Category: United States of America

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Activism United States of America

February 12 1968 – The Motherfuckers do their motherfucking thing, with garbage in New York.

February 12 1968 – The Motherfuckers do their motherfucking thing, with garbage in New York.

Fifty five years ago, on this day, February 12 1968, New York City was the scene of an inventive piece of activism.

“On February 12, 1968, a group of radicals led by Ben Morea collected garbage on the lower east side, trucked it, then dumped it in front of the Lincoln Center on a gala night. The event coincided with a NYC garbage strike and was meant to express both the group’s contempt for the bourgeois establishment and its support of the strikers.”

 (Gottlieb, 1993: 350)

and

COMPARE NATHAN HALE “BLACK ECOLOGY”

“No solution to the ecology crisis can come without a fundamental change in the economics of America particularly with reference to blacks. Although some of the ecological differentials between blacks and whites spring directly from racism and hence defy economic correlations,44 many aspects of the black environmental condition are associated with basic economics. Blacks are employed in the most undesirable or polluted occupations,45 lagging far behind their educational attainment. About two-thirds work in unskilled and semi-skilled industries. Aggravating, and associated with, the occupational effects on the black environment is the consistently low family income of blacks which must generally support larger families. Since the turn of the century, the family income of blacks has remained about half that of whites” (Hale, 1970: 7)

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 323.1ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was

The Vietnam War, black civil rights, the beginnings of second wave feminism were beginning to kick off, and poor people were getting shat on (for once). At this exact point, Martin Luther King was planning for his march on Washington in the summer of 1968 (he wouldn’t be there). And the Motherfuckers and black Mask were in that milieu. The idea of bringing the unwanted waste back to the people who produced it, for them to deal with, was an inspired one. It has become a famous action. 

What I think we can learn from this

Why am I talking about it on a climate change website? Because of exactly this. The super rich – and the rich – enjoying their/our imperial way of living, don’t want to know about or think about the consequences. The costs are out of sight and out of mind. Activism can be about making those costs more obvious.

What happened next

Oh, to the Motherfuckers I suppose the usual schisms and splits and anarchist pathologies. Possibly/probably helped on by COINTELPRO. But the FBI could have saved its money except of course for them it was all about the lulz and the need to dominate and control, but I’m going off on a tangent here 

What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong?  Do comment on this post.

References

Gottlieb, R. 1993. Forcing the Spring: The Transformation of the American Environmental Movement. Washington DC: Island Press.

Hale, N. 1970. Black Ecology. The Black Scholar Vol. 1, No. 6, BLACK CITIES: COLONIES OR CITY STATES?, pp. 2-8

We Propose a Culture Exchange – garbage for garbage [1968]
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Science United States of America

February 8, 1973 –  American ecologist explains carbon build-up to politicians

Fifty years ago, on this day, February 8 1973, American ecological thinker Barry Commoner talks greenhouse effect and fossil fuels to US politicians.

“This is a very complicated phenomenon, and a good deal of study is underway. But it seems to me that in the long run it would be best to get away from using fossil fuel.” https://climatebrad.medium.com/climate-hearings-af27a3886a43

February 8 — Dr. Barry Commoner, hearing on the Council on Energy Policy

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 329ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures.

The context was

Barry Commoner by this stage was “Mr. Environment.” He’d appeared on the cover of Time in February of 1970. His book “The Closing Circle”, and the other one were very well received and known. Commoner had been writing about, in passing, the buildup of CO2 for several years. And his statement here is a reasonable summation I guess of what was going on.

What I think we can learn from this

US politicians, especially House members and senators, were well informed or aware of the carbon dioxide buildup issue a lot earlier than you might think. The hilarious “Grant Swinger” parody that we will come to in the middle of the year makes more sense once you know this…

What happened next

Commoner ran for president in 1980, as did one of the Koch brothers. Neither of them troubled the scorebook particularly. In the short term, the first oil shock made all of this moot because coal was on the comeback (making Carl “Mr Coal” Bagge happy – we will come to this).

What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong?  Do comment on this post.

