On the 13th of April 1992. Richard Lindzen MIT scientist – still alive so one has to be careful what adjectives one uses – was at an OPEC Seminar on thee Environment ini Vienna, talking about “The Origin of Alleged Scientific Consensus.” You can read more on this in Jeremy Leggett’s, the Carbon War.
Lindzen’s schtick for a long time was – and may still be – that the climate models can’t cope with water vapour and therefore, we shouldn’t do anything. And this flimflam was useful for a long time as a talking point for those who wanted to protect the power and investments of the fossil fuels gang.
Why this matters.
The lost decades. This sort of thing helped prevent/delay action when we still might have done something about the whole unravelling.
On the 12th of April 1992, the Australian Institute of Wnergy held a workshop seminar on the thorny topic of “How sustainable is Australian Energy?” And this came asthe momentum, the wave towards the 1992 Earth Summit was cresting. It was only two months away. So everyone was still up for getting together and schmoozing. And that’s what they did. There were proposals about switching to gas from coal because it was allegedly lower carbon. It only gives if you ignore the fugitive emissions.
And so it came to pass that the wave crested and broke
Why this matters.
For the same reason that this whole project matters, we need to know that we have been talking about doing something on climate for a very, very long time.
What happened next?
The new Keating government (Keating, formerly Treasurer, toppled Bob Hawke at the end of 1991) was profoundly uninterested-through-to-actively-hostile on environmental matters generally, including “greenhouse” issues. So the momentum just died. In December the pissweak “National Greenhouse Response Strategy” (only one of those four words is accurate) was released. In 1996 John Howard came along and made the whole thing at least more honest… And the carbon dioxide accumulates…
On the 11th of April 1987. Two things happen worthy of note.
One, the World Resources Institute released its report “A Matter of Degrees: The Potential for Limiting the Greenhouse Effect”
Second. Primo Levi died either by suicide or accident
So let’s deal with those in turn. The World Resources Institute had been set up in 1982 by Gus Speth, ater his time in the Carter Administration, and the Council on Environmental Quality. WRI had been producing reports and hosting conferences and briefings and so forth. And this report coming in the aftermath of Villach 1985 and before another meeting in Villach and then Bellagio, was intended to throw more for once of a better expression, firewood on the fire, to increase the likelihood of international negotiations. In that, it was a success, and the failure of the negotiations is hardly the fault of people like Irving Mintzer (author of the WRI report).
Primo Levi was an Italian chemist, and thinker and writer who had survived the concentration camp, Auschwitz and he had famously written “If Not Now, When”, et cetera. Hs body was found at the bottom of the stairwell in his apartment building in Milan. And it’s unclear whether he killed himself or toppled over by accident.
Three months earlier he had written a poem Almanac, which includes the lines
“The glaciers will continue to grate, smoothing what’s under them” and
“Earth too will fear the immutable Laws of the universe. Not us. We, rebellious progeny With great brainpower, little sense, Will destroy, defile…”
It ends
“Very soon we’ll extend the desert Into the Amazon forests, Into the living heart of our cities, Into our very hearts.”
See this rather excellent blog post by Bridget Mckenzie, @bridgetmck
On this day, April 10, in 2010, there was an attempt at a “party at the pumps” by Rising Tide. This was in the UK this was an attempt to use the reclaim the streets, street party blockade protesting that had worked so well in the late 90s, and arguably in the early noughties at point sources of carbon, ie petrol sates stations, (but they’re not actually point sources of carbon production, like power stations, they’re far more local.)
This did not “work”. (Though for the counter view, see this –
And it will continue probably not to work. This is an attempt at modifying an existing repertoire, and that’s praiseworthy. But on the whole, we don’t have the numbers for that. So what if they gave a party and nobody came? The cops also turned out in numbers.
Rising Tide and Climate Camp both gave up the ghost. For the following decade, there was “Reclaim the Power”. Now we’ve had Extinction Rebellion and “Just Stop Oil”. And soon???
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.
On April 8 1995, Australian environment minister John Faulkner declared himself happy with the Berlin mandate that had emerged from the first COP..
Faulkner had just failed to get a carbon tax proposal through the cabinet of Labor. Prime Minister Paul Keating this was supposed to be a signal of Australia’s intent at the first Conference of the Parties of the UNFFFC held in Berlin in March, April.
The COP had finished despite the best efforts of Australia and other parties with a mandate that said industrialised countries of which Australia was one should turn up two years later at the third COP in order with concrete proposals and agreement for emissions reductions.
