Categories
Australia Coal

June 27, 2001 – A new coal research centre. Oh Joy.

Twenty-five years ago, on this day, June 27th, 

BRISBANE, June 27, AAP – A new national coal research centre will be based in Queensland, Mines Minister Stephen Robertson said today.

The Cooperative Research Centre for Coal in Sustainable Development would facilitate research to assist the Australian industry produce coal in the most efficient and environmentally responsible manner, he said.

Mr Robertson said Queensland had provided $250,000 towards the setup costs.

He said the centre would explore ways to improve the environmental performance of existing coal technologies and promote the adoption of emerging clean coal techniques.

The centre would also maximise the economic and social value of Australian coal reserves.

“Many of Queensland’s export markets including Japan and Europe are becoming concerned with issues of efficiency and environmental performance,” Mr Robertson said.

AAP, 2001. QLD – New coal research centre. Australian Associated Press, 27 June.

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 371ppm. As of 2026, when this post was published, it is 430ppm. This matters because the more carbon dioxide in the air, the more heat gets trapped. The more heat, the more extreme weather events. You can make it more complicated than that if you want, but really, it’s not. Fwiw, I have a tattoo of the Keeling Curve on my left forearm.

The broader context for this was that again, Australian political and economic elites had been warned about climate change through the 70s and into the 80s. In 1988 the problem became an issue, became unavoidable, if not undeniable. One of the reactive pieces of rhetoric is around “clean coal”.

The specific context was that by 2001 the Millennium drought was well underway. The third IPCC report had come out. There was ongoing efforts to get an emissions trading scheme going, either nationally or federally or from the states.

Meanwhile, the coal industry is always interested in handouts from the taxpayer for “research.” It keeps academics employed and it gives the politician something to announce what are called, or were called under Rudd, announceables. 

And that’s how this sort of thing should be seen. I’m not a Luddite. I’m not saying there shouldn’t be any research into cleaner coal and cleaner everything, depending on your definition and explanation of clean. It is, after all, a finite planet, and there’s no such thing as away (as per Barry Commoner). But I’m also fearful that these sorts of announcements act as a kind of mitigation deterrence. They allow everyone to go back to sleep and to assume that the system is managing the problems. 

What I think we can learn is this: We have been telling ourselves soothing lullabies for a very long time. Time to wake up and start screaming.

What happened next: More announcements of more research, but also, of course, more emissions, higher atmospheric concentrations and more impacts. 

On this topic, you might like these other posts on All Our Yesterdays

References

You can see the chronological list of All Our Yesterdays “on this day” posts here.

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.

If you want to get involved, let me know.

If you want to invite me on your podcast, that would boost my ego and probably improve the currently pitiful hit-rate on this site (the two are not-unrelated).

Also on this day: 

June 27, 1994 – Good free advice to Australian Environment Minister

 June 27, 1998 – we’ll trade our way outa trouble (not)

June 27, 2000 – crazy but well-connected #climate denialists schmooze politicians

June 27, 2013 – Judge versus climate 

Categories
United States of America

June 26, 1988 – CBS News tries to raise the alarm

Thirty years ago, on this day, June 26th, 1988, 

The Inside Sunday edition of the CBS Evening News for June 26, 1988 featured a very unusual eight-minute environmental story that led with the greenhouse effect, linking it to the high temperatures of the 1980s. The Goddard Institute’s David Rind and climatologist Thomas Karl warned of future warming and discussed the need to decrease the production of carbon dioxide.

(Sachsman, 2000: 5)

starts at 14m45secs

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 351ppm. As of 2026, when this post was published, it is 432ppm. This matters because the more carbon dioxide in the air, the more heat gets trapped. The more heat, the more extreme weather events. You can make it more complicated than that if you want, but really, it’s not. Fwiw, I have a tattoo of the Keeling Curve on my left forearm.