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IPCC United States of America

Feb 5 1990 – A president says what he is told…

On this day, 33 years ago, February 5 1990, President George H.W. Bush gave a welcoming address to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which was then meeting in the US to push towards its first report (released May/August that year).

https://www.c-span.org/video/?11033-1/presidential-address

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 354.5ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that Bush had mouthed all the right words on the campaign trail in 1988 “those who worry about the Greenhouse Effect are forgetting about the Whitehouse Effect” blah blah.  Once in office, he’d allowed various attack dogs to slow down any progress.

The speech, we now know, had been the subject of bureaucratic fighting…

REINSTEIN: The President made a welcoming speech at the January 1990 meeting, but it was unusually warm. Every time we hosted an international meeting on climate change, it was exceptionally warm, record warmth for the day.…

As an indication of the White House approach, the leaders of the Energy Department and EPA had collaborated to produce a text for the President for this meeting, and they proudly brought it to the White House and gave it to [pictured, White House Chief of Staff] John Sununu saying, “We have got a statement here that both of us can agree on: Energy and environment.”

Sununu’s response was to tear up the document and throw it in the trash and say, “Thank you but no thank you. Don’t do this again unless I ask you to.” Sununu and I got along for whatever reason….

https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/remarks-the-intergovernmental-panel-climate-change

What I think we can learn from this

Behind most speeches/statements there’s an untold tale of fighting….

What happened next

Bush and his dogs kept on keeping on. In 1992 the Europeans blinked in a staring contest, and targets and timetables were removed from the draft of the text of the climate treaty…

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United States of America

February 1, 1978 – US TV show MacNeill Lehrer hosts discussion about climate change

Forty five years ago, on this day, February 1 1978  the PBS “MacNeill Lehrer Report” had various smart people talking about the climate problems ahead (Robert Jastrow, Gordon MacDonald, Stephen Schneider, Clairborne Pell). They let Jastrow go first, shilling his Ice Age is Coming book. Then Gordon MacDonald, who had been warning about carbon dioxide build-up since 1968, and had helped write the first public facing report on it in 1970,  was able to respond –

“GORDON MacDONALD: Bob Jastrow talked about the natural fluctuations in climate. I think that basically the picture he drew is correct, except he left out one important factor, that is, man. Man has been doing lots of things that are going to change climate in very significant ways. For example, he`s burning oil, gas, coal, putting the carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. He`s also clearing forests, turning lands that were once covered with biologically active material into areas that are no longer biologically active. That means that the carbon that was once fixed in those forests is now released into the atmosphere. These two effects plus a very important effect, that is, natural gas coming from deep within the earth, coming into the atmosphere and being oxidized, all lead to the greenhouse that you described.”

https://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip_507-ms3jw87f1f

And yes, that is Stephen Schneider with hair –

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 333ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was

In 1977 the National Academy of Sciences had released a big fat report saying there was probably a problem about carbon dioxide buildup, and other books had been written in the mid 70s (e.g. Wilcox). So television producers, who were always needing to fill up space and to seem to have their finger on the pulse, will have looked upon this as a good topic. Schneider was a no-brainer. MacDonald and Jastrow were among the JASONs who had been up to their necks as well in ozone discussions, and MacDonald was at the time of this television appearance leading work on a JASON Technical Report “The Long Term Impact of Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide on Climate.”

What I think we can learn from this

These sorts of chin-stroking documentaries and discussion panels have been going on a long time. And at one point, certainly up to this point, they had their place. But since then they have become an opportunity for middle-class people who don’t want to get off their fat asses to say “oh, there’s still a debate going on.”

What is amusing about some of the denialists is they don’t admit (or perhaps even know) that some of the people they pointed to as ‘Big Scientists Who Disagree’ in the 1990s were Ice Agers. That doesn’t fit their narrative (though they never forget to cite the paper Stephen Schneider co-authored with Rasool in 1971…)

What happened next

The contestation over whether carbon dioxide buildup mattered led to a process in 1979 known as the Charney report, which said there’s no reason to think otherwise.

What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong?  Do comment on this post.

