Fifty eight years ago, on this day, June 1st, 1966, the pivotal book about the environment, which included a section on carbon dioxide build-up, was released.
“Fire, an ancient friend, has become a man-made threat to the environment through the sheer quantity of the waste it produces. Each ton of wood, coal, petroleum, or natural gas burned contributes several tons of carbon dioxide to the earth’s atmosphere. Between 1860 and 1960 the combustion of fuels added nearly 14 percent to the carbon-dioxide content of the air, which had until then remained constant for many centuries. Carbon dioxide plays an important role in regulating the temperature of the earth because of the ‘greenhouse effect.’ Both glass and carbon dioxide tend to pass visible light but absorb infrared rays. This explains why the sun so easily warms a greenhouse on a winter day. Light from the sun enters through the greenhouse glass. Within, it is absorbed by soil and plants and converted to infrared heat energy which remains trapped inside the greenhouse because it cannot pass out again through glass. Carbon dioxide makes a huge greenhouse of the earth allowing sunlight to reach the earth’s surface but limiting reradiation of the resulting heat into space. The temperature of the earth — which profoundly affects the suitability of the environment for life — is therefore certain to rise as the amount of carbon dioxide in the air increases.
“A report by the President’s Science Advisory Committee finds that the extra heat due to fuel-produced carbon dioxide accumulated in the air by the year 2000 might be sufficient to melt the Antarctic ice cap — in 4000 years according to one computation, or in 400 years according to another. And the report states: ‘The melting of the Antarctic ice cap would raise sea level by 400 feet. If 1,000 years were required to melt the ice cap, the sea level would rise about 4 feet every 10 years, 40 feet per century.’ This would result in catastrophe for much of the world’s inhabited land and many of its major cities.”
page 10-11 CO2 and greenhouse explained
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 321ppm. As of 2024 it is 426ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that Barry Commoner had been campaigning on biological pollution from atmospheric nuclear testing, strontium 90, etcetera. He’d obviously been influenced by Rachel Carson. It turns out, to quote a book from 25 years later, there are consequences of modernity.
What we learn is that this book was a really important influence for a lot of people, although it is somewhat overshadowed by Commoner’s later efforts, The Closing Circle.
What happened next well, somebody lobbed a copy onto the desk of Roy Battersby, and this led him to take a completely different view with the TV programme Challenge that appeared on Fifth of January 1967. There was also a huge influence on Richard Broad, who made Report: And On The Eighth Day. The book was approvingly reviewed in The Guardian Telegraph, both of which made mention of the CO2 buildup possibility and as well in the Canberra Times, in early 1967; the reviewer then also made mention of CO2 buildup. So really, you could argue, I think strongly that Barry Commoner’s first book Science and Survival was a crucial node for climate change awareness among English speaking publics; I don’t know what influence it had in New Zealand, or Canada, or, for that matter, the US that would be interesting to find out.
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.
Also on this day:
June 1, 1965 – Tom Lehrer warns “don’t drink the water and don’t breathe the air”
June 1, 1992 – “environmental extremists” want to shut down the United States, says President Bush
June 1, 2011 – Japanese office workers into short sleeves to save the planet
