Fifty five years ago, on this day, October 15th, 1971, an Australian newspaper reviews “The Greening of America” – a Right Put On?
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 326ppm. As of 2026, when this post was published, it is 430ppm. This matters because the more carbon dioxide in the air, the more heat gets trapped. The more heat, the more extreme weather events. You can make it more complicated than that if you want, but really, it’s not. Fwiw, I have a tattoo of the Keeling Curve on my left forearm.
The broader context was that the civil rights movement had begun with “let’s treat black people as if they were human beings”, and then that had ramified to ”let’s not kill Vietnamese people, and gosh, let’s treat women and homosexuals as if they’re human beings.” Radical, eh? And then from the late 60s this had led on to there’s this thing called ecology, and we should probably watch out for it, and the book industry was hoping to make money and so therefore the bookshelves were full of various tracts, and a runaway bestseller among them was The Greening of America by Charles Reich. Had a picture of Nixon tinged green. And this the hardcover cover
This sounds ridiculous 50 years later, but you have to remember that shortly after Nixon was inaugurated, the Santa Barbara oil spill had happened, and Nixon started bleating about how important it was, and this is the last decade to do anything, do or die, blah blah blah.
Thespecificcontext was that Reich’s book was selling in Australia too.
What I think we can learn from this is that long-forgotten books seemed very important at the time.
What happened next. Reader… America was not greened. Charles Reich made a mea culpa in his book Opposing the System.
And the emissions kept climbing, and the concentrations kept climbing.
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Seventy six years ago, on this day, October 15th, 1950,
Is the world warming up? Dr. Joseph J. Hickey, Professor of Wildlife Management at the University of Wisconsin, holds that it is. He has drawn his evidence from the changing habits of some half-dozen species of mammals …
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 310ppm. As of 2026, when this post was published, it is 430ppm. This matters because the more carbon dioxide in the air, the more heat gets trapped. The more heat, the more extreme weather events. You can make it more complicated than that if you want, but really, it’s not. Fwiw, I have a tattoo of the Keeling Curve on my left forearm.
The broader context was it was apparent from the 1930s onwards that the world was warming. The warming seemed to be accelerating. No one was quite sure why; sun’s activity, sun spots, orbital wobbles, whatever.
But usually in these circumstances the empirics come first, and then the theories to make a decent picture that fits most of the facts as we know them comes next.
On a cynical level, stories about the weather are always nice eyeball bait/”click bait”.
What I think we can learn from this – the word’s warming was not regarded as particularly controversial (because it wasn’t being pinned on human activity).
What happened nextIn 1953 Gilbert Plass got the carbon dioxide theory originally propounded by Tyndall, Arrhenius and Callendar – and also without people knowing it, Eunice Foote – onto the agenda. By the late 50s, enough people were pretty clear that there could very well be trouble ahead. And here we are, in trouble. Oh, well.
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Forty-six years ago, on this day, October 14, 1980,
A meeting of “sherpas” (diplomats who work to make G-7 Summits achievable – geddit?) in Washington DC, with the Carter Administration’s “Global 2000” report on the agenda.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 338ppm. As of 2026, when this post was published, it is 430ppm. This matters because the more carbon dioxide in the air, the more heat gets trapped. The more heat, the more extreme weather events. You can make it more complicated than that if you want, but really, it’s not. Fwiw, I have a tattoo of the Keeling Curve on my left forearm.
The broader context was that there had been various attempts to get international environmental action going (NATO’s CCMS in the late 1960s the UNCHE process, around Stockholm), without a lot of enthusiasm. In 1976 the French had organised an ad hoc meeting at Rambouillet. At a later G7 (as it became) meeting in Tokyo, in 1979, carbon dioxide build-up was explicitly on the agenda.
Thespecificcontext was that an attempt to repeat the trick in 1980, with a push by Crispin Tickell, had been scuppered by early 1980. But in August 1980, after Venice, the Global 2000 report had come out, and Carter people were trying to use it to keep it on the agenda.
G7 meeting in Venice had NOT dealt with CO2 of course.
What I think we can learn from this that the G7 has an interesting history of non-action
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What happened next – the Ottawa G7 was similarly mealy-mouthed. In 1984 there was a bit more “oomph” (thanks to Tickell briefing Thatcher) and then finally in 1989 the French hosted a G7 with climate front and centre
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Global 2000 stuff
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Seventeen years ago, on this day, October 12th, 2009,
Oct 12th 2009 Stephen Chu, US Secretary of Energy writes in an open letter “I believe we must make it our goal to advance carbon capture and storage technology to the point where widespread, affordable deployment can begin in 8 to 10 years.”
