Thirty six years ago, on this day, May 16th, 1990,
The UN Economic Commission for Europe held a large conference on Sustainable Development in Bergen, Norway. This was intended as a regional follow-up to the WCED report. The Ministerial Session of the conference was attended by 300 delegates from thirty-four governments.
“In order to achieve sustainable development policies must be based on the Precautionary Principle. Environmental measures must anticipate, prevent and attack the causes of environmental degradation. Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty should not be used as a reason for postponing measures to prevent environmental degradation.”
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly xxxppm. As of 2026 it is 4xxppm, but check here for daily measures.
The broader context was that international agreements around environmental issues are pretty hard to find. However, at this period, there had been the success of the Montreal Protocol on CFCs. And so there was still hope that there could be effective, if not necessarily binding, international agreements on x and y and z.
The specific context was that all the cards were in the air because the Soviet Union was in the process of disintegrating. The Berlin Wall had come down. Elections were being held in former satellite countries and Germany was on the way to reunification. By this time, 1990 it was clear that there was going to be a negotiating process for climate treaty, and that there would be a Rio Earth Summit in 1992, 20 years on from the Stockholm conference.
What I think we can learn from this. It could, perhaps, have been slightly different…
What happened next. The US prevented any meaningful text in the climate treaty, by threatening to boycott the whole show if there were targets and timetables for emissions reductions by rich countries in the text.
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.
I was conscious that I could not abuse the privilege by speaking for more than say five minutes — and that a dense, technical speech might challenge the interpreter, excellent though she clearly was.
So I expressed my regret that in the available time I could not develop the arguments or the detail — I could do no more than state my position (but I offered to send my “Cool Thinking” book to anyone interested — and had several requests for it afterwards). I said that a large and increasing number of highly qualified scientists were challenging the orthodox view. I pointed out that by general agreement mean global temperatures in the last hundred years had risen less than one degree C — a very modest and normal sort of change. I said that many people thought that the small changes we had seen were entirely consistent with well-established, long-term, natural climate cycles. I briefly mentioned the Roman Optimum/Dark Ages/Mediaeval Warm Period cycle, and said that we appeared to be moving towards a new 21st century climate optimum.
I said there were sound scientific reasons to believe that CO2 was not a major factor in climate change — though sadly I had no time to develop that point.
Ukipper MEP tells Taiwanese parliament CC is doubted… Comedy gold!! http://rogerhelmermep.wordpress.com/2011/05/17/i-address-the-taiwanese-parliament-on-climate-change/
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 392ppm. As of 2026 it is 430ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The broader context was that there has always been a “head banger” wing to right wing thought. unconvinced by hippie greeny hoax bollocks like, oh, I don’t know, 19th century physics. And you can use words like anti-reflexivity, but ultimately it comes down to willful stupidity and selfishness, which is quickly followed by unwillingness to admit that they’ve been wrong for a long time, so they paint themselves into more and more corners.
The specific context was that UKIP was exemplary of this.
What I think we can learn from this is that stupid is going to stupid, and there’s no cure for stupid.
What happened next. UKIP, I’m told, is still around, but the energy has moved to Reform, but that is in danger of splintering as well (Restore, Advance etc).
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.
Last night the Nelson Mandela lecture “Strengthening our Democracy – Valuing Our Diversity – Building Our Future” was delivered by Thomas Mayo, who is “an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander man, assistant National Secretary of the Maritime Union of Australia and author of seven books about First Nations history and justice.”
It was held at the Hawke Centre (more of that later) on North Terrace. Last time I was here was for a pre-Voice referendum event which left me disconsolate for its lack of strategic focus, and fearful for what was to come(1). Last night I left with more ‘hope’, but still uneasy.
This was a night of three parts (four if you count the book signing afterwards, I guess).
First up there was an excellent “welcome to country.” These can vary in quality of course, but this one was done with empathy, honesty, clarity and good humour (especially the line about normally asking people to stand up, but given the tiered theatre and the audience demographics switching to plan B). The woman welcoming us was of the Kaurna peoples, and also a member of the Pirltawardli Collective, trying to defend trees and animals from the State Government’s chainsaws. I didn’t catch her name, but will add it as soon as I can.
