“Carbon Sense Coalition is a voluntary group of people concerned about the extent to which carbon is wrongly vilified in Western societies, particularly in government, the media, and in business circles. We aim to restore balance and reason to the carbon debate, and to explain and defend the key role of carbon in production of most of our energy for heat, light, and transportation, and all of our food.”
June 17th, 2007
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 384ppm. 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 from the late 1980s in Australia and elsewhere, and the United States especially, there was an active – what’s the word phrase I’m looking for,? – fucking stupid climate denial movement, or bunch of individuals occasionally coalescing as a “movement” in the Australian context that would be people like John Daly with his demented book the Greenhouse Trap. Daly died in 2004 and also outfits like the so called Lavoisier group.
The specific context was that the carbon dioxide build up issue had been actively suppressed by John Howard as Prime Minister of Australia from 1996 to 2007.
But this had become impossible for Howard to do in late 2006; the issue just burst onto the scene again thanks to the endless, or seemingly endless, Millennium drought, Al Gore and his film An Inconvenient Truth, ratification of Kyoto Protocol, leading to new UN negotiations, social movement activism like Climate Camp in the United Kingdom and so forth. Then you had new Labor leader, Kevin Rudd, having toppled Kim Beasley, using the climate issue as a stick to beat John Howard with, especially over ratification of the Kyoto Protocol, which Australia had famously not done.
Therefore it was clear that the climate issue would be live for another year or two, at least (in the end, it was until 2011).
What I think we can learn is this: So here you have a bunch of intellectual inadequates giving themselves the title ‘carbon sense’, which is, of course, a play on common sense. And this invocation of common sense tells you a lot in the same way that it was common sense, that the world was flat, that women shouldn’t vote, that black people should be slaves, that blood letting made you stronger, etc, etc, that kind of common sense.
What happened next: I am sure they are still around. Gaia help us all.
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).
I didn’t invent the term Fafocene – or rather, I did, but I was not the first person to do so. However, it seems like I am the first to popularise it.
“Fafocene?” You ask. Well, there’s a graphic for that.
And now I wonder if it might not be worth exploring this in more depth. – Explore its causes, signs and symptoms, the prognosis. If I had the time/expertise/money it would be a podcast, a la Heather Cox Richardson. But I don’t, so, there’s that.
A few years ago, on another site, I did ‘doom diaries‘ for a month, so this could be a kind of sequel to that…
Mind you, what was that warning of Freddie Nietzsche’s about staring into the abyss?
In 1980 a book called The Greenhouse Effect was published. Its author, Buzz Bernard, kindly agreed to an email interview…
Buzz Bernard
A bit about where you were born, grew up, were educated
I was born in Eugene, Oregon; grew up in Portland, Oregon; and was educated at the University of Washington (Seattle)
What drew you to the Air Force? What did you do in your service?
The draft was still in effect when I entered college. My dad said, “You’re gonna have to serve in the military, so you might as well do it as an officer.” Thus, I joined the AF ROTC and was commissioned as a second lieutenant. I was hoping the AF might send me on to get a Master’s Degree in Atmospheric Science, but something called Vietnam came along. So much for furthering my education.
In the air force I mainly supported flying/combat operations. I ended my career (primarily in the reserve) as Deputy Director of Weather (Reserve), Air Combat Command.
When and how did your involvement in meteorology come about?
I always (at least since I was about 8 or 9 years old) knew I wanted to be a “weatherman.” I wanted to know what made it cold or hot, why sometimes we got snowstorms instead of rainstorms, what caused big windstorms, etc. There wasn’t any one big event that triggered my curiosity (like with many of my fellow meteorologists), I was just interested in weather.
When and how did you first hear about carbon dioxide build-up as a potential problem?
I first heard about atmospheric carbon dioxide when I went on a research project sponsored by the Univ of Washington in the Alaskan arctic in the summer of 1962. My job was to drive an old WWII weapons carrier out to a hut at the literal end of Point Barrow and record CO2 measurements. “Man, is this boring,” I thought.
