DeFries, Ruth S .; Malone, Thomas F. National Research Council (U.S.), Committee on Global Change Forum on Global Change and Our Common Future 1989 Washington, D.C. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press; 1989. xiii, 227 p. : ill., maps ; 28 cm. Committee on Global Change, National Research Council.
Proceedings of the Forum on Global Change and Our Common Future, held on May 2-3, 1989, at the National Theatre in Washington, D.C., and organized by the National Research Council’s Committee on Global Change. Includes bibliographical references.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 353ppm. As of 2025 it is 430ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the “Our Common Future” report had been released in 1987. It was a sequel/rehash of sorts of the Brandt report of 1980, and sat alongside the Global 2000 report. All these – whisper it – were dancing around the fact that the Limits to Growth people of 1972 were basically right but nobody wanted to admit it so everyone went along with the bright shining lies about Technology or Development or Human Rights or whatever protective incantations were popular and career-enhancing at that moment.
What I think we can learn from this. We were smart enough to spot the problems. Mostly too scared (with good reason) to point out that the maniac sociopaths in charge would never allow the actions required, because it would interfere with their power, prestige, appetites, ideology. Duck and cover? Kinda.
What happened next
In 1989 the Global Climate Coalition was formed – oil companies and auto companies and so on – to fight any meaningful policy response to climate change. They won.
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.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 327ppm. As of 2025 it is 430ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was the ferment of the 1960s (i.e. the hard dangerous work of civil rights activists and the hand-wringing of the liberals) was ramifying through the institutions. Here we see Orr Roberts, by all accounts a decent man, trying to carve out some space.
What I think we can learn from this. Institutional racism is a thing. Individuals try to ameliorate it, but you need a system to change a system…
What happened next. The 60s ended in the late 1970s, with exhaustion, repression, and the beginnings of a successful “fightback” (that never ended, but was on the back foot for a bit). By 1981 it was “Morning in America” again…
There’s plenty of books about elements of this – I should make a list I guess.
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.
Former Prime Minister Tony “I actually belong at The Hague” Blair has offered us all some more of his ineffable and ineluctable pearls of wisdom. This time, on climate change. Apparently phasing out fossil fuels is doomed to fail and impractical (we will come back to this).
Labour politicians, most who did not serve under him, are predictably irritated, though Keir Starmer, in a surprise move, says that black is white, ignorance is strength etc and that Blair is aligned with Labour policy (on carbon capture).
Liberals will talk patronisingly and cod-Freudianly about “Relevance Deprivation Syndrome” – of Blair as an antinomian ha-been who once bestrode the world stage like a Poundstore colossus, chumming it up with George and Silvio and is now reduced to palling around with petrostate assholes instead (because, you know, George and Silvio were so much, well ‘classier’.)
Radicals will say “why does the media give this has-been oxygen? Are they just trolling us? Blair is a GODDAM WAR CRIMINAL.”
Reform bosses will say “more of this please, especially ahead of the local elections and that by-election.”
Everyone in between will just sigh, roll their eyes and doomscroll right on past to other less outraging sources of outrage.
I’m writing this simply because I spent a little time this morning working on the indexing (currently slipshod af) of my All Our Yesterdays site, and since Blair popped up a bit, I thought I’d write something brief about Blair, climate and carbon capture and storage and close out with my usual quote about “practicality.”
Blair and hot air
First of several fun facts – Tony Blair was born on May 6 1953, which was the day that newspapers around the world (US, Australia etc) carried news of a warning by Canadian physicist Gilbert Plass that the build-up of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, thanks to the burning of fossil fuels, would mean a rise in global temperatures, melting ice-caps and all the rest of it. For the next thirty five years, scientists would beaver away. Ultimately, Plass was right….
Tony Blair was a new keen MP when the climate issue “broke through” in 1988. These were the days of Neil Kinnock as Labour leader. Already it was obvious that Blair – by all accounts not exactly the sharpest tool in the box – was doing what all his fellow politicians were doing – seeing the climate issue (existential, super-wicked) as another opportunity for political games.