Second up there was a very good lecture by Thomas Mayo.
The man knows how to grab an audience. The anecdote about his Bob Marley fixation being joined by a love for Lucky Dube was great.
Mayo has a lovely voice, a lovely manner and – crucially – an actual working-class perspective to put. It is all too rare to hear a full-throated defence of unions in public life.
In a paragraph – there are a series of pillars of Australian democracy (among these trades unions, recognition of First Nations, access to information, the right to protest), all of which have been under very deliberate sustained attack for decades. Mayo explained why each was important, what was being done to it and what needed to be done to defend the pillar/undo the damage.
Mayo also had useful things to say about Artificial Intelligence – and the need for a Universal Basic Income, and much else.
It was entirely competent, occasionally lyrical, but – back to that sense of unease – very much left me with ‘who will bell the cat?’ vibes. (This is from one of Aesop’s fables). The point is – there are all these good policies we are expecting ‘government’ to enact, but who is going to force the government to do the right things, when it is so obviously a plaything of the economic elites? “Braver mice” was the answer of someone earwigging my explanation to a friend. Braver mice sure, but who is brave, under what circumstances, for how long, to what purpose?
Anyway, that asides, Mayo’s speech was excellent and watching the video recording would be a good use of your time, whether you’re interested in defending (Australian) democracy, or learning how to structure a speech or to deliver it. Or something else.
As soon as the Hawke Centre people put up the recording, I’ll post it here and also blog it again.
The final portion was however, frankly painful, through no fault of Mayo. There were no questions from the audience, but rather Mayo was ‘in conversation’ with Peter Geste. This can work, but if the questioner is bold, engaging and bringing their A-game. Not tonight; it was a polite/liberal avatar of Andrew Bolt in the room. Geste, presumably needing to defend his journalistic persona as ‘neutral,’ (2) was flipping through all the right-wing/nut-job (the Venn Diagram merges year after year) talking points. Doubtless among the thousand people joining the meeting via Zoom were some Murdoch hacks looking for a cheap headline about “ABC journo in soft-balling [insert dogwhistle adjective] activist.” Rather than asking any interesting questions, getting Mayo to expand on his arguments, Geste forced Mayo onto the back foot. It was frustrating and literally unedifying. Geste is a man of undoubted courage and intelligence and this was all quite bewildering.
This could have been prevented if the Hawke Centre either
Had a different interlocutor (Marcia Langton was in the room, for instance)
Had had the guts to go to the floor for questions instead (though this comes with its own risks, of course).
Random reflections
It is easy to give a list (litany) of what has been going wrong, and Mayo did it very well.
It is less easy to explore the underlying motivations/causes of what has been going wrong, and Mayo, in the margins, tackled this.
It is not easy at all to explore (in private and especially in public) the reasons why those wanting to make things worse for ordinary people and better for the big end of town have been winning, almost without pause, for a good 40 years. That’s because speaking truth about power marks you out as a radical, and speaking truth about the failures of the forces trying to slow down/reverse the horrors will mark you out as a malcontent, who is ‘not constructive’ etc. Mayo did not attempt this at all, and while I totally understand (I think!) why he didn’t, it’s a pity, because if we don’t talk about the failures of the ‘progressive’ forces, the reasons for those failures, and what might be done to avoid history repeating itself again and again and AGAIN, well, history will probably repeat itself, with force.
As James Baldwin said – “not everything that can be faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”
One thing that makes it harder to defend democracy is the isolation and atomisation we all face. Part of this is to do with “technology,” part the sense of ‘speed up’ in our lives (real or imagined) and partly by the destruction of ‘third spaces’ where people can meet and be convivial and, well, civil.
The Hawke Centre COULD, if it wanted, take some really quick simple and no-financial cost actions around this. They COULD create a norm where every public lecture has a two or three minute ‘turn to someone you don’t know – probably someone sat behind or in front of you – and introduce yourselves’ at the beginning of their events, and similar before a Q&A.
I’ve written about the why and how of this, in case you’re interested
I don’t expect it will happen, but then, speakers like Mayo could insist on it until it became a new ‘norm’ of meetings. And then, in a town like Adelaide, the informal ‘weak ties’ would become more numerous, loose networks would spread, information, ideas and resources would flow more easily.