In the late 1970s, I became friends with an MIT professor emeritus who worked at the research firm I was working at (as a civilian) in Massachusetts. He’d been involved in linking sunspot cycles to climate cycles. I found that fascinating and wrote a trade book (WEATHER WATCH) about it. I asked the professor about the threat of warming from increasing CO2 in the atmosphere. He brushed it off saying, “Don’t worry about it.” Well, I wasn’t worried about it, but wanted to find out more. So I began reading everything I could find about the subject, and drew my own conclusions as a layman. I decided that there was a real threat from anthropogenic warming caused by CO2. Not immediately, but maybe by the turn of the century. Thus came the book THE GREENHOUSE EFFECT, which was what global warming or climate change was called back then.
I grew even more convinced of the threat of man-caused global warming through the 1980s and ended up writing another trade book about it that came out in 1993, GLOBAL WARMING UNCHECKED. By then, the threat of anthropogenic global warming was becoming more public, controversial, and politicized. Even many (most?) operational meteorologists (forecasters) didn’t believe in it, or maybe just wanted to ignore it. I was told by one forecaster who owned a big commercial firm that I was a charlatan. (I don’t think he had a clue how little money most authors really make.) When I joined a commercial forecasting operation a few years later, I was told by a friend to keep my mouth shut about having written books that dealt with global warming. No one at the company believed in it. Of course, the company has done a one-eighty since then and now can’t talk about it enough.
The book itself, how did it come about—were you commissioned or did you pitch it?
I was not commissioned. I wanted to write the book because I believed the threat of global warming was real. I had an agent by then because of WEATHER WATCH, and the agent was able to get a contract for the book with a subsidiary of a major publisher.
Anything you recall about the writing process—easy, hard, quicker or longer than expected, surprises on the way? (this is all fifty years ago, I know!)
Looking back, it was hard. There were no word processors then. I used a typewriter. Cut and paste was literal. Q&A with researchers was via snail mail not email. What little research I did was done in libraries, not on the internet. I hated doing the indexes at the end of books. I think that’s one reason I ultimately turned to writing fiction.
Were you happy with it?
Yes. Of course, I think any time you complete a book, you’re happy with it. In truth, I don’t think many of my friends had any idea what I was writing about. One of my bosses asked me, in all seriousness, “Do you have a greenhouse at your home?”He obviously hadn’t read the book yet.
How was the book received?
It wasn’t any big deal. I was not an author (or researcher) that anybody knew. There was no Amazon back then where you could track book sales or read reviews by customers.
Any further work you did on the Greenhouse Effect/thoughts on where we are now at?
As I mentioned earlier, I did write a follow-up book called GLOBAL WARMING UNCHECKED. From here on out, however, I’ll let the climate change experts/researchers write about the subject. I still follow global warming/climate change, and science has proven the early warnings were correct. People still occasionally ask me if I “believe” in global warming, as if the science were unsettled. I respond, “Do you believe in sunrise and sunset?”
Thoughts? Major challenges still remain in front of us. Heat waves, droughts, major floods, superstorms.
Me? I’m just gonna kick back and enjoy writing my WWII historical fiction series. I still have to do a lot of research, but it’s a lot more fun, I get more “attaboys,” and earn more money.
Which of your WW2 books should people start with and why?
I would say the first novel of the series which was titled simply WHEN HEROES FLEW. I wasn’t thinking of a series then. But the novel sold well, got great reviews, and eventually drew some interest from a screenwriter, so I was off and running.
Anything else you’d like to say?
Thanks for this opportunity to help me recall how I got started in this crazy business of commercial writing. When I was younger, I was a meteorologist who wrote a few books. Now I’m a novelist who retains a keen interest in meteorology and climate change, but those subjects are no longer my profession They are hobbies. I think I have a wonderful life.
Fourteen years ago, on this day, June 16th, 2012, Australian journalist Lenore Taylor, took stock of CCS in an article called “Climate strategy up in smoke.”
IT WAS the technology that was going to help underpin the nation’s climate change strategy. In 2009, the then prime minister, Kevin Rudd, pledged to ”lead the world” in carbon capture and storage technology, which traps carbon dioxide emissions, permanently storing them deep underground.