The broader context for this was that various news networks, especially CBS, had been broadcasting clips on the greenhouse effect repeatedly. There was one in 1980 and then in response to various congressional hearings, especially in 1982-1983. This was nothing particularly new, except in the length of it (8 minutes is a long time in TV-land).

The specific context was that three days earlier, in the midst of a heat wave and a drought, James Hansen had said to journalists after a meeting, after giving evidence to the Senate inquiry, that “it was time to stop waffling and say that the greenhouse effect was here.” This had been broadcast around the world.

What I think we can learn is this: the media has. Indeed tried to alert us. It’s the rain falling on hard surfaces and just running away. 

What happened next: The media continued to cover the story with more or less accuracy and ethics over the coming years. An important one to remember is the September l88 incident where Stephen Schneider is not invited on because they want someone who’s going to make even more “alarmist.” And you’ve also got Australian science journalist Robyn Williams talking about how they’ll have to be the backlash stories. But that’s science is not a matter of opinion like this, you fucking muppets. And then, crucially, the denialists learn to exploit journalistic norms for their own purposes – “Balance as Bias”, as Boykoff and Boykoff put it. 

You can see the chronological list of All Our Yesterdays “on this day” posts here.

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.

If you want to get involved, let me know.

If you want to invite me on your podcast, that would boost my ego and probably improve the currently pitiful hit-rate on this site (the two are not-unrelated).

Also on this day: 

June 26, 1975 – Denialist Richard Scorer being stupid

June 26, 1986 – Australian Environment Council schooled on climate

June 26, 1986 – “our children will grow old  in a world that fragmenting and disintegrating.”

June 26, 1988 – it’s SHOWTIME for climate…

June 26, 1991 “environment is not flavor of the month any more” 

June 26, 1992 – BCA versus reality (BCA wins in the short-term) – 

June 26, 2009 – Impact on cartoonists 

Categories
Uncategorized

June 26, 1996 – another leak about the Global Climate Coalition

Thirty years ago, on this day, June 26th,  1996 another GCC flak letter (see also 30 May). 

This controversial issue also resulted in two letters (dated 30 May and 26 June), being sent to me, one from the Global Climate Coalition (John Schlaes) and the other from The Climate Council (Donald Pearlman). Copies of these were also sent to ten key members of the US Congress as well as the Advisor for Science and Technology and Assistant to the US President (John Gibson), and the Assistant Secretary of State (Eileen Clausen).”

Bolin 2007, page 130

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 362ppm. As of 2026, when this post was published, it is 430ppm. This matters because the more carbon dioxide in the air, the more heat gets trapped. The more heat, the more extreme weather events. You can make it more complicated than that if you want, but really, it’s not. Fwiw, I have a tattoo of the Keeling Curve on my left forearm.

The broader context for this was that industries that feel threatened by potential or actual regulation by states, local, federal, national, whatever, will usually fight back by supporting or inventing politicians who will fight their corner. And they will flood the public domain, newspapers and then later, radio, television and the internet, with arguments against regulation. It’s been explained and exposed many times. 

One particularly good exposure, in my opinion, is Nancy Oreskes and Stephen Conway’s, Merchants of Doubt. You’ve also got on climate, two books by Ross Gelbspan, “The Heat Is On” and “Boiling Point.”

And so it came to pass with climate in 1989 something called the Global Climate Coalition was created. Sounds cuddly, doesn’t it? But it is actually opposition to national and international action on climate change via the usual mechanisms of group public letters signed by the CEOs of a bunch of companies, incredibly dodgy economic modelling that “proves” the sky will fall, divisive rhetoric, targeting of vulnerable politicians who have elections coming up, threats of funding their opponents, classic carrot and stick. 

The specific context was that by this time, the attacks had moved to the scientists with the IPCC second assessment report. And they wheeled out a bunch of decrepit Relevance Deprivation Syndrome suffering physicists to try and create confusion. It worked.

What I think we can learn is this: is that evil organisations doing evil things have to contend with people who have slivers of morality. 