It was the Hawke government that ratted out the Aboriginal communities on a Treaty, after basking in the applause of saying they’d sort one, back in 1988. (Aye, Barunga).
But then it’s not polite to mention these things…
Footnotes
And so it came to pass – the Murdoch media’s assault, and the decision of Peter Dutton’s Liberal Party to be the absolute worst version of themselves, meant that a tsunami of lies swept away the possibility of basic respect. Had it not been for the events of October 7th, Australia’s international reputation would have taken a massive hit.
Many books have been written about what ‘neutrality’ and ‘objectivity’ mean in journalism. I ain’t gonna recapitulate except with a quote and a reference.
The quote – “if you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor” Desmond Tutu
The citation –
Maxwell T Boykoff, Jules M Boykoff,
Balance as bias: global warming and the US prestige press,
Abstract: This paper demonstrates that US prestige-press coverage of global warming from 1988 to 2002 has contributed to a significant divergence of popular discourse from scientific discourse. This failed discursive translation results from an accumulation of tactical media responses and practices guided by widely accepted journalistic norms. Through content analysis of US prestige press—meaning the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and the Wall Street Journal—this paper focuses on the norm of balanced reporting, and shows that the prestige press’s adherence to balance actually leads to biased coverage of both anthropogenic contributions to global warming and resultant action.
Nineteen years ago, on this day, May 15th, 2007, a stupid politician is stupid,
A SENIOR Federal Government minister has expressed serious doubts global warming has been caused by humans, relying on non-scientific material and discredited sources to back his claim.
One month after a United Nations scientific panel delivered its strongest warning yet that humans were causing global warming, the Finance Minister, Nick Minchin, has questioned the link between fossil fuels and greenhouse gas pollution.
In a letter he wrote on March 5 to Clean Up Australia’s founder, Ian Kiernan, Senator Minchin took issue with Mr Kiernan’s criticism of the minister’s scepticism.
Frew, W. 2007. Minchin denies climate change man-made. Sydney Morning Herald, March 15.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 384ppm. As of 2026 it is 430ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The broader context was that there’s a kind of Australian politician who takes delight in what we now call “owning the libs” and being a hate figure. They believe that they are somehow heroic Galileos, defending Western civilization or some such. Nick Minchin is one of those, and in 2000 he led the successful campaign to defeat an emissions trading scheme in John Howard’s second cabinet.
The specific context was that the climate issue had burst back into public prominence in September, October, 2006 for a variety of reasons, including the Millennium drought, Al Gore’s film, An Inconvenient Truth, a fracturing business consensus about Kyoto ratification and the ongoing IPCC process, all of which were taken and being taken advantage of by Labor, the opposition party. In December 2006 Kevin Rudd had become Labor leader, toppling Kim Beasley, and had used climate change as one of his two sticks to beat John Howard with. So here we see the Liberals feeling cornered and flustered, but you can always rely on someone like Nick Minchin to say the stupidest thing possible.
What I think we can learn from this. Some people are just well, they’re who they are.
What happened next. The climate wars continued unabated. The most vicious period was maybe 2011 because we had a female prime minister who was “intentionally barren” trying to do the smallest, most inadequate thing to put a price on carbon dioxide. And those climate wars bubble under today, and you have the problem being that there is no competitive consensus, and that you have a Labor party that has basically given up on everything except being in power.
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.
Vibes aren’t going to cut it: What we (well, I) learn from the Possum rally
Last night I was at the rally on the steps of South Australian parliament protesting the cutting down of 585 mature trees in the North Parklands.
I should write something longer, coherent, but I don’t have time, energy (and perhaps talent). So instead, just a list of random observations. After that, the speech I would have liked to have given.
From an emotional perspective, the whole thing was a success. Those attending got their emotional needs met. Three obvious candidates here –
The cop who tried to push me onto the pavement instead of simply asking (did he get the uniform so he could literally push people around, or did he get the desire once he had the uniform? Chicken, meet Egg)
Some (#NotAllSpeakers) of the speakers, who were loving the attention (they wouldn’t be human if they didn’t). Special shout out to the person who read out a speech that had been written for a council meeting last night and almost lost the crowd (‘read the (lack of a) room’). You could have quickly pointed us to the video of that speech and said something else?