Taylor, L. (2012) Climate strategy up in smoke. Sydney Morning Herald June 16th
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 394ppm. 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 in Australia, CCS had first popped up in the late 1990s in the Geodisc programme, and then a couple of years later, post Kyoto, in the efforts of the Prime Minister’s Science and Industry Council, then chaired by Robin Batterham, who was part time and the rest of its time, who was the chief technology officer of Rio Tinto. And then from 2004 onwards, there had been a series of announcements and conferences and legislation about CCS, the Queensland Government had pushed for it as well under Premier Peter Beattie. Also you’d had Kevin Rudd in 2007 Eight, using CCS as a way of keeping coal miners on side while still attracting liberals, small l liberal voters and those concerned about the environment, thus CCS performed the function of squaring the circle.
The specific context was that the physics didn’t add up, the money didn’t add up, and it all fell over in late 2010 and here we see Lenore Taylor, who had been covering climate since the early 1990s, writing about how it all fell over.
What I think we can learn is this: fantasy eventually meets reality and there’ll be a smart somebody there to report on that, usually, hopefully…
What happened next: CCS has staggered on because it’s too useful, and in fact, it’s pretty much the only story that the coal industry has to tell, though there’s also all this shit about or there was this HELE – “high emissions, low efficiency” (sic) power plants, and the money that the Australian Coal Association put aside was repurposed to publicise the coal industry. And meanwhile, Gorgon, the Chevron CCS facility, has continued to massively underperform.
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).
The Adelaide Advertiser runs a full page ad (not for the first or last time) from Mobil Oil company, trying to insinuate that Mobil gives a flying fuck about Australia, and to get readers to build a connection between buying Mobil and being a Real Australian.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 329ppm. 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 we are marinated in all forms of propaganda. As per the late Alex Carey,
“The 20th century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance. The growth of democracy; the growth of corporate power; and the growth of corporate propaganda against democracy.”
The specific context was that with the coming of drilling in the Bass Strait for oil and gas, multinationals stepped up their propaganda, sorry “advertising” effort.
What I think we can learn is this: the marinating has been going on for so long. I think we’re cooked, in fact.
What happened next: The propaganda has been constantly topped up. Like the sheep in Animal Farm, endlessly bleating, to stop any chance of independent thought.
On this topic, you might like these other posts on All Our Yesterdays
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).
Thirty four years ago, on this day, June 14th, 1992,
Rio Earth Summit finishes 3 to 14th June. Everyone signs the UNFCCC… (except Saudi and a couple of others, who waited until it was inevitable and they’d be left out in the cold if they didn’t).
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 356ppm. 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 in 1968 the United Nations had agreed to a Swedish proposal to host a conference on the human environment. This had happened in 1972 in Stockholm, and one of the few things to come out of it was the United Nations Environment Programme, UNEP. UNEP, the World Meteorological Organisation, and the ICSU, had sponsored various scientific gatherings through the 70s and 80s about climate, and especially carbon dioxide build up, leading to the Villach conference in 1985.
And after Villach in several nations, not so much the United Kingdom, but certainly, for example, Australia and the United States, there had been a concerted push to get politicians aware of/concerned about climate change from CO2 build up.
The specific context was in 1988 the problem had become an issue, and the public were concerned. And perhaps the most important sign of this was Thatcher’s speech at the Royal Society in September of ‘88. Then, despite the efforts of the United States to slow things down, or even stop them, there was irresistible pressure for an international climate treaty to be signed at the Rio Earth Summit (kind of a 20 year follow on to the Stockholm conference, but this time, held in the developing world, or third world, or whatever the politically correct term happens to be).
And there were many books written about the conference, much ink spilled, many protests as there had been at Stockholm. Because guess what? World leaders in limousines with vacuous speeches are not particularly trusted by the rabble because the rabble have been paying attention.