The Thatcher government, thanks to her speech in September 1988 to the Royal Society, was having to grapple with what to do about the “greenhouse effect.” There were some within the civil service and government saying “well, you know, we tax things we think are bad, to discourage them… soooo….” This was not a popular view within government, and either to kill it or boost it, somebody leaked it to the media. It was covered on the front page of the Independent on June 1 1989. And, well
In the aftermath of John Smith’s sudden death, Blair became Labour leader thanks to The Infamous Dinner. Climate change was really not an “issue” for the electorate in 1995-1997 (though of course it could and should have been, but this is the world we live in.
Blair’s deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott, was at the Kyoto COP in December 1997 and much was made of the UK promise to go “beyond” Kyoto in terms of carbon emissions cuts. The simple reality was that these were, to paraphrase Dire Straits, “Reductions for Nothing” – they were an artefact of a) the “dash for gas” (i.e. the partial phasing out coal-burning for electricity generation – though that phase out is clear in retrospect – until early 2010s the plan was for coal to stick around and b) deindustrialisation – factories getting exported to India, China etc.
Blair managed not to hold businesses feet to the fire on a climate levy, and generally continued with lipservice and all the rest of it. Sometimes uttered some Fine Words like these at the Sustainable Development summit in September 2002
Mr President and colleagues. We know the problems. A child in Africa dies every three seconds from famine, disease or conflict. We know that if climate change is not stopped, all parts of the world will suffer. Some will even be destroyed, and we know the solution – sustainable development. So the issue for this summit is the political will.
But it wasn’t until 2004 that Blair really started leaning into the pieties. What happened? Well, there was the small matter of the attack on Iraq that wasn’t going so well, and the impending G8 summit, the one the UK was hosting. Rather like Richard Nixon going “green” in 1969 to try to change the topic from Vietnam All The Time, Blair wanted to have a different mood music for his various crusades.
What is now plain is that the emission of greenhouse gases, associated with industrialisation and strong economic growth from a world population that has increased sixfold in 200 years, is causing global warming at a rate that began as significant, has become alarming and is simply unsustainable in the long-term. And by long-term I do not mean centuries ahead. I mean within the lifetime of my children certainly; and possibly within my own. And by unsustainable, I do not mean a phenomenon causing problems of adjustment. I mean a challenge so far-reaching in its impact and irreversible in its destructive power, that it alters radically human existence.
As best I can tell,it’s the first time carbon capture and storage got a run from him.
“And carbon sequestration: literally capturing carbon and storing it in the ground, also has real potential. BP are already involved in an Algerian project which aims to store 17 million tonnes of CO2.”
[Fun fact – BP had to end the Algerian jaunt because the carbon didn’t stay stored]
So Blair got his wish – the 2005 G8 Gleneagles was about “Make Poverty History” and some long-forgotten promises on climate – and the launch of all the tosh about carbon capture and storage.
Blair by then was on borrowed time, and his pivot towards nuclear, cloaked as climate concern, came as no surprise.
Praktisch
Blair is one of those “politics is the art of the possible” kinda guys. Always happy to remind you that some things are impossible and unrealistic- feeding people, decent housing, preparing for climate change while others – starting wars, ignoring climate change – are the normal behaviour of ‘responsible’ people.
‘Responsible’ people like him. They have known about climate change for four decades. We are living in the world they are responsible for. They are going to be – inevitably now I think – quite literally the death of us all.
And so I will close out with a quote, one I use often, but probably not often enough, from a wonderful memoir about World War 2. The author, an American doctor serving in Europe in late 1944, encounters a young German, called Manfred. Manfred had offered his services to the Allies, who put him in a German army uniform, parachuted him behind the German lines. His job was to gather as much useful military intelligence as he could, get captured by the advancing American troops and then spill everything he knew. Given that the Gestapo and Abwehr etc knew about this, and were on the look out for the Manfreds, this was, ah, mildly brave.
Manfred hears some of the American troops talking about “being practical” and starts muttering to himself. The author of the book, asks-
“… the word praktisch had been a two-syllable club he’d been beaten with by fellow students and teachers and businessmen and clergy all through the nightmare years. “Stop being such a god-damned idealist! Be practical!”“Practical means I know right from wrong but I’m too fucking scared to do what’s right so I commit crimes or permit crimes and I say I’m only being practical. Practical means coward. Practical frequently means stupid. Someone is too goddamn dumb to realize the consequences of what he’s doing and he hides under practical. It also means corrupt: I know what I ought to do but I’m being paid to do something different so I call it practical. Practical is an umbrella for everything lousy people do.”