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 387ppm. As of 2026, when this post was published, it is 430ppm. This matters because the more carbon dioxide in the air, the more heat gets trapped. The more heat, the more extreme weather events. You can make it more complicated than that if you want, but really, it’s not. Fwiw, I have a tattoo of the Keeling Curve on my left forearm.
The broader context was that Obama had appointed some smart, high-profile people into his administrations, including Stephen Chu
And of course, if you want things to happen, you have to tell compelling stories, but sometimes stories are just stories.
Thespecificcontext was just before Copenhagen, which is supposed to be the last chance to save the earth (until the next last chance to save the earth. Reader, we never save the earth) comes this announcement full of optimism and brim and technosalvationism.
What I think we can learn from this is that smart people say stupid things, or things that turn out later to have been very stupid. I suppose maybe there’s a universe in which CCS was indeed rolled out – widespread affordable deployment – but we are not living in that universe.
What happened next. CCS hype cycle came to a shuddering halt, but has been re-hyped, re-inflated.
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Twenty seven years ago, on this day, October 11th, 1999,
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has opened the competition for companies to begin designing a new type of energy facility that could change public perceptions about fossil fuel fired power plants. DOE will initially offer as much as $30 million to qualified projects.
Anon. 1999. DoE sets sights on clean burning fossil fuel power plants. Coal Week, Vol 25, no. 41, 11 October.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 368ppm. As of 2026, when this post was published, it is 430ppm. This matters because the more carbon dioxide in the air, the more heat gets trapped. The more heat, the more extreme weather events. You can make it more complicated than that if you want, but really, it’s not. Fwiw, I have a tattoo of the Keeling Curve on my left forearm.
The broader context was that the Kyoto Protocol had been negotiated in December 1997. Various nations had signed, but not yet ratified, and therefore attention was beginning to turn to so-called “clean coal”, because many nations were industrial nations still dependent on coal, and everything that could make it “cleaner” was a good thing. Of course, the language of clean coal has been around since, well, at least the early 70s, and looking to think of those Wall Street Journal adverts, but also further back.
What I think we can learn from this is that we’re smart enough to figure out how to find and burn carboniferous ego energy, so sources, we’re smart enough to figure out that that is going to cause mayhem, we’re not smart enough to figure out how to get ourselves off the fossil fuels and therefore, mayhem is locked in.
What happened next. All the clean coal bullshit got upgraded as various carbon capture and storage – CCS – strategies and proposals, and sequestration leadership forums and bold announcements about money that would be spent, Futuregen
And what do we have to show for it? Half of fuck all.
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Twenty nine years ago, on this day, October 1st, 1997,
NBC covered one hundred television weather forecasters on October 1, 1997 who were invited to the White House for a briefing on global warming policy. By this action the Clinton administration appeared to be linking the greenhouse effect to today’s weather. (Sachsman, 2000:6)
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 363.4ppm. As of 2026, when this post was published, it is 430ppm. This matters because the more carbon dioxide in the air, the more heat gets trapped. The more heat, the more extreme weather events. You can make it more complicated than that if you want, but really, it’s not. Fwiw, I have a tattoo of the Keeling Curve on my left forearm.
The broader context was that the US, under George H. W. Bush had successfully stopped targets and timetables for emissions reductions by rich countries being there in the text of the climate treaty to be signed at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992. And so countries interested in making something happen had got targets and timetables onto the agenda by the time of the first COP – “the Berlin mandate”, which called for rich nations to reduce their emissions, and to come to the third COP with plans for reducing their emissions.
An enormous lobbying effort against the US turning up at Kyoto with a reduction plan had been underway for a couple of years, and this had succeeded in that there was the Byrd Hagel resolution – adopted 95 to nil – that basically said the US would not sign anything that didn’t impose restrictions on countries like China, even though the US had signed up in 1992 to so-called “common but differentiated responsibilities.”
Thespecificcontext
So here we see the specific context is that Al Gore is going to be flying off to Kyoto in a couple of months, and we see the Clinton White House trying to stiffen spines, put arguments about why there needs to be action on climate change, etc. etc.
What I think we can learn from this is that we have been failing on climate change for a very long time. This was 29 years ago, and I don’t see why anyone thinks that we will not continue to fail on climate change.
