Category: United States of America

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Ignored Warnings United States of America

February 18, 1978 – “#Climate Experts see a Warming Trend”

On this day, 18th February 1978. readers of The Washington Post would have learned, via an article by a journalist called Thomas O’Toole titled “Climate Experts See a Warming Trend,” that the burning of coal and oil was causing so much carbon dioxide to build up in the atmosphere that by the year 2000, temperatures might begin to rise.  

O’Toole was reporting

“… the opinions of 24 climate experts in seven countries polled by the Pentagon’s Advanced Research Projects which yesterday released the poll’s results in a 100-page report published by the National Defense University.”

This report, bless, is available on the interwebz.

[See also a report in the New York Times]

We need to remember that in the late 1970s the buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as a problem and as one that was going to get worse and cause serious difficulty had moved from the academic journals and the scientific periodicals to the quality press such as the New York Times, The Washington Post, The Canberra Times. If you go looking for these, you can find them. They usually come out of various National Academy of Science reports too. We knew. We really did.

Why this matters? 

What it says is that we’ve had almost 50 years to sort this out and, pace Donald Trump,, this problem was not invented by Al Gore, or by the Chinese as a hoax. 

What happened next? 

Well in this specific case, Carter’s Science Advisor asked some top scientists to look into the problem. This is the so-called Charney report, which said in 1979, we find no reason to believe this warming won’t happen. You can read more about it in Nathaniel Rich, and to some extent in Alice Bell’s “Our Biggest Experiment”

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Activism United States of America

February 17, 2013 – Scientists, activists, actors, arrested outside Whitehouse, protesting #Keystone

On this day, the 17th of February 2013, nine years ago, climate scientists, activists and activists were arrested outside the White House. They were protesting against the Keystone pipeline. Those arrested included James Hansen, actor Daryl Hannah, civil rights leader Julian Bond and environmental advocate Robert Kennedy Jr.

[This wasn’t their first go at this rodeo]

There were about 40,000 people on the march (though these guesstimates are always rubbery).

Why this matters

We need to celebrate resistance. Remember that we have resisted, albeit without much success, for who knows how much worse things would have been if we hadn’t. 

What happened next? 

Keystone may have been cancelled, but the extractivist infrastructures continue to be built…

See also

Thousands rally to protest Keystone- POLITICO

Protesters Call On Obama To Reject Keystone XL Pipeline (npr.org)

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Kyoto Protocol United States of America

February 16, 2005- The Kyoto Protocol shambles into futile existence, despite Uncle Sam’s best efforts

On this day 16th of February in the year 2005, the Kyoto Protocol finally became international law. It was an agreement reached at the third Conference of the Parties (COP) in December 97, in Japanese city of Kyoto. It had called for rich industrialised countries to cut their emissions by a certain small amount in the period 2008 to 2012… 

But before we get bogged down in the details, let’s go back to the beginning. When the climate issue arrived on the agenda in 1988, small and developing nations said “this is caused by rich countries. They have to take the lead in sorting it out.” And this was relatively uncontroversial in principle, at least. And so in 1992, you get the notion of “common but differentiated responsibilities,” and some sort of loose talk about technology transfer, etc. However – and this is crucial – the proposal to have targets and timetables for rich countries to reduce their emissions in the text of the climate treaty, due to be signed in Rio was opposed successfully.

And it was opposed successfully by our old friend, the United States of America, who basically said (and I paraphrase), “If targets and timetables are in, we will not come to Rio and you will have a worthless treaty.” So Kyoto was the first attempt, the first of many, to try to put targets and timetables back in. It was full of loopholes, famously, the Australian land clearing one (by the way, Australia got an emissions reduction target that allowed it to increase its emissions). And it also was supposed to kickstart carbon trading, something the Europeans had been sceptical about 

In 2001, the new administration of George W. Bush had pulled the US out of Kyoto process. And the following year, Australia had done its little “me too” act, under its deeply inadequate Prime Minister John Howard. 