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United States of America

January 30, 1961 – New York Times reports world is cooling

Sixty two years ago, on this day, January 30 1961, in a story that would later be used by incoherent denialists, Walter Sullivan, New York Times science reporter, reported that the world was… cooling.,

You see this clip on various denialist websites.  You don’t see this below, from the same article.

This was in the context of a symposium in New York, attended by Hermann Flohn and Gilbert Plass, among others…

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 317ppm. As of 2023 it is 419. .

The context was that global temperatures had been rising over the last 50 plus years (Guy Callendar had been one of many to spot this – his contribution had been to say it was down to carbon dioxide build-up). However, from about 1940, the amount of dust/smog/sulphur had increased the reflectiveness of the atmosphere, meaning some of the sun’s heat didn’t hit the Earth.  So temperatures started falling…

What I think we can learn from this

The signal did not properly emerge from the noise until the 1970s (though the reason – smog/suplhur was well understood)

Denialists cherry-pick like mad, then project that onto people who… advocate for 19th century physics.

What happened next

The carbon dioxide kept accumulating. Sullivan kept covering it, forming good relationships with working scientists like Stephen Schneider (they met late 1972) and James Hansen.

What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong?  Do comment on this post.

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United States of America

January 29, 2001 – President Bush announces “energy taskforce” #TaskforceAnnouncementGrift

Twenty-two years ago, on this day, January 29 2001, newly-installed President George “Dubya” Bush announces an “energy taskforce”

The National Energy Policy Development Group was a group, created by Executive Order on January 29, 2001, that was chaired by Vice President Richard Cheney. The group, commonly referred to as the “Cheney Energy Task Force,” produced a National Energy Policy report in May 2001. [1] In a cover note to George W. Bush, Cheney wrote that “we have developed a national energy policy designed to help bring together business, government, local communities and citizens to promote dependable, affordable and environmentally sound energy for the future.” [2] (pdf) The composition of the task force, according to the report, was confined to government officials.

https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Cheney_Energy_Task_Force

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 371ppm. As of 2023 it is 419.

The context was that Bush had won the Presidency (if not the actual election – but, you know, details) with the help of his Dad’s mates on the Supreme Court. The power behind the throne, Dick Cheney, was clearly interested in coal and nuclear, not this carbon emissions reductions nonsense.  So, there had to be a process for backtracking on loose talk of regulating carbon emissions that had been made during the campaign. A “taskforce” should do the job…

What I think we can learn from this

Taskforces are absolute catnip to liberals.

They function either as “cooling out the mark” – the way that a promise can be broken (“we consulted independent experts.. Changed circumstances… therefore…”), or as a way of delaying (perhaps indefinitely) any actual ACTION on promises, while offering CV tokens and grin-and-grip opportunities to would-be trouble-makers, who become obsessed with maintaining their spot at the table, rather than actually keeping tabs on what is (not) being done, or building political power outside ‘the Beltway’/’Westminster’ etc.

What happened next

Bush pulled the US out of the Kyoto Protocol negotiations, and started mangling the language in the direction of absurd techno-fantasies. True leadership.

Cheney fought two legal challenges against releasing the records of this Taskforce. Of course he did.

https://www.npr.org/2007/07/18/12067186/cheneys-energy-task-force-records-revealed

What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong?  Do comment on this post.

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United States of America

January 27, 1986 – Engineers try to stop NASA launching the (doomed) Challenger Space Shuttle

Thirty-seven years ago, on this day, January 27 1986, engineers at the company Morton-Thiokol were begging their own bosses, and NASA administrators, to delay the launch of the Challenger Space Shuttle. They feared it could explode on the launch pad, because seals keeping fuel away from air were not going to work because the rubber they were made of had lost its elasticity, thanks to unexpected sub-zero temperatures in Florida.

As per the Wikipedia entry about one of the engineers, Roger Boisjoly. 

Following the announcement that the Challenger mission was confirmed for January 28, 1986, Boisjoly and his colleagues tried to stop the flight. Temperatures were due to fall to −1 °C (30 °F) overnight. Boisjoly felt that this would severely compromise the safety of the O-ring and potentially the flight.