What happened next Gore went to Kyoto. There was an agreement at Kyoto. Clinton didn’t try toratify it because he knew he didn’t have the numbers in the Senate, and then under the presidency of Dick Cheney via the sock puppet that was George H. W. Bush’s son, W, the US pulled out of Kyoto in March 2001.
Kyoto was eventually ratified/became law, because the Russians wanted membership in the WTO, and that was the quid pro quo.
And then Kyoto was not really replaced. There was a failed conference at Copenhagen, and now we have a version of the Parisian “Pledge and Review”, which everyone knew was a farce.
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Fourteen years ago, on this day, September 30th, 2012,
Barry Commoner, a pioneering environmental scientist and activist, died Sunday at age 95.
Described in 1970 by Time magazine as the “Paul Revere of ecology,” Commoner followed Rachel Carson as America’s most prominent modern environmentalist. He viewed the environmental crisis as a symptom of a fundamentally flawed economic and social system. A biologist and research scientist, he argued that corporate greed, misguided government priorities, and the misuse of technology undermined “the finely sculptured fit between life and its surroundings.”
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 394ppm. As of 2026, when this post was published, it is 430ppm. This matters because the more carbon dioxide in the air, the more heat gets trapped. The more heat, the more extreme weather events. You can make it more complicated than that if you want, but really, it’s not. Fwiw, I have a tattoo of the Keeling Curve on my left forearm.
The broader context was Barry Commoner had been a very important figure in global environmental awareness, especially around Project Sunshine and Fallout, and his book Science and Survival in 1966 really was important for sensitising people to the build up of carbon dioxide. There’s a direct line to the 1967 documentary by Roy Battersby, and Commoner had stood for president in 1980
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The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 311ppm. As of 2026, when this post was published, it is 430ppm. This matters because the more carbon dioxide in the air, the more heat gets trapped. The more heat, the more extreme weather events. You can make it more complicated than that if you want, but really, it’s not. Fwiw, I have a tattoo of the Keeling Curve on my left forearm.
The broader context was that Gilbert Plass had made a splash in 1953 and The New York Times was picking up on something that other papers had already covered, John Hutton’s speech, which you can read more about here.
What I think we can learn from this is that the New York Times was hungry for content and would pick up on what other newspapers had been reporting.
What happened next the Times kept reporting in 1956 and then under Walter Sullivan all through into the 1980s. The Times editorialised about the greenhouse effect, as we then called it in 1981 ran op-eds, and then kept running stories from 1988 onwards. We really cannot say we were not warned.
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Seventy years ago, on this day, September 24th, 1956, the Baltimore Sun ran a p.24 article on “Carbon Dioxide Weather.”
It began “A growing group of American physicists is wondering whether the world’s warming up spell since 1900 may not become permanent, due to man’s own activities.”
It’s mostly based on Gilbert Plass, but also this
“Dr Joseph Kaplan, also formerly at the Hopkins and now at UCLA points out that the rate [of adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere] is increasingly steeply with world industrialisation; he thinks the net addition may be as much as 175,000,000,000 tons in twenty years.”
FWIW, the amount of carbon dioxide being tipped into the air in 1976 was…18bn tonnes…
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 312ppm. As of 2026, when this post was published, it is 430ppm. This matters because the more carbon dioxide in the air, the more heat gets trapped. The more heat, the more extreme weather events. You can make it more complicated than that if you want, but really, it’s not. Fwiw, I have a tattoo of the Keeling Curve on my left forearm.
The broader context was that there had been some awareness of the world warming up, and also the various theories that might explain it. However, there was no real certainty, and there still wasn’t in ‘56. But what you had since 1953 was Gilbert Plass and others talking about carbon dioxide build-up as a likely reason.
Thespecificcontext was that the year before Fleming’s newspaper article John Hutton, the general electric engineer, had given a talk, which had been picked up by many American newspapers, Gilbert Plass was publishing and also Roger Revelle was using the possibility of carbon dioxide build up as a way of getting money out of the International Geophysical Year Fund funders, i.e. the US taxpayer. This was the Baltimore Sun, so Fleming had access to Plass, who was at Johns Hopkins – or had been – and the Baltimore Sun had covered Plass’s 1953 talks, so it would have been in the morgue.
What I think we can learn from this is that from the mid 1950s articles about carbon dioxide build up were appearing in newspapers, this was not a state secret.
What happened next Fleming wrote some more articles. The IGY happened. Carbon dioxide build-up was talked about in the 1950s. People knew.
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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.
If you want to get involved, let me know.