There is a thing called the Keeling Curve (see my tattoo of it here).
It measures the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
When Blair was born, 6 May 1953 the C02 level was about 310ppm (we didn’t have the Keeling Curve then – it starts in 1958. We have ice cores, though…)
When Blair took office in 1997 the C02 level was 363ppm
When Blair left office in 2007 the C02 level was 384ppm
Today it is 430ish, and climbing fast. It could have been different. If Blair had had courage, or principles – which he would only have had if forced to by unflinching social movements capable of pushing back against State and Corporate power – then it might have been different
Things I will read someday, if only to understand Blair more
Leo Abse- “Blair the man behind the smile”
There’s also these – https://www.theguardian.com/books/2007/may/05/biography.politicalbooks
Thirty two years ago, on this day, April 30th, 1993, British scientist Tim Berners-Lee, then at CERN, publishes the protocols for what would become the “World Wide Web.”
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 357ppm. As of 2025 it is 427ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that ARPANET and Darpanet were already “a thing”, but getting computer to speak to computer was not necessarily that easy. Berners-Lee’s genius was in the codification but also in refusing to patent it.
What I think we can learn from this is that there is such a thing as an intellectual commons, but that commons requires rules and governance. This is possible, despite what actual racist scumbags like Garrett Hardin may have though. Having said that, the AI slop and the broligarchs are making Hardin’s view plausible.
What happened next
1995-96 the internet for public consumption begins to kick in. You have email, then you have Hotmail, web based email. You have websites, internet cafes, Hollywood making websites for things like the movie Independence Day and so on, and I was relatively young back then. I’m very glad that I hit my adulthood, if you can call it that, before the internet and certainly before social media, and certainly, certainly before smartphones. Because those things are like the blood in Alien they are acid, and they will burn through any container you care to mention.
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.
The great Australian cartoonist Jon Kudelka kindly agreed to an interview.
1. Who are you and how did you come to be a cartoonist (where grew up etc).
I grew up in Hobart and after completing an undergraduate degree in molecular biology and chemistry in the early 90s realised that opportunities to do actual research were mostly in the area of weapons research or mining or forestry and decided that it wasn’t for me. I had supported myself through uni illustrating for various clients and decided to give that a go as if it failed I could probably get into teaching.
2. When and how did you first hear about climate change?
I heard about climate change in grade ten which would have been the mid eighties, so only 90 years after Arrhenius published his first paper on the topic, establishing my ability to be right on the ball with important news.
3. Your “scientist tapping the microphone ‘is this thing on'” cartoon from 2013 pops up intermittently in my feed and on sites – any recollection of how it came to be? If you were doing a sequel, what would the scientist be saying now?
The scientist one was done in a tearing hurry as I had taken in far too much work with various papers. I intended to have the sea level rising in each panel but somehow managed to forget it so was kicking myself the next day. If I did a sequel it would probably involve a scientist swearing a great deal.
Also I would probably go with a female scientist because the only people in my uni year who stuck with science turned out to be female. Probably should have done that with the first one but like I said, I was right on deadline and details weren’t a priority.
4. Your Rusted On Bingo is pure genius – what was the motiviation/straw that broke the camel’s back? Presumably you do encounter these responses from people in real life, where the block function is not possible. What do you do then?
I always got a lot more snark from Labor for the mildest criticism whereas the (slightly more) conservative parties were cranky in a more buffoonish manner. I think the trouble was that Labor types wanted to be Tories but didn’t want to be seen as Tories and didn’t react at all well to it. The prevailing attitude was to promise something centrist then roll over at the slightest pushback. I picked this rank cowardice during the run-up to Bill Shorten’s failed campaign against [then Prime Minister Scott] Morrison in 2019 where there were some good ideas that didn’t go far enough and the whole campaign was handed over to risk averse spin doctors. More effort seemed to be put into making excuses (mostly blaming the Greens for not passing Rudd’s CPRS in 2009) rather than actually following through with a consistent platform.
This is not to say that the Coalition weren’t people you’d touch with a barge pole (unless you were trying to push them off a boat) and a lot of the groundwork in ruining the country was done during the John Howard era. In fact I even published a book to that effect. It all got to the point where despite the succession of absolute clowns put forward by the Liberals starting with Tony Abbott, it became clear that Labor’s cowardice from opposition was clearly enabling the Coalition and the two party system was the entire problem. Pointing this out unleashed a deluge of spitefulness from the party faithful to the point where I just made a bingo card based entirely on their excuses for failure.