What happened next: the Global Climate Coalition also attacked, of course, the Kyoto Protocol. Then in 2002 it splintered even further and lost more members, especially Ford; the gig was up. And in any case, the Global Climate Coalition was able to declare victory. They had stopped there being any robust international or national response to climate and secured their profits for another few decades. 

You’d compare it with the greenhouse mafia in Australia, but it was wider, better funded, more organised. 

You can see the chronological list of All Our Yesterdays “on this day” posts here.

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.

If you want to get involved, let me know.

If you want to invite me on your podcast, that would boost my ego and probably improve the currently pitiful hit-rate on this site (the two are not-unrelated).

Also on this day: 

June 26, 1975 – Denialist Richard Scorer being stupid

June 26, 1986 – Australian Environment Council schooled on climate

June 26, 1986 – “our children will grow old  in a world that fragmenting and disintegrating.”

June 26, 1988 – it’s SHOWTIME for climate…

June 26, 1991 “environment is not flavor of the month any more” 

June 26, 1992 – BCA versus reality (BCA wins in the short-term) – 

June 26, 2009 – Impact on cartoonists 

Categories
Activism Unsolicited advice

Terrible meetings for terrible times? #DoBetter

Yesterday I wrote an article called “After the heatwave – what is to be done”

After the heatwave – What is to be done?

Its advice mostly focussed on ‘holding good public meetings’. There is SO MUCH more to ‘growing a movement’ than this, but bad public meetings (and most of them are, in my extensive experience) is one way activists try to hit the accelerator with their whole body-weight unwittingly mashing down on the break. It’s heart-braking.

So, this below is a mix of questions, provocations and the customary unsolicited advice for anyone thinking about holding a meeting once this wretched heatwave ends and before the next one starts (and remember, this is one of the coolest summers of the rest of your life)

First question

Why are you holding this meeting?

Usually the answer is “to give people the facts” (and to be the person giving the people the facts)

That is not good enough – people can get the facts from the internet, newspapers etc.  If you want people to have the facts, a decent video would do better. Are you sure you aren’t holding this meeting to pump some prestige/’momentum’ back into a grassroots group/NGO offshoot that had a sheen a year ago but is now looking a bit tired?  Are you sure you’re not suffering from a little bit of Relevance Deprivation Syndrome? You wouldn’t be human if you didn’t, and suffering RDS doesn’t make you a bad/worthless person, but it DOES make you susceptible to perpetrating one of the many fatal errors in social movement organising/agitating.

Second question What would success look like for this meeting?

The usual answer is ‘lots of people come’ and ‘lots of people feel like/tell me they learned a lot.’

Okay, but then, so what? People are more informed (coulda been done more efficiently online, btw). How does a few more people knowing a few more facts (most of which they will forget quite quickly) translate into pressure for change at a local/national/international level? How?

Did those people form any new links with other people, or was all the time and all the attention devoted to the Big People at the Front Of the Room? Was the Q and A dominated by the usual suspects? Did people slump out, shoulders slinked before the close of the meeting, which seemed to have no clear end in sight? Did they? I bet they did, but you chose not to see it, or to explain it away, to blame the victim of your own malpractice for failing to design and execute a meeting well.

Who did you invite to speak at your meeting? 

I bet it’s a natural scientist and some politician/celebrity.

Of course, you need a “name” to get people in the door. I understand that. People are more likely to come if they know that the Executive Member for the Environment, some scientist from the nearest university, some person off the telly is going to be there.


But look, all these people come with baggage, with problems

The Executive Member for the Environment will probably be some brittle egomaniac who throws out half an hour of verbiage to try to disguise the fact that her local authority is far more interested in building skyscrapers and raking in cash from the airport than in doing anything meaningful about climate change. They will bludgeon the audience with factoids and boasts about their Strategies and Implementation Protocols, until everyone has lost the will to live. If anyone points out their long record of failure they will, as per media training come out with “well, I’m focussed on the future and what we do next, not on the past.” Rinse and repeat.

