow the issue into the committees because they are the place where good ideas go to die.
What happened next: A flurry of promises in 1989 – 1990, especially around variations on the Toronto target of rich nations cutting emissions. Then the Rio Earth Summit gave us a half-baked stabilisation target. And then it all just went away. Because it 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.
Seventy years ago, on this day, June 21st, 1954, the Manchester Evening News runs a story on carbon dioxide build-up. Yes, seventy years ago.
Cook, J.G. 1954. That smoking chimney warms up the world. Manchester Evening News, June 21, p.4
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 314ppm. As of 2024 it is 426ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the year before Gilbert Plass had made his attention-grabbing speech at the American Geophysical Union. And in early 1954, Gerald Wendt had published a piece in the UNESCO Courier.
Alongside this other newspapers, notably the Mews Chronicle, had run pieces by Ritchie Calder. And so on. Yes, the Manchester Evening News was a regional paper that was bigger and better back then. (Manchester hadn’t really felt in a big way, the decline that was to take hold in the late 50s and 60s)
What we learn is that carbon dioxide buildup was not controversial. It was at this point speculative; there weren’t firm numbers just merely a guesstimate that the CO2 levels had increased by 10% and could reasonably be expected to increase further and that this could/should have implications. But that’s as far as it went.
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.
Sixty seven years ago, on this day, June 17th, 1957, Guy Callendar submitted an article – “On the Amount of Carbon Dioxide in the Atmosphere” to Tellus, the Swedish scientific journal.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 314ppm. As of 2024 it is 426ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that Guy Callendar had now been writing about the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere and the warming planet for 20 years. He had presented this work in 1938 at the British Meteorological Society and received a polite but relatively dismissive hearing. Callendar must have been looking at the work around the IGY and hopefully, he was feeling at least a small sense of vindication. I don’t know, even though he’s been largely ignored by or tolerated by the British scientific establishment.
What we learn is that the old Hollywood trope of the lone genius, who’s right when the establishment is wrong or looking the other way, is not entirely without foundation.
What happened next Callendar had one more significant paper in him in 61/62. I think he must have been too sick to be invited to the Conservation Foundation meeting in 63. And he died in 1964 on the same day of the year, Svante Arrhenius had died, in 1927.
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, June 8th, 1974, the party that became the Green Party was formed, You can read more about it at the superb Green History website, see for example here.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 330ppm. As of 2024 it is 426ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that after Blueprint for Survival, published as a special issue of The Ecologist, there had been interest in creating a new political party to represent the “what was needed for survival” policies to enact the blueprint (though “party” is doing a lot of work there – many were more interested in a broader-than-party-politics movement. The organisation was called People, and it held its first conference in Coventry. You can read more about it here and here. It changed its name to the Ecology Party, and then later changed its name to the Green Party.
What we learn from this is that environmentalists have understood the need for policy change and fairly early realised that it wasn’t going to happen in the mainstream parties. These would have decent individuals like Waylon Kennett, but the logic that the “grey parties” were wedded to was too, all encompassing.
What happened next well, the Ecology Party stood candidates and had its first general election broadcast in 1979. And it has generally been a force for sanity. Not that people are particularly keen on listening to sanity.
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-three years ago, on this day, June 8th, 1991, the UK Minister for the Environment, Michael Heseltine, went on a (futile) mission to the US to try to get them to be less of a blocker in the negotiations around the climate treaty that had to be agreed at the Rio Earth Summit of June 1992.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 355ppm. As of 2024 it is 426ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the climate negotiations were upon us in full flow. The UK had just adopted the stabilisation target at least. But it was clear that the administration of George HW Bush was digging in its heels and generally being douchey. Environment Minister Michael Heseltine was therefore dispatched to see what could be done.
What we learn from this is that even under John Major the UK was trying to be less terrible than the Bush outfit. And they’re always these behind the scenes games. It is actually one of those little incidents that would be nice to cover. Heseltine was fresh from challenging Margaret Thatcher for the leadership and precipitating her departure.
What happened next? The American anti climate clique went round spreading bullshit about Heseltine and there was actually very unusually a public rebuke of this. See questions in Parliament about the July 12th 1991 article in The Times. For all the good it did. And then less than a year later, the pantomime ended with the British dispatching another envoy, Michael Howard this time, to raise the white flag on behalf of the Europeans. Targets and timetables were dead. A Tale of Two envoys…
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.
June 4, 1979 Daily Mail reports on climate change without losing its mind
Forty five years ago, on this day, June 4th, 1979, the Daily Mail managed a half-way decent article on climate change,
It continues –
Lamb’s newly published book, World Without Trees, is compulsive doomwatch reading.
Man’s obsessive squandering of trees, says lamb, is potentially disastrous.
“Trees are one of the main sponges for the carbon dioxide in the air. They mop it up. If we continue to destroy trees at the present rate, it will cause a surplus of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.”
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 337ppm. As of 2024 it is 426ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the First World Climate Conference had just happened. Carbon dioxide buildup was out and about. But this article was pegged off a new book called A World Without Trees by a guy called Robert Lamb, I have a copy (of course) and yes, he does mention CO2 buildup.
What we learn is that the Daily Mail was for a short while anyway able to treat the issue of climate change without being completely idiotic about it.
What happened next is that the Daily Mail became completely idiotic about it.
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 373.5ppm. As of 2024 it is 426ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that everyone was scratching their heads and thinking about carbon dioxide build up and by this time,alongside the RCEP there’s another group…
The Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution’s pivotal Energy and Climate Change report had come out in 2000. President Bush had pulled out of Kyoto. The Regional Development Association agencies were doing their thing. And so, of course, the Sustainable Development Commission set up by Blair, would be talking about what counts as a low carbon place. So we’re well aware of all this.
What we learn is this language of specificity of places for low carbon goes back a long way.
What happened next? Lots of nice glossy reports got produced, Blair went nuclear. The Sustainable Development mission went south in the bonfire of the quangos in mid 2010, thanks to Dave “Greenest Government Ever” Cameron.
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, May 31st 1981, the British public intellectual Barbara Ward died.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 340ppm. As of 2024 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures.
Barbara Ward, well you can read her Wikipedia page here, had been banging on about development, albeit from a relatively high Tory patrician, paternalistic view and also environmental issues. She was an early popularizer of spaceship Earth. Crucially, so the climate story in 1972, she had co authored with Rene Dubois a book called Only One Earth, about Stockholm conference and environment and it has mentioned CO2 buildup on such and such pages.
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.
