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Australia United States of America

May 3, 1990 – From Washington to Canberra, the “greenhouse effect” has elites promising…

On this day, May 3 1990, different things happened around the world that are worth remembering.

First, in Washington DC a whole bunch of legislators had got together and announced that there should be a global Marshall Plan for Climate and Environment blah, blah, blah. It finished on the 2nd, so I am cheating (but already had two posts yesterday, so sue me.) It was reported on the 3rd in the New York Times.

The usual well-meaning words sincerely meant as well, but not connected to a set of social forces that could make it so.

Meanwhile, in Australia, probably more or less the same time, The Primary Industries Minister John Kerin, was telling the Australian Mining Industry Council Annual General Meeting annual that there was a good chance of a of a referendum allowing the federal to Commonwealth Government to gain powers over environmental issues from the States. This would have scared the bejesus out of The AMIC people.

Seccombe, M. 1990. Chance for green referendum, says Kerin. Sydney Morning Herald, 4 May. CANBERRA: Public support for Federal Government power to make national environment laws had grown to the point where a referendum could now succeed, the Minister for Primary Industries and Energy, Mr Kerin, said yesterday. Mr Kerin raised again the need for the Commonwealth to wrest power from the States – first broached by the then-Minister for the Environment, Senator Richardson, last year – at the annual seminar of the Australian Mining Industry Council in Canberra.

It was not to be Australia remains a quarry with the state attached.

What happens next?

Well, the global Marshall Plan idea got filed in the circular file. Noise towards a referendum got quietened down, and the whole issue of climate got kicked into the “ecologically sustainable development process” long grass. And AMIC a couple of years later became so toxic that it had to change its leader and rebrand but not until it had helped in defeating another carbon tax proposal…

Categories
Carbon Capture and Storage Technophilia United Kingdom

May 2, 2012 – CCS is gonna save us all. Oh yes.

On this day (May 2nd) in 2012 the UK government announced a “Carbon Capture andStorage” Cost Reduction Taskforce which would

“to advise the government and industry on the steps needed to reduce the cost of CCS, so that it could compete with other low carbon technologies in the 2020s.” (see also this press release).

CCS has long been the get-out-of-jail-free card for industry (esp oil and gas) and a lot of time and money has been spent on it. But it still ain’t here. Maybe this time will be different…

Why this matters

We need to remember that these salvationary technologies have fallen over repeatedly, and ask ourselves “gee, maybe we could focus on, you know, just using hella lot less energy?”

What happened next

CCS fell over, got picked up and dusted off, and is again flavour of the month.

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Australia

May 2, 2009 – Australian Liberals warned of wipe-out if seen as “anti-climate action” #auspol

On this day, in 2009, it was reported that Australian Liberal senators were telling their industry backers that secret polling had them being wiped out if they didn’t say yes to Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s “Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme.”

Taylor, L. 2009. Turnbull must bridge Coalition split on ETS. The Australian, 2 May, p. 18. SENIOR Liberals are telling industry their internal polling shows the Coalition losing up to 10 seats in the House of Representatives and four in the Senate in a double dissolution election triggered by their rejecting Kevin Rudd’s emissions trading scheme

The context is this Rudd had come to power in December 2007. promising that he would do something about climate change after the inaction and resistance of John Howard for 11 years. Rudd’s something amounted to a so-called Carbon Pollution Reduction scheme.

The :iberals were on the hook because they had agreed to an emissions produce reduction scheme of their own in the run up to the 2007 election campaign. And so it would look churlish if they did not support. Rudd knew this and was busy sticking the knife in

Significant portions of the Liberal Party and even more significant portions of the National Party which is the other part of the Coalition were not convinced by the climate science and are still not

Why this matters

We need to remember that even periods of so-called bipartisan consensus are fragile, and that there are those who will, until (even after?) the waters close over their heads/they all die of thirst, still deny 19th century physics.

What happened next? 

In November Malcolm Turnbull already damaged opposition leader overplayed his hand and ended up being toppled as opposition leader by an unexpected candidate Tony Abbott who had declared that the climate science was “absolute crap”

This led to a stop astonishingly turbulent period in Australian politics with multiple defenestrations, and assassinations, thanks to Rudd’s spinelessness after the Copenhagen debacle, in not calling a double-dissolution election.

But the short version is that a relatively anodyne and inadequate proposal for an economy-wide carbon price became impossible. And nothing in Australia’s future suggests anything other than an uninhabitable hellscape. 

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United States of America

May 1, 1996 – US Congressman says climate research money is “money down a rat hole”

Okay, on May 1 1996, US California and Republican Congressman Dana Rohrabacher complained that money spent on climate research was money “down a rat hole.” )Gelbspan 1998 page 76-7) The context was that the Republicans at this time had become significantly sensitised to climate as a “wedge” issue, and were aware that it was a stick they could beat the Democrats with (having defeated the BTU tax a couple of years earlier, and with a Presidential election in the offing.