Kyoto languished in limbo for years, and only got through, because Russia wanted to join the World Trade Organisation. And this was the quid pro quo. After the Russian Duma had ratified this, 90 days later, Kyoto became law for all the good that it did, which was virtually none. 

Why this matters

We need to remember these histories. So we remember who’s to blame – sometimes it’s the actors, sometimes it’s the nature of a given process. We need to remember that the “sausage machine” of international law has not saved us, and is very, very unlikely to save “us.” 

What happened next? 

Well, Kyoto was always supposed to be replaced by something else bigger and better. And this was supposed to happen in Copenhagen. In 2009. It didn’t. The shards of agreement got swept up and glued together in a new pisspot called the Paris Agreement, which is basically the old Japanese “pledge and review” proposal, reheated. And then, six years after Paris, nations met in Glasgow, without their enhanced ambition statements for the most part. Meanwhile, carbon dioxide continues to accumulate. 

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Kyoto Protocol United States of America

February 14, 2002 – George Bush promises “Clean Skies” to distract from Kyoto-trashing…

On this day, 14th of February, Valentine’s Day 2002, 20 years ago, George W. Bush, the minority US president sent a Valentine’s Day love letter to the future called the “Clean Skies initiative.” And although the wrapping was attractive, the contents were deeply unhealthy. Clean Skies was supposed to solve the political problem created by Bush for Bush when he had pulled the US out of the negotiations around the Kyoto Protocol, and when Cheney (the real Prez?) had tried to kick start, yet more coal fired power plants. Folks weren’t fooled.

Why this matters? 

We need to remember that those in charge of society who got there being elected, or in this case being elected by their mates on the Supreme Court, do not have our best interests at heart. They have been kicking the can down the road, blindly making ridiculous promises based on unproven technologies. 

What happened next? 

Clean Skies was a “failure” if you judge it on reducing pollution. Looked at another way, it was a success, giving enough of an impression of “action” so the issue of air pollution couldn’t be used against him, even had the Democrats been minded to. Bush was reelected, or elected for the first time in 2004, relatively fair and square, if you don’t count, the swiftboating of John Kerry. And the emissions keep rising, the atmospheric concentrations keep rising. The only thing that doesn’t really rise are the viewing stats on this website.

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Environmental Racism, United States of America

 February 11, 1994 – President Clinton proclaims the end of environmental racism.  Yeah, right.

On this day, in 1994, Bill Clinton, the President of the United States, signed an Executive Order telling all government departments – not just the EPA – that they had to consider environmental racism. The clue is in the name – “Federal Actions To Address Environmental Justice in Minority Populations and Low-Income Populations.”

Now the crucial thing here is that these moments in history get put down as “Oh, enlightened leader leading,” but if you actually peel back, he’s (and it is usually a he) putting his name on something that is the result of years of tireless, dedicated campaigning by people whose names don’t appear in the history books. And there is always this bias towards the personality of an individual. This does not mean that the personality of individuals does not matter in specific moments. But for this sort of bread and butter (attempted) institutional change probably it doesn’t. 

Why this matters

We all need to understand that institutional racism isn’t something that’s only there with the Metropolitan Police – it is baked into society. 

What happened next? 

Well, is the USA less institutionally environmentally racist? Is it? [This is not to criticise the heroic efforts of countless people fighting for justice!]

See also – Dr Robert Bullard – Father of Environmental Justice

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Ignored Warnings United States of America

February 8, 1965- All the way with LBJ – first President to say “carbon dioxide is building up”

On this day in 1965 President Lyndon Baines Johnson gave a “Special Message to the Congress on Conservation and Restoration of Natural Beauty.” 

He said

“Air pollution is no longer confined to isolated places. This generation has altered the composition of the atmosphere on a global scale through radioactive materials and a steady increase in carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels. Entire regional airsheds, crop plant environments, and river basins are heavy with noxious materials. Motor vehicles and home heating plants, municipal dumps and factories continually hurl pollutants into the air we breathe. Each day almost 50,000 tons of unpleasant, and sometimes poisonous, sulfur dioxide are added to the atmosphere, and our automobiles produce almost 300,000 tons of other pollutants.”