Those attending, who got to feel less lonely (that’s good) and more sane (it’s a crazy-making world). The repeated chants of ‘stop the chop’ are the progressive ‘left’s versions of the muscular bonding and chanting at sports events that hoi polloi get every weekend.
Those attending (2000, according to the ABC, but we will come back to that) got some information they already knew, or could easily have found out. In terms of what to DO they got requests that amounted to (and did not go beyond)
write to your MP
sign the petition
get some stickers
come to another rally on Sunday.
They were assured that the Federal Minister for the Environment had been written to. Well, that’ll show everyone. There were no calls on individuals who had turned up and were keen to know how they could contribute to
Use and expand their skills
Use and expand their knowledge
Use and expand their relationships
Just people as an undifferentiated mass, a pulse of emotional energy, that will be gone like a fist when you open your palm.
We were told to ‘maintain our rage’, a cute line from someone who was not around when Whitlam said it.
Besides who WAS there (Kaurna spokespeople, Adelaide Parklands Association people, Adelaide City Council folks) there was one very very telling absence.
The Conservation Council of South Australia, the peak body for various green groups (the clue is in the name). Did they have any representation at the rally? Not that I saw. Certainly none of the speakers and their blog is entirely silent.
This is not surprising. The CCSA is dependent, financially, on the State Government, and knows it would not be forgiven for biting the hand that feeds it. At this point it is simply a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Labor government. This is a tragedy, but there you have it.
UPDATE 15/7/2026. Last night (14/5/2026) CCSA sent around an email encouraging people to attend the next demo, on Sunday. Their website is still silent on the question. Make of this what you will.
4. The media coverage was hilarious and instructive.
The 7pm ABC TV news of South Australia framed it as ‘no violence happened though police were present’ (yes, and if it meets the needs of the state for there to be violence, doubtless the police – in uniform or plain clothes – will be happy to provide it). There were two vox pops that focussed on the animal livelihoods aspect, not on the far more sinister State government powergrab aspect. Meanwhile, the ‘Advertiser’ (Murdoch toilet paper, the only print paper in town) … pretended it had not happened. Not a single word, because their pet Malinauskus is doing what they like, generally. They had an ‘exclusive’ from him (presumably planned as a spoiler?) about overturning a fracking ban. At this point the Advertiser should just rename as the Santos Sturmer.
Don’t get me wrong. Rallies matter. Good signs are good signs.
But it is not enough. We have been here so many times. So so so many times. If we don’t use rallies for MORE than feeling good in the moment, for supplying ego-fodder and being ego-fodder, then more losses will pile up, while the pile of debris that gets called progress grows skyward.
Maybe this campaign will win – it’s the future, so I don’t know. But IF it wins, it hasn’t laid any ground work for future bigger campaigning sinews, relationships, skills, knowledge, expectations. And if it loses, then people will just have more grounds for despair.
Below is the three minute (ish) speech that could have been given.
Hypothetical speech to Rally.
Thank you for coming. That you are here matters. But it doesn’t matter ENOUGH.
I want us to reflect on who we are, what are we even doing here, and what we must do in the coming days, weeks and months.
Who are we?
Some of us here have ancestors who were here, on this land, thousands and thousands of years ago. (hopefully applause). Some of us maybe trace our history with this land to 1836 or thereabouts, when South Australia was ‘settled’. (pause) . South Australia was not settled. South Australia was invaded. And sovereignty was never ceded.
Some of us maybe trace our history to the last 50 or 20 years.
But this is home. All of us here tonight, we know this land, this air, this water, these other creatures we share with, is precious. We know it is fragile, and that it must be protected from those who know the price of everything and the value of nothing. We know it must be protected from people who have no respect for nature, or for democracy, for anything than their wretched careers and bank accounts.
Do we know this?
(Hopefully everyone yells “yes”)
Do you – you, me, everyone – want to protect this land, this air, the possums, the birds, the humans, the future generations?
(Hopefully everyone yells yes).
Okay. That was the easy part.
What are we even doing here?