Your scientist

  • May not be a very good public speaker at all. This will be bad.
  • Or they may be a very good public speaker but without a strict (agreed beforehand and then gently enforced) time limit, will go on and on and on.
  • They may get involved in long detailed discussions about obscure/confusing (to Joe and Jane Public) 
  • The scientist won’t necessarily know much about what is(n’t) being done locally, and in any case will fear tarnishing their reputation for high-minded neutrality by having an opinion about a local issue (it’s fine to bash the usual suspects). [The whole question of why we continue to fetishise natural scientists about what is a social problem is for another day].

Your celebrity will be in Rod Stewart mode – “once I was a young man, and I thought all I had to do was smile.” And likely ditto the scientist on the local issues

All three, unless kept to time, will talk too long, too vaguely. 

This will eat into time for the Q and A.

The Q and A will almost certainly be dominated by a few people (usually over-educated middle class white men, young, middle-aged, and old). They will engage in point-scoring or ‘look at me for asking an obscure question’ or give speeches thinly disguised as questions (some may be butt-hurt that they were not invited to be a panellist).

The energy will be leaking from the room by now, and the chair will either be sad about it or ignore it and plough on.  The meeting will dribble to an inconclusive conclusion, with those people not reliant on public transport and who don’t have to get home to the baby-sitter or get up early in the morning sticking around and regurgitating their talking points.

Other people, who came and were talked at, who hoped to meet people and start thinking about DOING things, will go away, thinking the problem is them, and that they simply aren’t dedicated enough to be involved.

A few months later, another meeting, same format, same usual suspects, new ego-fodder. Rinse and repeat repeat repeat.


So, when you hold your meeting, I BEG you, have answers to the following questions.

  1. Have you looked at this meeting through the eyes of someone who is coming who doesn’t know anyone else? How will you make them feel welcome, how will you make it easier for them to make loose connections, chatting to people who are strangers?
  2. What is the meeting FOR?  Are you hoping to start/revive a group that will take action? Have you thought about what skills are needed? Have you got a well-written information sheet (2 sides of A4 at absolute most) to give out to everyone 
  3. Have you agreed with the speakers how long they will speak for and about what, making clear that you WILL keep them to time?
  4. Have you got a plan for how make sure that the Q&A is not the usual sausage-fest?
  5. Have you got a way to finish the meeting ON TIME, with an up-beat feel
  6. Most of all. MOST OF ALL. Have you got a way for QUICKLY communicating the content and the outcome of the meeting to all those people who would be interested in what you are doing but couldn’t come because of finances, work commitments, child-care, illness, agoraphobia etc etc?  If there isn’t a blog up on your website (you do have a website, don’t you? I mean, you’re not a captive of Meta, are you?) within a couple of days of the meeting, then, guess what champion, you’ve failed.

I could go on and on and on, but, well, I won’t.

Two other bits of reading

About the pathologies of meetings 

https://theconversation.com/weve-got-to-stop-meeting-like-this-81615

About the pathologies of movements

https://peacenews.info/node/8767/2019-how-we-blew-it-again

Categories
Uncategorized

June 25, 1967- First live global satellite programme

Fifty nine years ago, on this day, June 25th, 1967,

Broadcasting of the first live global satellite television program: Our World

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_World_(1967_TV_program)

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 322ppm. As of 2026, when this post was published, it is 430ppm. This matters because the more carbon dioxide in the air, the more heat gets trapped. The more heat, the more extreme weather events. You can make it more complicated than that if you want, but really, it’s not. Fwiw, I have a tattoo of the Keeling Curve on my left forearm.

The broader context for this was that television had been invented in 1927 and there had been a certain amount of TV before World War Two, but then it had been stopped for the duration of the war. And after the war for 10 years, there was only the BBC, but then Independent Television started in the mid late 50s, and at the same time, in 1957 the BBC ran a live-from-the-studio presentation called The Restless Sphere. This was a triumph for the science unit under Aubrey Singer, and here we see Singer’s next big leap, a satellite broadcast just before colour television got going. 