And the proponents of the targets and timetables decided it was better to have Bush at the table than not at all. And there’s an understandable logic to that decision, but what it’s meant is that we’ve spent the next 30 years trying to get targets and timetables for emissions reductions bedded in, and it hasn’t worked, and we’re doomed.
What I think we can learn is this: That’s all you need to know, is that, thanks to a bunch of stupid white men with ideas above their intellect, we’re doomed. I mean, it’s broader than that, even if we’d taken better decisions in ‘88 to ‘92 the challenges we faced would still have overwhelmed us. I think we’ll never know.
What happened next: See above. The emissions kept climbing and climbing
On this topic, you might like these other posts on All Our Yesterdays
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).
Forty seven years ago, on this day, June 13th,1979, the Financial Times ran an article (on page 3, since you ask) “Schmidt to seek international action on energy.”
At the end of it, this –
“Despite West Germany’s large coal reserves, Herr Schmidt has recently expressed doubts privately about markedly increasing use of the fuel.
“His attitude appears grounded in fears recently underlined here by the scientist and energy expert, Dr Carl Friedrich von Weizsaecker, that increased carbon dioxide production could, over decades, cause climatic change with serious economic and political consequences.”
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 336ppm. 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 Herman Flohn, a German meteorologist/climatologist had been aware of Guy Callendar’s 1938 paper and wrote about it during the war. Afterwards, Flohn had kept talking about it, and written about it.
The specific context was that various German scientists had been trying to ring the alarm bell by this point. Also, the first World Climate Conference had taken place in February 1979.
What I think we can learn is this: People knew. We knew. At the highest levels. And here we are.
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).
Forty years ago, on this day, June 12, 1986, Conservative MP David Heathcoat-Amory had this to say in his regular column in the Mid-Somerset Series…
“Pumping carbon dioxide into the air also produces a “greenhouse” effect in which the atmosphere gradually heats up (hardly noticeable this spring!) This in turn causes the ice caps to melt and the sea level to rise.
Since 1850 the level of CO2 in the air has gone up by about a quarter. Not disastrous, but certainly a worry.”
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 347ppm. 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 the question of carbon dioxide build-up had been spoken of in mainstream media (BBC, newspapers, the Economist etc etc) in the late 1960s and early 1970s. There had been an effort to get the UK Government concerned and paying close attention in the late 1970s, but this had come up against Thatcher’s indifference/hostility.
The specific context was that by 1986, things were moving. The Villach meeting had happened, and questions around the dangers of energy production were super-live because of the then-recent Chernobyl explosion.
What I think we can learn is this: plenty of (Conservative) MPs were aware of the problem. It wasn’t yet part of a culture war.
What happened next: In September 1988 Margaret Thatcher gave a speech to the Royal Society about science funding and… the Greenhouse Effect. The issue has waxed and waned, but never gone away because (checks notes)… we are tipping billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year, and that is starting to have some of the predicted effects.
On this topic, you might like these other posts on All Our Yesterdays
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).
The first duo-written commentary on an issue of the CO2 Newsletter! Annie Mitchell and Tony Wainwright, both Chartered Psychologists take a deep dive into why we are where we are..
Annie Mitchell and Tony Wainwright
As Ana Unruh Cohen said in her contribution to this series on people’s responses to William Barbat’s “message in a bottle” CO2 Newsletter, “looking back at the history of climate science and policy can trigger wistful thoughts of “what if?” And relatable feelings of sadness about what we have lost and anger at fossil fuel and other vested interests that have fought to prevent climate and action”. Reading the well-informed 1980s (and earlier) warnings also triggers in us, as psychologists, curiosity. First, why did vested interests prevail in the 80s and why do they still, despite incontrovertible evidence of the damage caused by fossil fuels, and despite decades of efforts to raise the alarm and mitigate the harm befalling us all? Second, why do not more of our fellow citizens and scientists join in with activists’ efforts to wake us up and bring about urgent change? Third, what is it in the histories and experience of some of us that draw us, apparently against the tide, to persist in actively demanding change? Fourth, what could lead now to the positive social tipping point we so urgently need?