I have bad news. Besides the trees being cut down, besides the naked powergrab by the State Government. The bad news is that while you being here now, today, is great – and thank you for coming – it is not enough.
Is it enough?
(Hopefully people shout ‘no’).
Can we do more?
Can we do more?
(Hopefully people yell ‘Yes’)
Will we do more? Do you, as an individual, commit to doing more?
(Hopefully people yell ‘Yes’)
Okay, so this is where it gets interesting. I do NOT have a short list you can tick off. – “sign here, donate there. Tick that, next campaign.” Sorry.
But I do have some pledges for you, me, all of us to make. They want to destroy 585 trees, homes to birds, animals. 585. So I am going to close out with three pledges.
Does each of you pledge to talk, in the coming days, with five people who don’t know about what is happening? To listen to them, to inform them, to help them take a stand. Five people. Do you pledge this?
(Hopefully ‘yes’)
We need Peter Malinauskus and the Labor Party more generally to know that they have made a mistake, but that it is not yet too late for them to do the right thing.
Eight sentences. Do you pledge to write an eight sentence letter to Malinauskus, and send a copy to your MP -about this. Not War and Peace; Just eight sentences, which maybe you show to those five people, to your local councillors and that you post online?
Do you pledge this?
(Hopefully ‘yes’)
This is great. Thank you. But this is not enough. We need more. So a final pledge is coming up..
We need artists, poets, songs. We need tiktok videos, we need memes, slogans. We need blogs. We need letters to the Advertiser. Sorry- I was just playing with you. We need to bypass the Murdoch media. We need lawyers, we need conversations, we need networks. We need people standing outside football matches with placards and information about what is being done by this government, and in whose benefits. We need – well, we need more ideas than I have, we need all the ideas, skills and energy that YOU have.
Does each of you pledge to go home from here and – alone or with your friends – come up with a list of five things you all can do, with your knowledge, your skills, your networks, your time? Then DO those things, get better at those actions. Share those actions? Do you?
(Hopefully ‘yes’)
Talk to five people
Write an eight sentence letter to the Premier and your MP
Fifty four years ago, on this day, May 14th, 1972, American journalist John Crosby was making fun of ecology. Smart fella.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 327ppm. As of 2026 it is 430ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The broader context was that Crosby had been a big deal in the US, before moving to the UK in the 60s. He’d fronted one of those ‘harrumph, the green freaks are wrong’ documentaries, that I should write about some day.
The specific context was that the Limits to Growth report had come out, the Stockholm Conference was coming up, and harrumphing was what Sensible People were doing. It is always “punch a hippy” day, isn’t it?
What I think we can learn from this. To hell with these assholes.
What happened next. The harrumphing continued. The old white men could never admit they were wrong – their world would implode. As to the actual world burning, well, what of it?
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.
Melting of the West Antarctic ice sheet is likely unstoppable, two new papers published Monday indicate. That means the sea level rise projects by 2100 will need to be revised, closer to 3 feet of sea level rise.
2014 WAIS collapse unstoppable? The Collapse Of The West Antarctic Ice Sheet Is ‘Unstoppable’ http://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-west-antarctic-ice-sheet-results-2014-5#ixzz3GhJp14z6
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 399ppm. As of 2026 it is 430ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The broader context was that concerns about the stability of the West Antarctic glass sheet dated back to 1973 possibly earlier. Before that there had been sort of speculation, “what if the Antarctic melts?” About the stability of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, you have, I think, Hughes in ‘73 and then the famous paper by John Mercer in Nature in January of 1978.
What I think we can learn from this. it’s a slow motion suicide in geological terms. We might call ourselves Homo sapiens, but that’s about as reliable as the words “new and improved” on some washing detergent.
What happened next. Well, here comes the 21st Century, warmest day ever in the Antarctic and the ice sheet melt is just baked in now, and we’re going to see surges in sea level rise that are going to be, frankly, highly entertaining.
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 IPCC has published the Special Report on Renewable Energy Sources and Climate Change Mitigation (SRREN). On Monday, the summary for policymakers of the SRREN has been approved by government representatives for IPCC member countries at the 11th Session of Working Group III co-chaired by Prof. Ottmar Edenhofer in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.
