Category: United States of America

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International processes United States of America

April 14th, 1989 – 24 US senators call for immediate unilateral climate action

On April 14 1989 24 US senators declared that the US should cut its carbon emissions in advance of any international agreement.

The context was that the new Bush administration was still delaying and trying to resist any move towards negotiating a global treaty. They weren’t alone in this. So were the Australian and UK governments.

Why this matters

We have to see declarations and statements as part of a Forever War between action and inaction. 

What happened next?

A couple of weeks later, having been caught trying to muzzle James Hansen, the Bush administration was forced to say “okay” to an international treaty process. It then, of course, proceeded to stomp on this process as hard as it could…

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United States of America

April 9, 2019- brutal book review “a script for a West Wing episode about climate change, only with less repartee.”

On this day, on the 9th of April 2019,, a scathing review of the planning of Rich’s “Losing Earth” was published. The review, which you can read here, included this priceless observation

“Other than Sununu’s vindictiveness and human shortsightedness, we have very little sense of the forces arrayed against Hansen and Pomerance. The inattention to the fossil-fuel industry is most glaring, but Rich also fails to address the consolidation of business interests more broadly against efforts to decarbonize. Nor do we get a glimpse of the movements that might have responded otherwise—say, those outside DC organizing against Reaganomics. So reading Losing Earth often feels like reading a script for a West Wing episode about climate change, only with less repartee.”

FWIW IMO. Nathaniel Rich has told an interesting human scale story of a few individuals in the second crucial decade, the 1980s. But the reviewer is largely correct in what they’ve said. 

Why this matters. 

Mustn’t get bogged down in the he said/she said, the minutiae. Gotta see the big picture, but it can be tricky, especially when you’ve dug up fascinating factoids.

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Ignored Warnings United States of America

April 7, 1980 – C02 problem is most important issue…”another decade will slip by” warns Wally Broecker to Senator Tsongas

On this day in 1980, the climate scientist Wally Broecker, the father of oceanography wrote to Democratic senator and future presidential hopeful Senator Paul TsongasPaul Tsongas. 

As historian Spencer Weart,( AIP.org:) “In 1980, the prominent geophysicist Wallace Broecker, who had spoken out repeatedly about the dangers of climate change, vented his frustration in a letter to a Senator. Declaring that ‘the CO2 problem is the single most important and the single most complex environmental issue facing the world,’ and that ‘the clock is ticking away,’ Broecker insisted that a better research program was needed. ‘Otherwise, another decade will slip by, and we will find that we can do little better than repeat the rather wishy washy image we now have as to what our planet will be like…'”

– Broecker to Sen. Paul Tsongas, 7 April 1980, “CO2 history” file, office files of Wallace Broecker, LDEO.

Why this matters. 

Scientists have been trying to get policymakers concerned about climate change for a very long time. Broker, as we saw earlier, had also engaged with Exxon.

This sort of lobbying is part of the effort to get elite policymakers sensitised to what’s going on and this is part of what Hart and Victor write about in their wonderful 1993 article.

What happened next?

Broecker kept trying to warn humanity, which kept ignoring him. Tsongas stood for President in ’92, but lost the nomination to Bill Clinton and died not long after of cancer

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Cultural responses United States of America

April 5, 2008 – Charlton Heston dies, star of first movie to mention the greenhouse effect

On this dayApril 5  2008 Charlton Heston died. What the hell has this got to do with climate change? 

Well, two things. One, superficially, Heston was the star of the first Hollywood movie to mention the greenhouse effect.  Soylent Green, released in April of 1973, has the following exchange

More deeply Charlton Heston is a good example of one of the problems that environmentalists face from a demographic and gender perspective. Namely, this Heston was a small-l liberal as a younger man and made the right noises about desegregation and racial justice. But as he aged, he became steadily more right wing, especially on the issue of gun control. And he became a spokesperson for the National Rifle Association (which is not a social movement organisation but is a lobby group disguised as a social movement organisation). “You’ll pry my gun from my cold dead fingers.” 

And this move is one that men often make. Especially men as they age, and it means that it’s really hard to sustain the concern for the environment, which becomes framed as a woman’s issue.

Why this matters. 

People take their cues from those they admire. We are very very social animals. And when a “macho” man’s man like Charlton Heston goes all anti-reflexive, it matters…

What happened next?

Well, last time I checked, Heston was still dead and the C02 was still accumulating.