We’re commenting on CO2 Newsletter Vol 2, No 1, October -November 1980. Reading it now feels extraordinary because pretty much everything that Barbat notes in his commentary remains the case: both the scientific evidence that global heating is caused by CO2 emissions, and the realisation of the appalling human cost and social injustice of inaction. It is hard not to be moved by reading this newsletter: a voice from over 40 years ago, hoping people would heed his call. It is salutary to realise that atmospheric carbon concentrations since he was writing have gone up by about one third, and the trajectory has been steady, in spite of all the agreements and conferences. Infuriatingly also, as of 2025, global emissions of greenhouse gases have never been higher. Perhaps if these agreements and conferences hadn’t happened it may have been even worse. One sentence jumps out: “Adapting to a highly different climate may be inappropriate to apply to future victims of malnutrition or storm-driven high tides of an elevated ocean. ‘Sacrificed’ may be appropriate if immediate counter measures to the CO2buildup could [as we now know they could] actually prevent such problems.”. We, like Barbat, watched the United States’ “me” decade to shift to the “we” decade: but we see, terribly, that decade is now closer to a century and escalating with Make America Great Again ferocity. We believe, along with grass roots organisations like Hope Not Hate, and Common Ground, that we humans (and indeed beings beyond human) have much more in common than that which divides us. We need to have the conversations, share the evidence, and generate the shared social narratives that prove it.
Why do vested interests prevail?
There is no doubt that where there is wealth there is power, and fossil fuels have created more wealth than anything else we can think of. They have also brought enormous benefits to humanity, but at a terrible cost. The cost is not born by the fossil fuel companies; it is, in the woefully inadequate term, an ‘externality’ where the planet pays the price. Even now, there seems to be evidence that these malign forces have undermined the United Nations COP (Conference of the Parties) process so that binding commitments are avoided https://www.transparency.org/en/press/fossil-fuel-interests-are-undermining-un-climate-negotiations-new-transparency-international-report-warns.
Stoddart and colleagues asked in 2021 why haven’t we bent the emissions curve despite 3 decades of climate mitigation? A common thread across the literature they reviewed was the central role of power, “from a dogmatic political-economic hegemony and influential vested interests to narrow techno-economic mindsets and ideologies of control.” These narrow mindsets serve to perpetuate the very conditions that hold us still now in the worsening climate catastrophe. And we urgently need, as Stoddart et al put it, new forms of social imaginary for a better future. Does modern technology’s hypnotic capacity to distract us from beauty, imagination and awe, and from our realisation of our bodily place in the world, account in part for the lethal stranglehold of ideologies of control?
2. Why do not more of our fellow citizens join in with demanding change? It is understandable that our fellow citizens (and ourselves too because we are all only human) adopt cognitive and emotional defences – including denial, delay, disinterest – against unbearable truths. These psychological defences are hard to shift because they are bolstered by a barrage of misinformation and disinformation promulgated by the media outlets of those who believe their interests are protected by keeping the truth hidden. And who does not wish the truth to be other than it is, when we face existential horror? In his book ‘Don’t even think about it’ George Marshall, founder of Climate Outreach put his finger on it. We are not wired up to deal with climate change – it isn’t the weather, it is what you might call a derivative. It’s the system that controls the weather. In addition, George Marshall worked out that different audiences need to be addressed differently, and just producing lots of charts that predict the end of the world as we know it will just turn people off.
3. What is in the histories and experience of some of us who do persist in demanding change?
Tony: engagement with environmental issues flowed from growing up in a family where the natural world was something to be enjoyed and studied in equal measure. At school, my teacher, Brian Brookes showed me on field trips to Skokholm and Handa Islands how interconnected the web of life was. He also introduced me to the Shanny a rocky shore fish, when he was warden at Slapton Ley, and the hours spent in rock pools led me to study for my doctoral thesis in experimental psychology, the way the visual systems of fishes and other creatures are adapted to their light environment (see https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4757-0241-5_54#citeas). My broader research work included a strong interest in marine and freshwater environments, and how we should protect them. The issue of climate change only came to my attention some 20 years later when I was by then a clinical psychologist, and when I became involved with the Friends of the Earth 2005 campaign, The Big Ask, which was successful in getting legislation through the UK parliament, the first in the world, with statutory carbon limits and an annual carbon accounting. My interests had been in ecological systems and how they were being impacted by human activity, but it was only after this campaign that my attention was on the effect of CO2 emissions. The way CO2 made the oceans more acidic was quite an eye opener, particularly given my previous work on freshwater and marine animals.