If you want to invite me on your podcast, that would boost my ego and probably improve the currently pitiful hit-rate on this site (the two are not-unrelated).
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 312ppm. As of 2026, when this post was published, it is 430ppm. This matters because the more carbon dioxide in the air, the more heat gets trapped. The more heat, the more extreme weather events. You can make it more complicated than that if you want, but really, it’s not. Fwiw, I have a tattoo of the Keeling Curve on my left forearm.
The broader context was that there had been some awareness of the world warming up, and also the various theories that might explain it. However, there was no real certainty, and there still wasn’t in ‘56. But what you had since 1953 was Gilbert Plass and others talking about carbon dioxide build-up as a likely reason.
Thespecificcontext was that the year before Fleming’s newspaper article John Hutton, the general electric engineer, had given a talk, which had been picked up by many American newspapers, Gilbert Plass was publishing and also Roger Revelle was using the possibility of carbon dioxide build up as a way of getting money out of the International Geophysical Year Fund funders, i.e. the US taxpayer. This was the Baltimore Sun, so Fleming had access to Plass, who was at Johns Hopkins – or had been – and the Baltimore Sun had covered Plass’s 1953 talks, so it would have been in the morgue.
What I think we can learn from this is that from the mid 1950s articles about carbon dioxide build up were appearing in newspapers, this was not a state secret.
What happened next Fleming wrote some more articles. The IGY happened. Carbon dioxide build-up was talked about in the 1950s. People knew.
On this topic, you might like these other posts on All Our Yesterdays
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References
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You can see the chronological list of All Our Yesterdays “on this day” posts here.
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.
If you want to get involved, let me know.
If you want to invite me on your podcast, that would boost my ego and probably improve the currently pitiful hit-rate on this site (the two are not-unrelated).
Sixty four years ago, on this day, September 20th, 1962,
“In a 1962 report by its international science panel, the PSAC recognized that “alteration of our environment has reached the point of requiring intensive study and understanding on an urgent basis.” Penned in unusual gravitas, the report stated that “never before has man had the power he now has to bring about changes, some of them irreversible, on a scale that can affect people in all parts of the world and that can cause major but indeterminate environmental changes.”145 The panel distinguished between two types of problematic large-scale experiments. The first related to actions that were individually small but whose compounded effects could be serious, and the continuous release of CO2 was cited as an example. The second category comprised nuclear tests, which were comparatively fewer, but had much larger consequences (or so it was thought at the time). The committee thus recommended that ecological factors be considered along the technological, military and scientific objectives….
“Interestingly, the PSAC called for a U.N. conference on “environmental contamination” exactly a decade before the first global environmental meeting took place in Stockholm in June 1972, under the auspices of the U.N. As a matter of fact, the PSAC report concluded: “We urge active consideration of this proposal for a UN conference, especially in the light of what we believe to be an important need for the United States to be a leader on this issue instead of sometimes appearing to be one of the chief offenders.”147
144 E. B. Skolnikoff, PSAC, “International Science Panel: The Problem with Large-Scale Experimentation with Possible Environmental Effects,” 20 Sept 1962,
Loetscher Audrey, 2022. A History of Unsustainability: The U.S. Government, the Fossil Fuel Industry, and Climate Change ( 1957 -1992). PhD Thesis
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 317ppm. As of 2026, when this post was published, it is 430ppm. This matters because the more carbon dioxide in the air, the more heat gets trapped. The more heat, the more extreme weather events. You can make it more complicated than that if you want, but really, it’s not. Fwiw, I have a tattoo of the Keeling Curve on my left forearm.
The broader context was that concern about the possible consequences of industrialization were growing. There had already been the invention of the word “fall out” thanks to the (un)Lucky Dragon. There had been the pesticides and cranberries incident of 1959. There had been Rachel Carson’s articles in The New Yorker that were causing one hell of a storm as this came out, and there were fears about H-bomb tests setting fire to the atmosphere and even the planet being knocked off its orbit.
Thespecificcontext was that the PSAC, which had been set up in the aftermath of Sputnik, was beginning to join the dots.
What I think we can learn from this is that there are beneath the headlines, behind the scenes, people beavering away. They are shoved on stage, blinking for their line or two lines, and then they are hooked off stage.
What happened next Roger Revelle and others were looking at carbon dioxide build-up and this was one of the issues that got into Johnson’s mouth in February of 1965, and the PSAC report was released in November of ‘65.
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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.
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If you want to invite me on your podcast, that would boost my ego and probably improve the currently pitiful hit-rate on this site (the two are not-unrelated).