What I think we can learn is this: the idiot’s lantern has a global reach. 

What happened next: A lot more television! On 1988 there was an Australian satellite link up for “Greenhouse 88”.

You can see the chronological list of All Our Yesterdays “on this day” posts here.

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.

If you want to get involved, let me know.

If you want to invite me on your podcast, that would boost my ego and probably improve the currently pitiful hit-rate on this site (the two are not-unrelated).

Also on this day: 

 June 25, 1986 – AEC meeting – 

June 25, 1990 – Ecologically Sustainable Development paper released

June 25, 1996 – Wall Street Journal pretends to be a newspaper  

June 25, 2002, 2003 and 2008 – CCS’s first hype cycle builds 

June 25, 2003 – the Carbon Sequestration Leadership Forum is created

June 25, 2007 – “what would you liked to have been?”

Categories
Cultural responses

Emily Dickinson does climate comms: a nsfw poem.

So, via Carbon Brief I learn that a bunch of worthy scientists have written to the relevant top journos.

I thought I’d try my hand at an Emily Dickinson poem

My effortEmily Dickinson’s knock off
Tell all the truth but tell it slant-
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth’s superb surprise



As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind –
Tell the truth and tell it blunt
Success in “HOLY MOTHER OF GOD THIS IS SERIOUS” lies
Too thick on our demented right
The truth’s a weather front

As frightening to the Children facts
With explanation BLUNT
The Truth must dazzle immediately
Pls stop being a cunt
Categories
Obituaries

The Weather Map is not the Climate Territory

According to the fact-checking/mythbusting website Snopes in 2019

“In 2014, weather reporter Évelyne Dhéliat of the TF1 television channel in France teamed up with the World Meteorological Organization to create a series of fictional weather reports imagining what the weather will be like in the summer of 2050. While these reports may have seemed far-fetched at first, a June 2019 heat wave across Europe showed that these temperatures are well within the realm of possibility.”

Ms Dhéliat had done this at the time of COP-20  (one of the many forgettable annual ‘last chance to save the world’ conferences that have been happening since Berlin 1995).

You can watch the video here.

Snopes was on the case because of this tweet (back before the fash took it over and trashed it).

And fast forward seven years, and we have this


What do we learn

The changes we induced from

a) deforestation and then the burning of – er – industrial quantities of coal, gas and oil

b) continuing to do this after the scientists started saying we should really knock that off (in 1980s, or 1970s if you’re being pedantic)

are coming at us faster than ‘responsible’ (sober, reticent  etc) scientists used to say they would. A captious and cynical observer could suggest that this implies that our self-confidence in understanding complex/chaotic systems once they go past certain ‘stable’ parameters is… how shall we say it to a family audience….”somewhat misplaced.”

The same somewhat assholish observer might also propose that we soothe ourselves with the idea that we can predict, because if we can predict, we can control, or at least prepare. Someone should tell them they’re dreaming.

This suggests that, as per Jason Bourne to the doomed journalist in the third (and equal-best) Bourne film “you have no idea what you are into here.”

This suggests that I was right twenty years ago when I did that spoof newspaper in the aftermath of Climate Camp 

The weather map is not the climate territory.

The territory is gonna be terror, from here on.  As per old Perce in January 1818

No thing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Categories
Activism

After the heatwave – What is to be done?

It’s too hot, this minute, to do anything. It’s too hot to march, it’s too hot to rally, it’s too hot to launch any dense, detailed footnoted report urging government (local, national, global) to Take Action Now. (It’s too hot to work on your tan as well).

So, what is to be done? Plant some (mental) seeds.

Explain to people (especially easy if you have a Keeling Curve tattooed on your forearm, just sayin’) that this heat is caused by the build-up of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere over the last couple of centuries. Explain to people that scientists and activists have been warning about this for forty years (longer, in fact, but no need to complicate the narrative right now).