Those words were written by – or at the very least based on the research of – Roger Revelle. Exactly 9 years earlier, on 8 February 1956  Revelle had given “Testimony before the House Committee on Appropriations.” And he’d told the Congressmen present

“There is still one more aspect of the oceanographic program which I thought you gentlemen would be interested in. This is a combination of meteorology and oceanography. Right now and during the past 50 years, we are burning, as you know, quite a bit of coal and oil and natural gas. The rate at which we are burning this is increasing very rapidly. This burning of these fuels which were accumulated in the earth over hundreds of millions of years, and which we are burning up in a few generations, is producing tremendous quantities of carbon dioxide in the air. Based on figures given out by the United Nations, I would estimate that by the year 2010, we will have added something like 70 percent of the present atmospheric carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. This is an enormous quantity. It is like 1,700 billion tons. Now, nobody knows what this will do. Lots of people have supposed that it might actually cause a warming up of the atmospheric temperature and it may, in fact, cause a remarkable change in climate. . . .”

And here we are.

Sources- 

REVELLE, ROGER, and PAUL S. SUTTER. “TESTIMONY BEFORE THE HOUSE COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS, FEBRUARY 8, 1956.” Making Climate Change History: Documents from Global Warming’s Past, edited by JOSHUA P. HOWE, University of Washington Press, 2017, pp. 60–63, http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvcwnkd5.13.

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IPCC United States of America

February 6, 2001: ExxonMobil Lobbyist Calls on White House to Remove Certain Government Climate Scientists

On this day, in 2001, the oil company Exxon was throwing its weight around trying to get specific scientists pushed off the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

In a memo to the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), ExxonMobil lobbyist Randy Randol denounces esteemed climate scientist Robert Watson, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), as someone “handpicked by Al Gore” who is using the media to get “coverage for his views.

He asks “Can Watson be replaced now at the request of the US?” In addition to Watson, Randol names other climate experts who he wants “removed from their positions of influence.” 

You can read the document here, on climate files.

And they succeeded. Bob Watson only served one term where the normal expectation was two. And this is because he was too independently minded and wasn’t going to waffle about technology saving us. 

This is not a new story. Historically scientists have come under ferocious attack, not just for their climate work, but also ozone hole, asbestos, you name it. There’s a lovely example in An Enemy of the People, the play by Henrik Ibsen, which by the way, inspired the movie, Jaws… but I digress. 

Why this matters

We need to remember that a lot of what we see and hear and take as accepted fact, is actually constructed for us actively or passively, and that critical voices have been removed. For the benefit of continued capital accumulation. This is Gramsci in action, people. This is how hegemony is constructed and maintained. 

What happened next

The IPCC kept producing reports and is producing another one. Meanwhile, the carbon dioxide accumulates thanks to the actions and inactions of people like you and me who have failed to build the kinds of movements that could have made a difference despite having freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of information. It might be a good idea for us to look ourselves in the mirror.

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Propaganda United States of America

February 5, 1974 – Energy security, meet anti-Arab sentiment #propaganda

On this day, February 5 1974, the American Electric Power (AEP) ran the first of its advertising, cartoon campaigns, with Arab sheikhs, holding the US to ransom (Sethi, 1977). 

This is of course, part of the first energy shock, as it’s known, which had started in late 1973. With basically a quadrupling of petroleum prices and actual shortages at petrol pumps in the developed world, because the energy producer cartel OPEC, decided to punish those countries who had supported Israel in the Yom Kippur War. (This is not to say that there had not been concerns about energy before late 73.) 

What’s interesting is that the oil companies were able to, or keen to shift the blame and tap into, frankly, long established anti-Arab sentiment in the United States. 

Why this matters 

We need to understand that issues around energy and energy security are visceral. And that those who are benefiting like to find someone else for the anger, fear, uncertainty to be pinned on. A bit like the tactic of the drill sergeant in Full Metal Jacket, who picks on one soldier as the scapegoat, as the lightning rod. 

What happened next? 