The matter was discussed with Morton Thiokol managers, who agreed that the issue was serious enough to recommend delaying the flight. NASA protocols required all shuttle sub-contractors to sign off on each flight. During the go/no-go telephone conference with NASA management the night before the launch, Morton Thiokol notified NASA of their recommendation to postpone. NASA officials strongly questioned the recommendations, and asked (some say pressured) Morton Thiokol to reverse its decision.

The Morton Thiokol managers asked for a few minutes off the phone to discuss their final position again. The management team held a meeting from which the engineering team, including Boisjoly and others, were deliberately excluded. The Morton Thiokol managers advised NASA that their data was inconclusive. NASA asked if there were objections. Hearing none, NASA decided to launch the STS-51-L Challenger mission.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Boisjoly

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 348.8ppm. As of 2023 it is 419.

The context was NASA was under a lot of pressure to launch, because of previous delays and because there was a civilian – a teacher called Christa McAuliffe – on board.

What I think we can learn from this

Hierarchies are “reality distortion fields”. But reality – especially physics and chemistry – will impinge, sooner or later.

It’s probably a good idea to listen to scientists and engineers who say something is really unsafe. 

There is such a thing as “organisational decay” – Organizational decay is a condition of generalized and systemic ineffectiveness. It develops when an organization shifts its activities from coping with reality to presenting a dramatization of its own ideal character. In the decadent organization, flawed decision making of the sort that leads to disaster is normal activity, not an aberration. Three aspects of the development of organizational decay are illustrated in the case of the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration. They are (1) the institutionalization of the fiction, (2) personnel changes in parallel with the institutionalization of the fiction, and (3) the narcissistic loss of reality among management.

What happened next

In case you didn’t know, the Challenger was torn apart 73 seconds into its flight.

Boisjoly spent the rest of his life trying to get other people to learn from what had happened. By all accounts, a mensch.

What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong?  Do comment on this post.

References and further reading

30 Years After Explosion, Challenger Engineer Still Blames Himself

Schwartz, H. 1989. Organizational disaster and organisational decay: the case of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Industrial Crisis Quarterly, 3, pp.319-334.

And a blog post of mine, inspired by reading Schwartz

Failing to meet the Challenge(r) – “Organisational decay”
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United States of America

January 26, 1970 – US science bureaucrat writes “what’s going on?” memo about #climate

Fifty three  years ago, on this day, January 26, 1970, a Nixon-era scientist (a professor in Applied Physics no less) called Hubert Heffner  expressed (understandable!) uncertainty about climate change. In September the previous year Daniel Moynihan had written a memo – now famous on the internet – about the possible consequences of carbon dioxide build-up.

“Moynihan received a response in a Jan. 26, 1970, memo from Hubert Heffner, deputy director of the administration’s Office of Science and Technology. Heffner acknowledged that atmospheric temperature rise was an issue that should be looked at.

“The more I get into this, the more I find two classes of doom-sayers, with, of course, the silent majority in between,” he wrote. “One group says we will turn into snow-tripping mastodons because of the atmospheric dust and the other says we will have to grow gills to survive the increased ocean level due to the temperature rise.”

Heffner wrote that he would ask the Environmental Science Services Administration to look further into the issue. 

https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna38070412

Hubert Heffner

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 325ppm. As of 2023 it is 419.

The context was the US administration of Nixon was trying to use environmental issues to change the conversation in Europe, away from, well, you know, napalming Vietnamese children.  That’s part of the context of the Moynihan memo. The Germans were underwhelmed by this as a tactic.  Meanwhile, the United Nations bureaucracy was grinding forward with preparations for the Stockholm conference, to be held in June 1972.

What I think we can learn from this

It was still okay at this point to be just not quite sure. We must not allow hindsight to condemn folks for not knowing for sure (I think by late 1970s that argument becomes much much less viable).

What happened next

In August 1970 the first Council on Environmental Quality report came out, with a chapter written by Gordon MacDonald – see here .

What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong?  Do comment on this post.

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Academia Science United States of America

January 19, 1968 – Engineers are not ecologists…

Fifty five years ago, on January 19, 1968,  the American publication“Science” reported on the (typical) capture of an advisory group by engineers and technocrats..