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Ignored Warnings United States of America

April 3, 1980 – US news anchorman Walter Cronkite on the greenhouse effect

On this day, third of April 1980, CBS News, anchored by Walter Cronkite had a two and a half minute story on climate change (by reporter Nelson Benton), hooked on some Senate hearings on the subject. 

Cronkite was a vastly respected news anchor. And famously, President Lyndon Johnson had said to Robert McNamara, “if we’ve lost Cronkite, we’ve lost the war.” 

Long before 1980, Cronkite already done stuff about the natural world – he threw CBS’s considerable weight behind “Earth Day” in 1970 – see this fascinating piece  

The Senate hearings were the work of people like X, Y, and they included a young Al Gore. 

“The CBS Evening News for April 3, 1980 carried a two minute 40 second story by Nelson Benton on the greenhouse effect based on a Senate Energy & Natural Resources committee hearing.

Why this matters. 

We need to remember that people, elites and everyone knew about this issue as early as 1980 in public and it was getting news coverage. For the love of Gaia, the problem is not information, the problem is sustaining attention, political and cultural pressure. That doesn’t come from ever more clever messaging, it comes from effective social movements and real democracy. But that is beyond our grasp now… But I digress…

What happened next?

Cronkite kept doing stuff he’d already done stuff about the natural world. And Gore famously kept hold of the issue and after the Villach meeting in 1985. Senators Republican, Democrat and Republican, stepped up the pressure. And that period between 93 That’s right. 85 and 88 is fascinating. 

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Science United States of America

April 1, 1979 – JASONs have their two cents on the greenhouse effect

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-60434299

On this day first of April 1979, the Jasons released their study into climate. Who were the Jasons? They were the elite, high security clearance, nuclear Cold War warriors,of very confident scientists

Wikipedia has it thus-

“JASON is an independent group of elite scientists which advises the United States government on matters of science and technology, mostly of a sensitive nature. The group was created in the aftermath of the Sputnik launch as a way to reinvigorate the idea of having the nation’s preeminent scientists help the government with defense problems, similar to the way that scientists helped in WWII but with a new and younger generation. It was established in 1960 and has somewhere between 30 and 60 members.”

 who had decided to take a look at the burgeoning climate question. 

In the late 70s everyone was doing this including the World Meteorological Organisation, which had in February that year hosted the First World Climate Conference.  

Reading the foreword to the Jasons report, which you can see here, all of the usual names, Revelle, Keeling, Smagorrinsky, etc, turn up. So too William Nirenberg who would three years later, produce a report for the National Academy of Sciences in a heightened period of climate concern (more of that report later in the year).

. 

So what does Jason’s report say? In essence (i.e. a loose paraphrase),  there may be a problem at some point, but we can’t really be expected to do much about it. And our best bet is technology. 

The JASON Report, The long term impact of carbon dioxide on climate (1979)

Why this matters. 

We have been failing to do anything substantive about climate change, other than make it worse for 50 years. And it’s worth therefore having some scepticism about the politics of experts…

What happened next?

Well, Nierenberg went on to produce the NAS report in 1983 – you can read more about that here. Later that year. Jule Charney, who had been quite rude about Stephen Schneider convened a study or chaired a study that was convened at Woods Hole. And it said that there was no reason to doubt that if the atmospheric concentration of co2 doubled then the planet would warm by three or so degrees. This is the so called Charney Report. And so it continued…

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Activism United States of America

March 27th, 1977- what we can learn from Dutch arrogance and aviation disasters

On March 27th 1977 there was a major aviation disaster;  still the biggest loss of life in a single aviation accident. (Obviously, 911 cost more lives in toto). This was the collision by a KLM jumbo jet with a Pan Am jet in the Canary Islands. And there are various accounts of it and why it happened but the consensus is that the KLM chief pilot was an arrogant “my way or the highway” dick, and the inability of the co-pilot to challenge him [the co-pilot almost certainly understood that the control tower had NOT given them permission to take off, but wasn’t willing to challenge The Boss] led to hella lotta death. 

What are the lessons here?

Firstly that arrogant Dutch men are more trouble than they are worth. And the more we learn to tell them to shut up, the more we ignore them, the happier and safer everyone will be.

On a serious note we could learn a lot from the aviation industry, which is safer than ever (give or take some 787 Max disasters). In terms of notechs for social movement organisations, I think that would be really handy.

You can have the technical systems, but the human factor will still get you all killed. 


For more on “notechs”- 

Nobody really likes it when planes drop out of the sky full of passengers.
Categories
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.