Explain that all the talk of renewables this, Strategic Plan that, have not, in fact, slowed the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

And, most of all, explain to them that this weather we are having is only in the most trivial sense the “new normal” – explain that it is not going to stay like this, it is going to get warmer – that looking back from 10 years into the future this will be regarded as not a particularly unusual year.

And, beyond explaining, if you’re not checking in on your neighbours and family who are vulnerable to heat (the old, the young, the poor, the ill, the asthmatic etc), then why should you expect anyone to listen to you about anything?

This heatwave will end.  There will be others, later this summer (it is, after all, only June), and next year. And the year after.

So what does responsible activism on climate change mean?  Most of all, it’s about, wait for it…  holding good meetings.

To quote myself from 9 long years ago – 

“The Arctic is melting, the Antarctic slowly cracking up. Even 1.5°C of warming will mean serious problems for Australia, and that target has probably already been blown. I think it’s really important, therefore that we talk about… meetings.”

The point is this.  We need to understand that governments (made up of elected politicians and employed officials) have had forty years of warning, forty years to act, on climate, and they have been either unwilling or unable, for the most part. They will make declarations, sign pledges and then continue with business as usual, blameshifting onto another layer of government (“Well, we can’t do anything without money from central government” “Well, most of these actions have to be taken locally.” Rinse and repeat.

Similarly, there are constant false dawns of ‘progressive’ business, groups formed with great fanfare while CEOs get around the world to give motherhood-and-apple pie powerpoint presentations about ‘the sustainability agenda’ and “innovations which will help meet the challenge (once research and development funding from the taxpayer arrives).”

Meanwhile, every year we burn more coal, oil and gas to heat houses, fly planes, etc. Yes, electric vehicles are going gang-busters, but the total amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere does not come down, it keeps going up.

So, if government and the corporate sector can’t act/won’t act, then, what? Individual action? Too difficult, not going to make a difference. Amounts to re-arranging deckchairs on the Titanic while feeling good about yourself.

But what if – stay with me here, I know it sounds crazy – people got together in groups (unions, parties, churches, mosques, pressure groups, professional bodies) and those groups came up with enough in common (not frying the planet would be a start), then they might be able to insist, effectively, that governments and corporates stop making things worse – because that is what we’ve been doing these last forty years.  In 1988, when the ‘carbon dioxide’ issue finally broke through, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 351ppm.  We’ve now made that blanket much much thicker – it’s about 430ppm and rising more quickly with every (well, most) passing year.

This would be what the academics like to call ‘civil society’ getting up on its hind legs.

The initiator for this, or one of them, would likely be effective ‘grass roots’ groups (based around shared interest, shared beliefs, shared demographics, shared location).

The problem with this pretty picture is that most groups are led by people with confidence and status who – almost always, from my experience – absolutely lack the relevant abilities to hold a meeting that is engaging, inspiring and will involve more than the usual suspects staying involved.  I mean, most meetings are excruciating – boring, alienating, disempowering. As per one L. Cohen “they sentenced me to twenty years of boredom, for trying to change the system from within.”

Alongside that, you have charismatic individuals with Old Testament prophet vibes who lead a bunch of desperate people (and anyone who can read a Keeling Curve and has the courage to understand its implications is desperate) into emotionally-charged and (in the moment) satisfying actions which lead to long court cases and not much else.

Somehow we need to create norms for these “social movement organisations” so that they avoid the boredom and demotivation of the former, and ALSO avoid the sugar-rush/sugar-crash of the latter.

In the former case the air leaks out like a punctured tire – people simply don’t come back for a second or third meeting. In the latter case they go up like a rocket and come tumbling down like a stick.

I think I have developed some (okay, quite a lot of) words to help explain that, and – more importantly – some techniques for how to avoid it.  BUT it isn’t something that can be done in isolation. It requires a ‘critical mass’ of different groups all doing it at the same time, to kind of ‘create their own weather’.  