Annie: my sense of being part of the natural world grew from a childhood in County Durham in an era (the 50s and 60s) in which girls growing up could roam pretty freely: helping on the local farm, climbing trees, wandering across footpaths and fields, camping under the stars, first with the Girl Guides, and later tramping the Lake District with boyfriends and girlfriends, exploring the ways our bodies and minds fitted into the natural world. Perhaps it is hard to fight for the health of the planet and nature unless we have first grown to love it. And in my story too, it was a school teacher who inspired intellectual curiosity about ecology. Dorrit Smith, a newly qualified biology teacher, was a breath of fresh air in our old-fashioned ex-grammar school that had just turned comprehensive but in which many teachers still wore dusty caps and gowns. She encouraged us to think for ourselves and to question authority, and in doing so set us a project – at a time and place when self-directed projects were an unheard-of educational approach. This project was transformational: we had to research the contribution of Rachel Carson through her newly published book, Silent Spring. From then on, I understood that ecological balance was the basis of flourishing, that corporations could mess up through corporate greed, and, vitally, that women could challenge the established order of things. These were tremendous lessons for a restless adolescent to take as a basis for life and learning, and I remain grateful for Dorrit’s then-youthful devotion to her pupils.
Everyone who comes to climate and nature activism will have their foundational stories, and we both believe that sharing and honouring these, as XR Scientists have done in their book Scientists on Survival, is a critical part of inspiring ourselves and others to persist with demanding change.
4. What could lead now to the positive tipping point we so urgently need?
Here we might take issue with some content in the newsletter:
“Q. Should the public be allowed to help decide what projects are pursued or not pursued?
“A. Generally no, if what you mean is basic scientific research….
“Most members of the public usually don’t know enough about any given complicated matter to make meaningful informal judgments. And that includes scientists and engineers who work in unrelated areas…
“… I don’t think John Doe will ever have enough information to justify technological public policymaking by public referenda.
“To make intelligent decisions about science-based technology, we will have to rely on analyses and advice from institutions that the polity trusts.”
We rather believe, along with Rebecca Willis in her book Too hot to handle: the democratic challenge of climate change, that trust requires more democracy and participation, not less. We’re unlikely to reach a positive social tipping point without much greater public knowledge, awareness and engagement. With a strong public mandate for positive progressive change, politicians and businesses would be much more likely to act against the vested interests of money and entrenched power. And on this, it is extremely inspiring in the UK to be part of the momentum movement in support of the Climate Emergency Briefing. A 50 minute film has been created, featuring 10 of the UKs most highly respected climate scientists and security experts, first shown in Westminster to parliamentarians, policy makers and leaders at the end of 2025, and now being screened in hundreds of community and professional venues across the UK, with facilitated post-show conversations to generate deeper engagement and future action. I , Annie, along with friends and neighbours, have hosted and facilitated screenings in my own community, with more still planned. This is how change can happen: hearing the truth from trusted experts, being held in community with others to process and digest what we hear, and then acting in solidarity with those others to demand the political change that survival in the face of reality requires. If only this strong public engagement had happened back in the 1980s or earlier: might we have bent the emissions curve by now? It is too hypothetical to contemplate.
