Category: United States of America

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Fossil fuels Greenwash United States of America

March 24, 1989 – Exxon Valdez vs Alaska. (EV wins)

On the March 24 1989, the Exxon Valdez, ran aground in Alaska. Another of the consequential oil spills like the Torrey Canyon (1967) , and the one in the March 1978 (the Amoco Cadiz).

 And that was followed, of course, by Deepwater Horizon. 

And the thing to remember is that it’s not the accidents that are the problem, itt’s the normal operating of the system. So here Imma point you at the Onion article about “Millions Of Barrels Of Oil Safely Reach Port In Major Environmental Catastrophe”

What’s interesting about the Valdez is it was probably the last time we thought things could be better. It spurred in the short term, Exxon to run a very effective publicity campaign about people scrubbing individual rocks and birds. And there was more loose talk about double hold oil tankers. In the longer term, they fought a successful ish rearguard action via the legal system and academia. And here we are. 

Then in 1997, one of my favourite references to this disaster is the Exxon is the movie Good Will Hunting where as part of his monologue about the dots between the National Security Agency and everyone getting fucked over, Matt Damon makes reference to a drunk captain who wants to slalom with the icebergs.

Check out the post for the 26th March, btw

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Energy Science Scientists United States of America

March 23, 1989 – cold fusion!!

On March 23 1989, cold fusion was announced by a couple of overexcited scientists. (the gory details of why they came to be releasing this when they did can be found here).

The implication in fusion (hot or cold, but especially cold) is of limitless energy, which sounds like a good idea until you start thinking about how infantile human societies would actually use that limitless energy: we would just intensify our exploitation/exploration. [Comedy fact, the Portuguese have one word that covers both of those]. 

And limitless energy would accelerate our doom in all probability without some serious wisdom in our institutions. And I see no evidence of any wisdom in our institutions. (There may have been some, but we have moron-ified ourselves over the last 40 years or more.)

But anyway, this particular bout of cold fusion was quickly debunked, and there were many articles and books about what it all “meant.” Science and Technology Studies was then a relatively new thing.

And the following day…

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United States of America

March 18, 1968 – Bobby Kennedy vs Gross National Product

On the 18th of March  1968, Robert Kennedy Jr. brother of slain president John F Kennedy, and campaigning for the Democratic nomination for that job himself, gave a speech in which he said 

Too much and for too long, we seemed to have surrendered personal excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things. Our Gross National Product, now, is over $800 billion dollars a year, but that Gross National Product – if we judge the United States of America by that – that Gross National Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities. It counts Whitman‘s rifle and Speck‘s knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children.

Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.

If this is true here at home, so it is true elsewhere in world.

The context was one of  growing concern about environmental problems. It would be interesting to find out where that speech came from, and if it’s been written about actually. 

Why this matters

The fetish of growth and GDP as a metric that overwhelms all else is with us still today, and will be the death of us. If you measure the wrong thing, and you measure success by the wrong thing, you’ll get the wrong result. 

And there’s that Bertram Gross quote, from his 1980 book “Friendly Fascism”

“If we just enlarge the pie, everyone will get more”. This has been the imagery of Capitalist growthmanship since the end of World War II- and I once did my share in propagating it. But the growth of the pie did not change the way the slices were distributed except to enlarge the absolute gap between the lion’s share and the ant’s. And whether the pie grows, or stops growing, or shrinks, there are always people who suffer from the behaviour of the cooks, the effluents from the oven, the junkiness of the pie, and the fact that they needed something more nutritious than pie anyway.”

What happened next? 

Well, a couple of weeks later, Kennedy was giving a statement after the assassination of Martin Luther King, assassination of Martin Luther King. And two months after that, he himself was assassinated.

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Predatory delay United States of America

March 13, 2001 – Bush breaks election promise to regulate C02 emissions…

On this day in 2001, George “Dubya” Bush, recently selected as President by the Supreme Court, backed away from a promise to cut emissions he had made on the campaign trail.