I was going to leave it at that but they just kept at it to the point where I rejigged the card into a teatowel and put the profits into sponsoring the endangered red handfish which I named “Rusty” which I quite enjoyed. I get a few requests to do another teatowel but have retired from cartooning due to a terminal brain tumour and don’t really have to time, inclination or funds to do another print run. Also the original seems to have held up pretty well.
These days people are generally too scared to make these comments to me in person but back in the day I would be increasingly polite to the point where they became quite cross. This may or may not have been deliberate. Anyway, I probably rambled on a bit there but I am somewhat bewildered as to why anyone would cling to any of the major parties these days but I haven’t really been paying attention since I retired late last year.
5. Who are your favourite cartoonists, living or dead?
6. Anything else you want to say – shout outs to activists, outlets, news of upcoming projects etc etc.
I’ve moved to being a more non-political artist because politics makes me a bit cranky these days as you’ve probably noticed. I recently attended the Takayna artist residency run by the Bob Brown Foundation and they do great work attempting to look after the place because they generally do what they say which would these days seems to be frowned upon by the media and the time-serving careerists who infest the major political parties.
Our only hope for getting the urgent changes needed to give the next generation half a chance after the long period of making the environment much worse in the case of the coalition or arguably slightly less worse under Labor is a minority government with sizeable crossbenches of people who are willing to actually work to make things better in both Houses of Parliament though it’s pretty much at the stage where if this occurred the Liberals and Labor will stop pretending they’re not defending their duopoly and band together to defend their donors.
Thirty six years ago, on this day, April 29th, 1989, the ABC radio programme the “Science Show” had this as its running line up.
The Science Show [Episode 658] – Reply to David Suzuki from Barry Jones; Greenhouse Effect Consequences; New Scientist Editor; Research Used for Biological Weapons; Lichens; Bopplenuts
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 353ppm. As of 2025 it is 427ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the Science Show had, from its first August 1975 broadcast, been alerting listeners to the threat of climate change. Science Minister Barry Jones had been on the case too, and his “Commission for the Future” had worked with the CSIRO on a highly effective “Greenhouse Project.” The Australian Federal Government was grappling with ‘what to do’… David Suzuki, the Canadian science communicator, was making frequent trips to Australia and had recently lectured on the Amazon.
What I think we can learn from this was that the late 1980s really was a burst of awareness/fear around climate change, but that people can only cope with so much fear and then they turn away, happy to be told that every little thing’s gonna be alright, even (especially) when they know that really, it won’t be…
What happened next
We turned away – the green groups were unable to maintain the momentum, sustain their capacity. It was always going to end like this. It’s how every story ends…Or has ended so far. Who knows, maybe next time will be different. Sure.
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.
Sixty six years ago, on this day, April 28th, 1959 a doctor, Gordon Fair, talks about carbon dioxide as a possible long term public health issue during his Chadwick lecture,
,
28 April 1959 NEW FACTORS IN MAN’S MANAGEMENT OF HIS ENVIRONMENT *
Especially Fluoridation, Air Pollution and Radiation
Professor of Public Health Engineering, Harvard University, U.S.A.
I am deeply grateful to the Chadwick Trust for its invitation to deliver a Chadwick Lecture at the 66th Annual Congress of the Royal Society of Health. Although the prevention of local or metropolitan air pollution is the most immediate concern of health authorities, the threat of possible future world-wide effects must not be overlooked. Most real is the accumulation in the atmosphere of the radioactive by-products of nuclear fission (see part IV of this paper) which could endanger life in all parts of the globe. More speculative is the possibility that the combustion of fuels and wastes may eventually build up the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere so fast as to influence world climate by creating the so-called “green-house effect”
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 316ppm. As of 2025 it is 427ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that already in the United States, carbon dioxide buildup was being spoken of by public health personnel alerted to it as part of the general problem of air pollution, but also just reading a newspaper. If you were a scientifically trained intelligent person in the 1950s who was reading American scientists and paying attention to science journalism in mainstream newspapers, you would have been aware of the potential problem of carbon dioxide buildup.