In conclusion, we wonder what Barbat would have thought about the word today? The breakdown of the international consensus – the so-called “World Order” – is so far leading us down a path of might is right and further conflict, and the warning bells are ringing louder than ever before. The urgent need for “a new we order” is very much on the agenda https://globaljusticeproject.wid.world/global-justice-report/
In a book chapter entitled ‘Who are we? Social identity and sustainable healthcare in the Anthropocene’ we tackled this issue of a new ‘we’ order in the context of healthcare, in which both of us have spent our careers. We say: “How can we join together in learning and solidarity with others in protecting all that we love and care for, when people’s lives and conditions are so separate and varied, and political and nationalist forces increasingly work to divide us from one another, under conditions of threat? How can we value and celebrate the varied contributions that we bring from our different perspectives of gender, ethnic background, culture, class, and ability, while also being sensitive to the ways in which the unequal distribution of power and influence shapes whose voices are heard and unheard? How can we do this at the same time as working to halt the retreat to personal identities that divide and polarise us? As the Black critical journalist Gary Younge put it, in his 2011 book Who are we – and should it matter in the 21st century?
“Identity is not seeking a role in politics. It is already there. For better, for worse, and usually for both, it is an integral part of how we relate to people as individuals and as groups. The choice is whether we want to succumb to its perils among moral panic and division or leverage its potential though solidarity in search of common, and higher, ground.”(Younge, 2011, p. 231)
Finally, in a recent paper, Tony wrote about the implications of the polycrisis for psychologists, entitled ‘A Warning’. Which sums up in some ways the main message of our reflections: “We are at a critical juncture for the future of humanity. I don’t use these words lightly, but they echo the various presentations at the Emergency Briefing for Parliamentarians (National Emergency Briefing on the Climate and Nature Crisis, 2025) last year on the climate crisis. We cannot continue business as usual when there are such clear indications of a catastrophic future. As psychologists we need to work out what ‘not business as usual’ looks like.”
Wainwright, T. and Mitchell. A. (2024) Who are we? Sustainable Healthcare in the Anthropocene. Chapter 5. In J. Braithwaite, Y. Zurynski, & C. K-Lynn Smith (Eds.), Routledge Handbook of Climate Change and Health System Sustainability Routledge.
Biographies
Annie Mitchell is a BPS Chartered Psychologist and former clinical psychologist born in 1953. She teaches, mentors and facilitates trainee clinical psychologists and medical students in the Southwest of England. She’s active with Psychologists for Social Change and has campaigned for climate and nature action.
Tony Wainwright is a BPS Chartered Psychologist and former clinical psychologist born in 1946. He has been a teacher and supervisor of trainee clinical psychologists over many years in the Southwest of England. He has had a long-standing interest in the natural world, and has campaigned for human rights and planetary health.
Twenty one years ago, on this day, June 11th, the Australian Conservation Foundation called for deep cuts…
ACF calls for national deep cuts target on greenhouse
Date: 11-Jun-2005
The Australian Conservation Foundation today urged a national commitment to a target of cutting greenhouse pollution by 60% by 2050 and a framework of immediate practical action, following commitments by the NSW Premier to this target and the expansion of gas and renewables to meet electricity needs in that state.
ACF Executive Director, Don Henry, said the NSW target of a 60% cut by 2050 matched that adopted by UK Prime Minister Tony Blair and the advice of Australia’s former Chief Scientist, and should offer important common ground for the national working group on climate change established at last week’s COAG.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 380ppm. 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 the Australian Conservation Foundation had been aware of CO2 build up since the early 70s, there had been articles in its magazine Habitat. And from 1988 onwards, it had been pushing on carbon dioxide build up as a severe problem. But then under Liberal Prime Minister John Howard (1996-2007), it had become impossible to get anything happening, really. All you could do was release reports showing how important carbon dioxide was as a problem and that there were economic steps that could be taken that wouldn’t cause havoc, and these would largely be ignored as this one was.
What I think we can learn is this: is that it really does matter for the speed and rollout of technology, who is making the government decisions and what messages they’re sending everyone else.
What happened next: Well, in 2006 ACF repeated a trick that it and other organisations including the Wentworth group and WWF had tried. They got together with a bunch of businesses and released a joint report. This was in April 2006 and it was kind of the beginning of the end of the silence. John Howard was accumulating wounds and enemies and bleeding credibility, and then later on, in 2006 the issue broke through, and it spelt the end for Howard.
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).