,He sends a letter to Senator Jesse Helms and other awful human beings saying that’s what he’s gonna do. This is part of Bush’s awful behaviour at the guidance of Dick Cheney and other turds in the Republican Party, and thanks to their perceived short term self interest, and they thought that the climate problem was illusory or whatever. Here’s stuff from Malto Mildenberger‘s “Carbon Captured: How Business and Labor Control Climate Politics“, which you should read if you’re into all this stuff…

Why this matters. 

“We” coulda fixed this – or at least slowed things down to give our wisdom time to catch up with our knowledge. “We” didn’t.

What happened next?

Bush pulled out of Kyoto shortly after this, and Kyoto limped on, becoming law because the Russians wanted membership of the WTO. Kyoto was ultimately replaced by a “Pledge and Review”.

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Science Scientists United States of America

March 12, 1963 – first scientific meeting about C02 build-up

On this day in 1963, the first ever policymaker meeting – in the West at least(1) – specifically around carbon dioxide bonding happened in New York under the auspices of Laurence Rockefeller’s organisation, the Conservation Foundation, (not to be confused with the Conservation Society launched in the UK three years later, and not funded by Rockefeller.)

The account of the meeting, which you can read here, had the snappy title “Implications of rising carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere; a statement of trends and implications of carbon dioxide research reviewed at a conference of scientists.”

Present at the meeting were Roger Revelle, Gilbert Plasss, Charles Keeling, and an Englishman called Frank Fraser Darling – someone we will return to…

The context was that as of 1959, it has become clear that carbon dioxide was indeed building up in the atmosphere, and that eventually, this would lead to warming of the planet. And this would lead to ice caps melting in flooded cities, changing weather patterns, etc. 

But at this stage, in early 1963 the assumption was, this would be a problem in a couple of 100 years as per Svante Arrhenius

Why this matters. 

The Conservation Foundation report of this symposium was not a best-seller, but it DOES pop up in the reference list of various books and articles over the rest of the decade, before it starts to be supplanted by later events with more information.

What happened next?

Revelle worked on a report for Lyndon Johnson’s science subcommittee with Margaret Mead Frank Fraser Darling would talk about the build up of co2 as a problem and his reef lectures for the BBC in November of 1969

And the CO2 would continue to accumulate

For more about the Rockefellers role in postwar environmentalism this article “The Eco-Establishment “by Katherine Barkley and Steve WeissmanRamparts Magazine, May 1970, pp. 48-50

Footnotes

(1) “Fedorov and Budyko were both key instigators of a specially convened meeting on the transformation of climate which took place in Leningrad during April 1961.40 This meeting, together with a related workshop the following June, represented the first focussed Soviet discussions concerning anthropogenic climate change” (Oldfield, 2018: 45).

Oldfield, J. (2018) Imagining climates past, present and future: Soviet contributions to the science of anthropogenic climate change, 1953e1991. Journal of Historical Geography 60 41- 51.)

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anti-reflexivity Denial Predatory delay Propaganda United States of America

March 4, 2003 – Republicans urged to question the scientific consensus…

On this day in March 4 2003, the Luntz memo was exposed. Frank Luntz was a Republican communications PR guru, and his memo advocated continued casting of doubt.

In the words of the Guardian’s reporter

The memo, by the leading Republican consultant Frank Luntz, concedes the party has “lost the environmental communications battle” and urges its politicians to encourage the public in the view that there is no scientific consensus on the dangers of greenhouse gases. 

“The scientific debate is closing [against us] but not yet closed. There is still a window of opportunity to challenge the science,” Mr Luntz writes in the memo, obtained by the Environmental Working Group, a Washington-based campaigning organisation.”

The broader context is that the Bush administration having already reneged on promises to reduce carbon dioxide and pulled the US out of Kyoto needed to continue its perception management, and that’s what Luntz was proposing, as part of the broader war, to keep people in the dark, ignorant, confused, demoralised and it’s been a very successful effort. So here we are.

Why this matters. 

We need to see how “common sense” (in the Gramscian sense) is endlessly confected and defended…

And here’s the memo, btw

LuntzResearch.Memo.pdf (sourcewatch.org)

What happened next?

Luntz changed his tune, but the damage was done. And the emissions continue to climb. 