President Nixon announced Project Independence which was going to see a huge growth in domestic energy production, especially coal. Prices sort of stabilised, but then we had in the 70s stagflation, the collapse of the Bretton Woods global consensus, . And by the end of the 70s, thanks to the dedicated efforts of some think tanks and politicians, and good luck, (but they were in the right place at the right time, which isn’t always easy) we have the coming of what we now call neoliberalism. This is, of course, antithetical to any form of collective provision or planning, which is what you would have needed to deal with a collective action  problem like climate change, but here we are. This is not to say that the AAP advert is responsible for all of that, to the removal of any doubt

Btw, AEP kept going with their campaign.  See also this advert on 31st July 1974

An Unlikely 1970s-Era Environmentalist

References

“Feb 5 1974 first advert in AEP campaign with the two sheiks appears in the “New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and 69 dailies and 192 weeklies in the area served by American Electric Power System’s group of companies.” Sethi, S. 1977. Advocacy Advertising and Large Corporations: Social Conflict, Big Business Image, the News Media and Public Policy. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, p.115.

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Predatory delay United States of America

February 4, 2002- Global Climate Coalition calls it a day (“Mission accomplished”)

On this day in 2002, the Global Climate Coalition shut up shop, basically declaring mission accomplished. Well, they’d probably done it a few days earlier, but Imma use this – Anon. 2002. Global Climate Coalition Bows Out. Chemical Market Reporter, , Vol. 261, Issue 5, 4 February – as the marker.

The friendly sounding coalition – actually, an industry group dedicated to stopping action on climate change – had been formed in 1989, when it looks like serious action was possible and even probable, with new US President George HW Bush, having declared on the campaign trail, that those who were worried about the greenhouse effect should not discount the White House Effect.

Even then moves were  well afoot within Bush’s administration, especially under Chief of Staff, John Sununu, to make sure that the environmentally concerned people were sidelined. And that the whole issue just got kicked into the long grass. There were those who would cast active actual doubt on the science but usually, the Global Climate Coalition was a little bit more subtle. 

However, in 1995/6, it had gone too far, launching full throated vociferous attacks on the IPCC second assessment report. In 1997 Shell had pulled out because of the reputational risk. And this was followed later, by other groups, including Ford and GM. By February 2002 it was no longer needed. Because the administration of George HW Bush’s son, George W. Bush, was clearly not going to do anything on climate, having already pulled out of Kyoto. The Global Climate Coalition had therefore, lived as long as it needed to.

Why this matters

Don’t be fooled by names. When they say they’re something they are usually the opposite. They’re very determined. They’re very clever. They’re very well funded. They stick around, they do the work. They get what they want, usually, not always, but often. 

What happened next

Although the Global Climate Coalition was dead, individual companies continued to finance both outright denial and also predatory delay. And they’re still at it, of course. Full stop.

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United States of America

February 2, 1992- that “sarcastic” memo about exporting pollution…

On this day, February 2nd 1992, following a leak from Friends of the Earth, Jornal de Brazil breaks the story that a “sarcastic” memo was signed by Laurence Summers, then Chief Economist of the World Bank, about the economic good sense in off-shoring pollution.

“Just between you and me, shouldn’t the World Bank be encouraging more migration of dirty industries to the LDCs [less developed countries]?… The economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable, and we should face up to that… Under-populated countries in Africa are vastly under-polluted; their air quality is probably vastly inefficiently low compared to Los Angeles or Mexico City… The concern over an agent that causes a one in a million change in the odds of prostate cancer is obviously going to be much higher in a country where people survive to get prostate cancer than in a country where under-five mortality is 200 per thousand.”

This just after the negotiations for a climate treaty to be signed in Brazil in 1992 had begun. Oops.

What happened next

It got mentioned during the Senate Hearings for Summers to get the Secretary of the Treasury gig in 1993. That’s about it.


Why this matters

As “satire” it wasn’t exactly Swift, now was it. And in the pre-Basel agreement world, many didn’t see the funny side.

See also – the wikipedia page, natch.