I no longer believe it will happen, but if there are other people who want to know about it, then I’ll write about it.

Categories
United Kingdom

June 24, 1994 – “World steels itself for action” Yeah, nah.

Thirty two years ago, on this day, June 24th, Manchester does what Manchester does best – big promises of future environmental action.

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 359ppm. As of 2026, when this post was published, it is 430ppm. This matters because the more carbon dioxide in the air, the more heat gets trapped. The more heat, the more extreme weather events. You can make it more complicated than that if you want, but really, it’s not. Fwiw, I have a tattoo of the Keeling Curve on my left forearm.

The broader context for this was that the Rio Earth Summit had happened in 1992, and Manchester had stuck its hand up to do the follow-up.

The specific context was that there were all sorts of problems (funding, ‘vision’) and the whole thing was a damp nasty squib. 

What I think we can learn is this: Manchester does cheap talk well.

What happened next:  Waves of promise making, and ignorance about previous waves on the part of both activists and (some) councillors and officers. It’s all kayfabe, innit?

On this topic, you might like these other posts on All Our Yesterdays

References

You can see the chronological list of All Our Yesterdays “on this day” posts here.

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.

If you want to get involved, let me know.

If you want to invite me on your podcast, that would boost my ego and probably improve the currently pitiful hit-rate on this site (the two are not-unrelated).

Also on this day: 

June 24, 1974 – Conference on “Science and Technology for Human Development” opens in Bucharest

June 24, 1985 – Climate change rears its head at a development meeting…

June 24, 1986 – New Yorkers get to watch a documentary on “The Climate Crisis”

June 24, 2004 – UN Global Compact Summit in New York, launches ESG in “Who Cares Wins” report

June 24, 2009 – Scottish Parliament passes insufficient climate legislation; claims ‘leadership’ anyway 

June 24, 2010 – Large and small renewables

Categories
United States of America

June 24, 1969 – Ominous Veil reported

Fifty seven years ago, on this day, June 24th, 1969 a Californian newspaper syndicates an article entitled “Air Pollution Hangs Like an Ominous Veil”

“Moreover, his dumping of carbon dioxide into the air (six billion tons a year) threatens to change the climate and may indeed already have changed it.”

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 324ppm. As of 2026, when this post was published, it is 430ppm. This matters because the more carbon dioxide in the air, the more heat gets trapped. The more heat, the more extreme weather events. You can make it more complicated than that if you want, but really, it’s not. Fwiw, I have a tattoo of the Keeling Curve on my left forearm.

The broader context for this was that from late 1965, with the release of the President’s Science Advisory Committee report on Restoring the Natural Environment, the question of carbon dioxide had been appearing alongside other, more immediate and prominent pollutants.

What I think we can learn is this: by 1969, you could rely on carbon dioxide to appear in any lengthy article about global pollution. 

What happened next: 

On this topic, you might like these other posts on All Our Yesterdays

January 27, 1967 –  Time Magazine talks carbon dioxide build-up

November 27 1967 – Newsweek wrings its hands about future ecological problems, including carbon dioxide

References

You can see the chronological list of All Our Yesterdays “on this day” posts here.

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.

If you want to get involved, let me know.

If you want to invite me on your podcast, that would boost my ego and probably improve the currently pitiful hit-rate on this site (the two are not-unrelated).

Also on this day: 

June 24, 1974 – Conference on “Science and Technology for Human Development” opens in Bucharest

June 24, 1985 – Climate change rears its head at a development meeting…

June 24, 1986 – New Yorkers get to watch a documentary on “The Climate Crisis”

June 24, 2004 – UN Global Compact Summit in New York, launches ESG in “Who Cares Wins” report

June 24, 2009 – Scottish Parliament passes insufficient climate legislation; claims ‘leadership’ anyway 

June 24, 2010 – Large and small renewables