Many ecologists doubt the ability of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) to advise the government properly on problems of environmental pollution and disturbance. Moreover some environmental scientists within NAS itself find it deplorable that, in setting up an Environmental Studies Board last year to co-ordinate studies of environmental problems the leaders of NAS and NAE saw fit to include five people with backgrounds in industrial research but no one with a background in environmental biology. In the view of these critics, the environment’s “despoilers” may be better represented on the new board than its “preservers.”

Carter (1968)

Carter managed to get a great quote out of Lamont Cole, president of the Ecological Society of America – “The National Academy doesn’t know enough about ecology to know how ignorant it is.”  This pithy summary is an example of the Dunning-Kruger effect before that was named…

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 322.5ppm. As of 2023 it is 418ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

https://www.esa.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/94/2022/02/Cole_LC.pdf

The context was that everyone was beginning to get seriously perturbed by water/air pollution in the US (and some were beginning to grok the global implications). So what do you do? You ask the experts to set up an investigatory/advisory panel. And then they do – made up of people exactly like them….

[According to a new journal Environmental Science and Technology, the aforementioned Environmental Studies Board had been set up in early 1967. Ah, no, wait, further down in the Carter article there is this –

“This board was appointed in January 1967 by Frederick Seitz, president of NAS, and Eric Walker, president of NAE. THE board, establishment of which was recommended in a 1965 report (Restoring the Quality of Our Environment) by PSAC’s Envrionmental Pollution Panel, was assigned the responsibility of over-seeing and coordinating environmental studies carried on within the two academies. With this sweeping mission the board’s role is potentially one of great influence.” ]

Frederick bloody Seitz…

What I think we can learn from this

Any panel or programme – or research and innovation centre – will get captured by one tribe of academics, who will then funnel funding and prestige to their own tribe, at the expense of another tribe.  That’s just how humans play the game. Every-so -often a Leviathan may knock heads together and insist the tribes play nice with each other, in order to get actual inter or multi-disciplinary working, but the silos – cognitive and financial – are always lurking, like the plague in that cheerful little book by the Sisyphus guy…

What happened next

Oh, a couple of token ecologists were probably appointed, if only to shut up Lamont Cole. 

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

Luther J. Carter (1968) National Academy of Sciences: Unrest among the Ecologists. Science, Jan. 19 Vol. 159, No. 3812 , pp. 287- 289

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United States of America

January 17, 2001 – Enron engineers energy “blackouts” to gouge consumers

Twenty two years ago, on this day, January 17, 2001, Energy gouger “Enron” engineered some blackouts in California to… gouge. It’s what they did. It was their “corporate DNA”…

As the FERC report concluded, market manipulation was only possible as a result of the complex market design produced by the process of partial deregulation. Manipulation strategies were known to energy traders under names such as “Fat Boy”, “Death Star“, “Forney Perpetual Loop”, “Wheel Out”, “Ricochet”, “Ping Pong”, “Black Widow”, “Big Foot”, “Red Congo”, “Cong Catcher” and “Get Shorty”.[10]

In a letter sent from David Fabian to Senator Boxer in 2002, it was alleged that:

“There is a single connection between northern and southern California’s power grids. I heard that Enron traders purposely overbooked that line, then caused others to need it. Next, by California’s free-market rules, Enron was allowed to price-gouge at will.”[11]

2001 Enron energy blackouts http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_electricity_crisis

But we are not supposed to remember this sort of behaviour. It doesn’t get institutionally remembered (included in textbooks, mentioned by mainstream commentators and columnists). That would be ‘impolite, or ‘political’ or even ‘unAmerican’ or ‘conspiracy theorising’.

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 375ppm. As of 2023 it is 419.

The context was that the free market was providing opportunities.  As per Adam Smith, author of 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 I think we can learn from this

That the “normal” workings of infrastructure are intensely political.  They are literally games of power.

That if we don’t remember the history, it will be repeated.

What happened next

Enron went under. And the shenanigans were forgotten,or dismissed as an aberration.

The trust between consumers/citizens and providers that would be needed for some kind of ‘energy transition’? Not helped.

What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong?  Do comment on this post.