They had started attacking the IPCC, which was in the process of doing its Fourth Assessment report, second assessment report. And they knew that Clinton’s administration had agreed to the Berlin mandate that was going to mean that in a couple of years time, the US government was going to be proposing some emissions reductions, perhaps over and above what Gore had already suggested.

There is an underlying antipathy, of course, to impact their to impact science – which is science that tells you the consequences of your extraction – and produ. ction science. And, of course, if they can resist money being spent on impact science, they can say that there isn’t enough evidence to do policy to fix a problem because they’re not sure that it exists, so it’s a win-win for them. They also get to harass and demoralise scientists, which they regard as a fun pastime.

Why this matters

The people who made it harder for the species’ to see its mess have faces and names. To the Hague with them.

What happened next

In early 1997 the US Senate voted 95-0 to say “to hell with any climate treaty that doesn’t force China etc to cut its emissions.”

References

Gelbspan, R. (1998) The Heat is On: The Climate Crisis, The Cover-up, The Prescription. Basic Books;

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Ignored Warnings Science United States of America

April 30, 1985 – New York Times reports C02 not the only greenhouse problem

On this day, the 30th of April 1985, The New York Times reported that “Rare Gases May Speed The Warming of the Earth: Rare Gases May Be Speeding Earth’s Warming”

The reporter, James Gleick, opened his story thus

“Tiny quantities of more than 30 rare gases threaten to warm the earth’s atmosphere even more rapidly over the next 50 years than carbon dioxide will, according to a study by a team of atmospheric scientists.

“Their findings reinforce a growing conviction among scientists that the trace gases, many of them industrial byproducts, are playing a leading role in the “greenhouse effect,” the warming of the earth as less and less heat is able to escape the atmosphere.”

This research was then presented at Villach in October of 1985, and helped convince people that climate change wasn’t anthropogenic global warming was not a threat for the relatively distant future, but something that would need a policy response right now. So even before Villach1985 there was a sense that shit was getting real.

Why this matters. 

We need to understand that our problem is not that senior politicians don’t understand the problem. Our problem is that we are unable to keep the problem at the front of their attention and to turn it into a set of policy proposals that are then implemented. 

What happened next?

Well Villach meeting happened WMO. UNDP ICSU. They tried to get the ball rolling that were successful. You got an international treaty, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. And since 1990, we have burned more carbon dioxide, released into the atmosphere, then all of human history to that date, which tells you how successful these international agreements have been.

Categories
Science United States of America

April 29, 1970 – Washington DC symposium talks about carbon dioxide

On this day, the 29th of April in 1970 a symposium was held in Washington DC on “Aids and Threats from Technology.” One of the topics of conversation was, well “Carbon Dioxide and its Role in Climate Change”

PDF here.

The newly minted Council on Environmental Quality would use this (and other research) to include a chapter about climate change in its first report, published a few months later.

Why this matters?

We knew enough to be worried, and to make a SERIOUS effort at research, throwing money and scientists at the problem.

What happened next

The scientists did the best they could. By the end of the decade, we definitely knew enough. Then Reagan and his cronies came and cost us the thick end of a decade. And then, well, the rest is history.

Categories
Denial Science

April 28, 1975- Newsweek’s “The Cooling World” story.

On this day, April 28 1975, Newsweek ran a story ”The Cooling World” (pdf here) based on the idea that an ice age was imminent because of the amount of particulates thrown up into the atmosphere.

It wasn’t alone in this – The previous year (June 24, 1974) Time had an article titled “Another Ice Age?” which said “the atmosphere has been growing gradually cooler for the past three decades” but noted that “Some scientists… think that the cooling trend may be only temporary.”

These articles have been used ever since, as the part of the myth that, in the 1970s, “all scientists were convinced that an ice age was coming. And therefore, carbon dioxide build-up is just the latest iteration of a scare that we need to pay no attention to.” This idea has faded somewhat in mainstream culture, but it still persists in the nuttier corners of the internet.

What we learn is that journalism around climate is very difficult because the issues are very complex, and that people choose not to accept the journalists and scientists can get it wrong and change their mind because they are looking to have a gotcha moment.

Why this matters. 

Denialists have kept using it.

What happened next?

Denialists kept using it

See also:

The original author, Peter Gwynne, writing in 2014

Scientific American in 2015 – For Its 40th Birthday, Let’s Retire Newsweek’s Global Cooling Story

Wikipedia on Global Cooling.

Categories
International processes

April 27, 1987 – “Our Common Future” released.

On this day, April 27 1987, Our Common Future also known as the Brundtland Report, was released, giving the world the term “sustainable development”, (which actually had been used in the Global 2000 report released in April 1980. But that was attached to the Carter Administration, by then regarded as a bunch of hopeless losers). 

The United Nations had created the World Commission on Environmental Development in 1983. And the commission was chaired by Norwegian politician, Gro Harlem Brundtland. The point of the Brundtland Report was to imagine that environmental development and ecological protection were not mortal enemies that you could have when win-win situations.

There was some stuff in there on climate (but not as much as there would have been if it had been published two years later! – they took information that had been produced for the 1985 Villach WMO/UNEP/ICSU conference and shoved it in a chapter.  