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Activism United States of America

March 2nd, 1997- RIP Judi Bari

On this day in 1997, environmental activist Judi Bari died of breast cancer. In May 1990, Bari and her partner Darryl Cherney had been travelling in Oakland, California in a car when it exploded. They were environmental activists with Earth First, participating in what was called Redwood Summer to bring environmentalists and workers in the logging sector together in common cause against logging companies.

The FBI tried to suggest that Bari and Cherney had been blown up by their own bomb. This quickly collapsed. It is to this day not known who planted the bomb. 

Why this mattersWe need to remember that people who are trying to stand in the way of the Ecocidal machine are at best smeared, at worst assassinated. Three years earlier, Chico Mendes had been killed. In 2016 Honduran activist Berta Carceras was killed. The list of people paying the ultimate price. In defence of nature and sustainability grows longer all the time.

Atmospheric concentration of C02 at the time:

Atmospheric concentration of C02 at time of publication: 419 or so

Follow the Keeling Curve on Twitter- @Keeling_curve

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Fossil fuels United States of America

Feb 27, 2003 – the “FutureGen” farce begins…

On this day 19 long long years ago George “Dubya” Bush announces “FutureGen”

Anon. 2003. Bush announces billion-dollar energy project. Agence France-Presse, 27 February.

WASHINGTON, Feb 27 (AFP) – President George W. Bush announced Thursday that the United States would lead a 10-year, one-billion- dollar effort to create the world’s coal-based, zero-emissions electricity and hydrogen power plant. [FutureGen]

The context is his resistance to anything that looks like regulation domestically, or international agreements. Still, in order to preserve electability, you have to mutter something about “technology-driven solutions and the like…” And that is pure catnip to people who don’t want to face facts (most folks, most of the time, some folks all of the time).

What happened next?

It failed, got rebranded (“FutureGen 2.0”) and failed again. Wikipedia has a decent article. fwiw.

See also

February 27, 2003: Abraham and Dobriansky announce “FutureGen” | Department of Energy

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Australia International processes Predatory delay UNFCCC United Nations United States of America

Feb 25 1992- business groups predict economic chaos if action is taken on #climate

On 25th of February 1992 20 business associations from nine different countries try to slow down progress towards the impending Rio Earth Summit agreements by predicting economic calamity and doom: the same old story. 

1992 On 25 February at UN headquarters (New York City, USA), 20 business associations from 9 countries released a joint statement to the fifth session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee for a Framework Convention on Climate Change….

Anon. 1992. International Business Associations Issue Statement on Climate Negotiations. Global Environmental Change. Vol. 4, No. 5 13 March.

You will be shocked, shocked to learn that Australian business interests were in that mix – “The business associations, nearly half of which are from Australia, are in the fields of fossil fuel and energy production, manufacturing, and metals.”

Why this matters

We need to remember that whenever governments and state institutions are forced to consider the long-term well-being of constituents/future generations, there will be short termist vested interests pushing in the opposite direction. That’s just the way it is. 

What happened next

A weakened Earth Summit. Treaty text was put forward, not entirely due to business interest, but also the US administration of George HW Bush in June of 1992. This was then ratified and then gave us the COPs for climate and biodiversity. Meanwhile, the carbon dioxide accumulates, the biodiversity collapse accelerates. And to young folk out there, I’m sorry. We old fuckers, we blew it. You have every right to feel betrayed and gaslit let down by your parents and your grandparents

The business associations? They’re singing differently, but the song remains the same…

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anti-reflexivity IPCC United States of America

Feb 19, 2011 – defunding the IPCC

On this day, 19th of February 2011, House Republicans in the United States Congress pushed through a symbolic statement throwing shade and threats of defunding at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Blaine Luetkemeyer, (still) a Missouri Republican, called the UN panel “nefarious.” [coverage here.]

The context is amusing, because it was actually their hero, Ronald Reagan, who signed off on the birth of the IPCC as an intergovernmental rather than international panel. 

This theatre, this throwing of red meat to the base, chipped away at the legitimacy of the IPCC.  So, while the resolution had no particular impact at the time (that I am aware of), it had a cultural one. It is also deeply uncomfortable for the scientists to be on the receiving end. And this is all part of more general “flak” as per Herman and Chomsky’s propaganda model of media.