What I think we can learn from this is that people have been talking about carbon dioxide buildup for longer than most of the five or six people reading this website will have been alive. And we have never managed to even get a cursory grip on what is a slippery, growing and ever more slippery problem that has always been wicked, then became super wicked and is now probably “hyper wicked”, whatever that means.
What happened next People kept talking about carbon dioxide build up as an issue and by the late 60s, it was more significantly on the agendas of biologists, clean air, folk, etc. For all the good that did.
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.
On this day 24 years ago Australia’s status as a colony of the United States – an enthusiastic one at that – was confirmed for the (checks notes) gazillionth time.
“Washington has mounted a diplomatic campaign to deflect criticism of its repudiation of the Kyoto Protocol, instead seeking support for its goal of broadening the UN climate change treaty to include developing countries.
And Canberra is Washington’s prize recruit in this campaign.
Asked in Wednesday’s Washington Post which countries backed him on greenhouse, President George Bush said “Australia [and Canada] said they understand why the US took this position”.
“However, the Canadian government has criticised the US for pulling out of the Kyoto process. Only Australia has provided uncritical support and is therefore Washington’s “prize recruit” in its campaign to kill the Kyoto Protocol, according to a report in the April 27 Australian Financial Review.”
Hordern, N. 2001. Bush wary of `kiss of death’ for backers in protocol pact. Australian Financial Review, April 27 , p.30.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 371ppm. As of 2025 it is 427ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that “settled” (invaded) Australia started life in 1788 as a dumping ground for convicts who couldn’t be hanged and/or sent to the American colonies. The various colonies gained measures of self-government and in 1901 the Commonwealth came into existence, but Australia was still basically a colony. Which was fine, but in 1942, after the fall of Singapore to the Japanese, it was clear the Brits weren’t going to be able to defend Oz. So the Aus Prime Minister pivoted to the Yanks – needs must. And Australia has been, in all significant respects, a colony ever since. So it goes.
What we learn. Colonial subjects like to imagine they are free. Everyone wants to imagine they are free.
What happened next. The Australian political “elite” (never were scare quotes so relevant) have continued to be craven and pathetic on climate. Why should anyone expect anything else?
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.
Thirty years ago, on this day, April 26th, 1986 reactor four at Chernobyl went kaboom (partial meltdown).
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 347ppm. As of 2025 it is 427ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that this was precisely the wrong time for a nuclear reactor to explode, and the absolutely terrible response at the Politburo-downwards level versus the heroics on the ground, put the lie to “glasnost” and “perestroika”, and made Gorbachev’s efforts to change the Soviet economy and society that much more difficult. I mean, he was never going to succeed, but Chernobyl was, in retrospect, kind of a nail in the coffin. It also made the pro-nuclear because of greenhouse gas arguments that much harder to make.
What I think we can learn from this is that the intersections between politics, technology, economics, culture, you name it. They’re fantastically complicated, obviously or complex. And there are times when an accident wouldn’t matter that much. I would argue that Chernobyl was exquisitely timed, and so it came to pass.
What happened next
In September 1986 a Safe Energy rally in London was held – the anti-nuke sentiment grew…
The battles over whether Chernobyl caused hundreds of deaths, 1000s of deaths, 10s of 1000s of deaths goes on.
The cultural response to Chernobyl is interesting.
There is that bizarre Kenneth Royce book, Fallout.
And there is the TV show Chernobyl, which I should watch sometime,
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.
On this day 25 years ago, April 25, 2000, the Federal Environment Minister, Robert Hill spoke at a meeting to the Pew Centre on Global Climate Change in Washington, ‘Beyond Kyoto: Australia’s efforts to combat global warming’, 25 April 2000,
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 372ppm. As of 2025 it is 427ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that Australia had extorted an extremely generous deal at the Kyoto Conference (Hill had received a standing ovation at Cabinet afterwards). But it had leaked in 1998 that Howard was only going to ratify the deal if the US did (up in the air, with the 2000 election forthcoming). So Hill had to pretend all was well. And people had to pretend to be going along with that. Rude not to.
What we learn. It’s all kayfabe, innit?
What happened next. The Supreme Court handed George W Bush the 2000 election. In March 2001 he pulled the US out of the Kyoto Protocol negotiations. Australian Prime Minister John Howard waited until World Environment Day 2002 before doing same. Why the delay? Probably just because he liked watching the greenies twist in the wind? For the shingles, in other words.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 327ppm. As of 2025 it is 430ppm, but check 