Our Common Future - Wikipedia

Why this matters. 

If you’re an apocalypse geek like me, it matters.

What happened next?

The Earth Summit, the WCED proposed for 1992 kind of sort of got overtaken by the climate issue. But biodiversity was also still in the mix, as was “Agenda 21”, which called for all sorts of participatory bottom-up democracy processes which ran into the sand. But the idea is too useful, politically, to be abandoned, so it is constantly rebranded as the Millennium Development Goals, and then the Sustainable Development Goals etc etc

Meanwhile, the UK called its first climate white paper “Our Common Inheritance.” Droll.

And Brundtland decided to throw in her lot with the technocrats rather than the deep ecologists. There’s a good article about that here.  Despite this, she remains a hate figure for the far-right (one world government etc etc).

Categories
Denial International processes Kyoto Protocol United States of America

April 26, 1998 – New York Times front page expose on anti-climate action by industry

On April 26 1998 the New York Times ran a front page story. It began thus.

Industry opponents of a treaty to fight global warming have drafted an ambitious proposal to spend millions of dollars to convince the public that the environmental accord is based on shaky science.

Among their ideas is a campaign to recruit a cadre of scientists who share the industry‘s views of climate science and to train them in public relations so they can help convince journalists, politicians and the public that the risk of global warming is too uncertain to justify controls on greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide that trap the sun’s heat near Earth.

An informal group of people working for big oil companies, trade associations and conservative policy research organizations that oppose the treaty have been meeting recently at the Washington office of the American Petroleum Institute to put the plan together.

Cushman, J. 1998. Industrial Group Plans to Battle Climate Treaty. New York Times, 26 April, p.1

The context is that the US had signed the Kyoto Protocol (this in itself was a meaningless gesture – it only had force if ratified, and the Clinton administration had no intention of trying to get it through the Senate, especially given the previous year’s Byrd-Hagel resolution, which had insisted the US should not sign any treaty that didn’t put emissions constraints on developing countries (looking at you, China). This was of course exactly the opposite of what they’d signed off on in 1992 (Rio) and 1995 (Berlin Mandate) but hey, consistency and hobgoblins, amirite?

On one level, this was hardly “news” – anyone who had been paying any attention at all from 1989 onwards; the George Marshall Foundation got going on climate, and then the Global Climate Coalition and the “Information Clearinghouse on the Environment” (1991) and the attacks on IPCC second assessment report by various well-connected loons, and THEN the attacks on Kyoto in the run up to the meeting in 1997.

See for example Cushman’s report on 7th December 1997, during the Kyoto meeting – “Intense Lobbying Against Global Warming Treaty: U.S. Negotiators Brief Industry Groups and Environmentalists Separately in Kyoto”

Why this matters

A part of the reason (not the most important part necessarily, and not the part we can do that much about) “we” have done so little on climate change is because of staggeringly successful campaigns of predatory delay.

See also – Ben Franta’s work on the American Petroleum Institute.

Categories
Australia International processes UNFCCC

April 25, 1996 – Greenpeace slams Australian government on #climate obstructionism

On this day, 25th of April 1996 Greenpeace International condemned Australia’s negotiating stance at the climate talks in Geneva.

“Gilchrist, G. 1996. Greenpeace Attacks Global Warming ‘spoiling Tactics’. Sydney Morning Herald, 26 April, p.2. Australia’s spoiling tactics in negotiations on tackling global warming undermined the nation’s “clean and green” international image, Greenpeace International’s top climate campaigner, Mr Bill Hare, said yesterday. He warned that Australia’s diplomatic position on climate change threatened its long-term trade interests.”

The context is that the second Conference of the Parties, following on from Berlin the previous year, was going to be an important to way station on the way to completing the so-called Berlin mandate, which called on rich nations to agree emissions cuts.

It was feared that the Australian Government’s obstruction tactics would move from softly-softly on display at the previous COP to full-on, shameless and unashamed heel dragging (In March of 1996 the Labor government had been replaced by John Howard’s “Liberal National” coalition.) 

And – getting ahead of ourselves (COP2 did not happen till July 1996) – so it came to pass…

“The discussions at the second COP to the UNFCCC in Geneva in 1996 saw Australia establish itself as a climate change laggard. Immediately before the conference the government questioned the science of climate change and opposed the idea of the IPCC’s new conclusions on climate change impacts providing the basis for negotiations.55 Significantly, they were joined in this concern only by OPEC states and the Russian Federation.56 Most importantly, however, the government’s position at the Geneva negotiations was to oppose the idea of legally binding targets on greenhouse emissions.57”

Macdonald, Matt. 2005a. Fair Weather Friend? Ethics and Australia’s Approach to Climate Change. Australian Journal of Politics and History 51 (2): 216–234.

Why this matters. 

We need to prepare criminal briefs for crimes against humanity and other species at The Hague

What happened next?

The Australian Government played a spoiler role as it still largely has, in the climate negotiations, they got a very sweet deal at Kyoto still refused to ratify. And as I may have mentioned, the carbon dioxide keeps accumulating.