1995 Noack, K. 1995 Faulkner sees way forward from Berlin. Canberra Times, 9 April.
LONDON, Saturday: Australian Environment Minister John Faulkner said yesterday he was satisfied with the outcome of the Berlin climate change conference, saying it offered a way forward for all countries to combat global warming.
On the final day of the 11-day meeting, agreement was reached on a mandate for further negotiations on greenhouse gas emission reduction measures by developed countries.
Senator Faulkner, who was part of the group of ministers who hammered out the final agreement, said it was ultimately a successful conference given the wide range of interests represented.
“Australia’s very satisfied with the outcome of the group of ministers and the achievement of a mandate to negotiate a protocol,” he said from Berlin.
Why this matters.
We have been failing to do more than agree to keep talking about climate change for a very very long time…
What happened next?
Faulkner was no longer environment minister after March of 96, when the Howard government took over the Berlin Mandate was agreed it took us to Kyoto in 97. And was useless and the carbon dioxide accumulates.
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
On this day, sixth of April 2006, the “Australian Business Roundtable on Climate Change” released its first and I think only report, “The business case for early action,” a 25 page extravaganza of nice pictures and nice rhetoric..
The ABRCC was made up of insurance, banking and service sector outfits. (The manufacturing and extractive industries were conspicuously absent).
They were trying to combat the impression that John Howard, Prime Minister of Australia since March 1996, had been able to give of business was against climate action because it would destroy the economy.
It was not the first attempt to create a business pressure around climate action; WWF had been trying in 2003 or so. And of course, there were open letters and surveys and all sorts of other efforts before 2006.
Why it matters
Well, it doesn’t, but it reminds us that service sector (esp banking and insurance types, and sometimes “gas rather than coal” outfits are keen to seek out business opportunities, and to undermine the pro-coal/anti-carbon trading outfits. And that one of the ways they do that is via these sorts of gaudy one-offs…
What happened next
In retrospect, this report can be seen as one of the opening salvo softening up for what would happen later that year, which is one of these periodic explosions of concern about climate change that swept Kevin Rudd bless his cotton socks to power.
The ABCC to my knowledge to do much more. It had served its purpose. And once these loose coalitions have said their piece, it’s hard and “not worth it” to most of the members to start saying what they DON’T agree with – too much cost in co-ordinating, negotiating, reputation-managing for very little return. There are other ways to make their point, so these outfits tend to fold…
Fun fact, the guy in charge of Westpac (big bank, and one of the signatories) at the time, David Morgan, is married to Ros Kelly, who was the third Australian was the the Australian Minister for the Environment back in 1990 when Australia made its first empty promise on emissions reductions. The Australian business elite have known about this issue for a very very long time.
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.
Okay, fourth of April 1978, the Chief Scientific Adviser to the UK Government Sir John Ashworth writes a letter in which he says – well, here is Janet Martin-Nielsen (2018) Computing the Climate: When Models Became PoliticalHistorical Studies in the Natural Sciences (2018) 48 (2): 223–245.
“The Meteorological Office’s ‘‘important and very helpful’’ work on Concorde, Ashworth wrote in a secret letter to Berrill, proved the value of climate modeling to U.K. interests—and since ‘‘the real worry is now the CO2 level in the atmosphere’’ he continued, the Meteorological Office needed to focus its energy in that direction . J. M. Ashworth to K. Berrill, re: ‘‘Meteorological Research,’’ 4 Apr 1978, secret KEW, CAB 184/567W01211,
The context for this is that the UK Government had started looking via its World Trends Study Group at the climate issue, also paying attention to what was happening in the United States. Also you have to factor in the the aftermath of the very hot summer of 1976, and the very cold winter in the US and Canada of 1977.
And it’s clear that they were trying to get their head around the problem. But not everyone in the UK scientific establishment was at all sold on this. And it would require other entrepreneurs as well, like Solly Zuckerman and Herman Bondi to push further. Unfortunately, all of this culminated in 1980 with Ashworth trying to brief the new Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, and her response was an incredulous “you want me to worry about the weather?”
And it would be another eight years before that she would do one of her turns because it turns out the lady was frequently for turning
Why this matters.
We need to puncture the myth that Thatcher deserves any credit whatsoever. She was warned a decade earlier,did nowt.
What happened next?
The problem stream entrepreneurs tried to get the issue paid attention to, but everything was against them. And it had to wait until 1988 for attention to be paid….