2011 IPCC Special Report on Renewable Energy Sources May 12th, 2011
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 392ppm. As of 2026 it is 430ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The broader context was renewable energy as a substitute for fossil fuels. Because of fossil fuels, carbon dioxide emissions had been spoken of for many years. There had been various mostly inadequate, all of them mostly inadequate, some of them entirely inadequate schemes to promote renewables.
Meanwhile, in 1990 the IPCC had delivered its First Assessment Report. Since then, it had delivered various other reports on mitigation technologies, etc, etc.
The specific context was that it was very clear that the global response to climate was going to be net zero. The Copenhagen deal accord, which was supposed to replace Kyoto, had been useless, and so if you were bothering to read in 2011 a report about the importance of renewable energy, well, good luck to you.
And of course, these reports don’t/can’t really anticipate non linear-growth and when renewables are going to kick in. So you have the over-supply of solar PV by Chinese factories. You have the enormous growth in offshore wind, and official reports about how long energy demand will continue to grow and how slow the uptake of renewables will be are always it seems overtaken by events.
What I think we can learn from this. We are a dumb species, for all our technology.
What happened next. Renewables finally kicked in in the 2020s. If you get a magnifying glass you might even see the impact on the Keeling Curve, the only measure that matters.
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.
Twenty five years ago, on this day, May 11th, 2001, the Bush administration does what assholes always do…
“In a letter of 11 May 2001 The White House asked the US NAS for assistance in identifying the areas in the science on climate change where there are greatest certainties and uncertainties. The NAS was also asked for its views on whether there are any substantive differences between the IPCC reports and the IPCC summaries. An answer to the request was expected in early June, i.e., within less than a month. The NAS quickly appointed a special committee under the chairmanship of Dr Ralph Cicerone, chancellor of the University of California, Irving, CA, and a well-known researcher in atmospheric chemistry (and president of the NAS since 2005). Its report was ready in June…”
(Bolin, 2007) Page 179
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 371ppm. As of 2026 it is 430ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The broader context was that scientists had been offering detailed warnings about carbon dioxide build up as a threat that must be responded to immediately since, well, really, let’s say 1979 the Charney report. And politicians had been nodding and then doing nothing.
The specific context was that George W. Bush, the son of HW, had on the campaign trail in 2000 said that CO2 would need to be regulated. In March of 2001, shortly after his inauguration, and after the Supreme Court had handed him the 2000 presidential election. Bush had pulled the US out of the Kyoto Protocol negotiations.
So Bush needed to do – or to be seen to do – something on climate change. And here he reverted to the classic tactic of calling “for further research” as a delaying tactic. So it’s not denial which will rile liberals, but it is that sort of soft “ah, we need further research. (We are responsible. We’re not rushing into anything, even though the time for that action has long passed.) It is still, if not catnip, then acceptable as a talking point for lots of centrist pundits who can then talk about sober statesmanship and who should be on the panel and what its terms of reference should be, and all the rest of it. Meanwhile, the planet burns.
What I think we can learn from this. The old tactics keep working. Because civil society never learns, never pushes.
What happened next. The National Academies of Science came back with the same report that they’d been coming back with since 1989 when Bush’s dad had been a new president. And they had said, it’s real and we really ought to do something about it, and nothing was done.
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 seven years ago, on this day, May 10th, George Bush says he will hold a conference.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 353ppm. As of 2026 it is 430ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The broader context was thatAmerican politicians had been warned about the climate threat since the late 70s. Under Reagan/Bush between 1981 and 1989 these threats had been largely ignored until it was no longer politically feasible to do so on.
The specific context was that in August 1988 on the campaign trail, George H.W. Bush,feeling vulnerable on environmental issues, because his Democratic opponent, Michael Dukakis, had a record to stand on, proclaimed that he would call an international conference on climate change in his first year in office.
The other specific context is that – he – Bush had been caught trying to suppress the scientific and alter the scientific assessment of a NASA scientist, James Hansen, and so was needing to do some reputational repair.
What I think we can learn from this is that when leadership was needed, we got Bush instead.
What happened next. The conference was finally held in 1990 and somebody somehow “forgot” in inverted commas, to invite the head of the IPCC, Bert Bolin.
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.
