Tag: 1964

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United States of America

August 1, 1964 – Popular Mechanics says the air around us is changing

Sixty one years ago, on this day, August 1, 1964, the magazine Popular Mechanics ran a story “The air around us: how it is changing” including mention of CO2 build-up – “when you burn anything such as fuel for heat or power you also take oxygen from the atmosphere and give back carbon dioxide.”

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=ROMDAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA4&dq=The+Air+Around+Us:+How+It+Is+Changing&pg=PA81&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 319ppm. As of 2025, 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 was that the 1950s had seen an explosion in scientific measurement of, well, everything (see also “The Great Acceleration”). Popular Mechanics had, 11 years earlier, briefly covered Gilbert Plass’s 1953 statements. The International Geophysical Year (1957-8) had enabled accurate measurements of carbon dioxide to be taken in various locations – most famously in Hawaii.

The specific context was “smog” in American cities was becoming a real problem, and journalists looking for newer/broader angles were also beginning to think globally. The journalist here is also drawing upon the report from the Conservation Foundation, of early 1963…

What I think we can learn from this is that anyone tolerably well-educated knew there might be trouble ahead. True, they probably also assumed we would nuke ourselves before then…

What happened next – the following February (1965) President Lyndon Johnson’s special message to Congress about pollution/natural beauty included a glancing reference to carbon dioxide levels… It would be the mid 1980s before serious policymaker concern began.

What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.

Also on this day

August 1, 1980 – Wall Street Journal does excellent #climate reporting

August 1, 2015 – World Coal Association tries to say coal is lifting people out of poverty.

August 1, 2016 – Anti-wind idiots step on their own rake – All Our Yesterdays

Categories
Activism United States of America

June 21, 1964 – Goodman, Chaney and Schwerner murdered

Sixty years ago, on this day, June 21st, 1964,

Three civil rights workers, Andrew Goodman, James Chaney and Mickey Schwerner, are murdered in Neshoba County, Mississippi, United States, by members of the Ku Klux Klan.

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 319ppm. As of 2025 it is 430ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The broader context was that black people had been resisting Jim Crow (the name given to the apartheid system in the Southern United States) as best they could, since its inception. But the “massive resistance” of the Southern States was only going to be broken with outside help – both the Federal Government and brave brave people trying to desegregate schools, buses etc.

The specific context was that Ella Baker had managed to protect students and young black people from being swallowed up into other people’s campaigns, and so the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was formed. It had had some success with education/outreach/voter registration, but decided (it was a contentious issue) that it needed more (Northern) hands on deck and so began the “Freedom Summer” in 1964, where white and black volunteers from the North would join those efforts. At the very beginning of that summer, these three volunteers were murdered.

What I think we can learn from this is that the defenders of the status quo are perfectly okay with murder to defend that status quo. Change costs lives.

What happened next  The Freedom Summer happened. It opened an enormous can of worms, and second wave feminism, queer rights, ecology movements sprang from the ferment of the second half of the sixties.  The Black Civil Rights Movement was the initiator movement, in academic terms.

Oh, and on August 3 1980 Republican candidate Ronald Reagan gave a “states rights” speech in Neshoba County. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink, dog whistle, dog whistle.

What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.

Also on this day: 

June 21, 2007 – ABC unleashes “Carbon Cops” on the world. ACAB – All Climate Activists Barf… – All Our Yesterdays

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Technophilia technosalvationism United Kingdom

October 8, 1964 – Party X and Party Y (techno and eco) – seminal article in New Scientist

Sixty years ago, on this day, October 8th, 1964,

 Nigel Calder’s article in New Scientist on 8 Oct 1964 (at the time of the 1964 general election). Calder’s article expressed dissatisfaction with the similar policies offered by the two main parties, and called for the creation of two very different political parties, X and Y. This seminal article basically espoused two different visions of the future: ‘Party X’ technocratic, ‘Party Y’ ‘ecological’. What is interesting about Calder’ s vision is how much of the vision for ‘Party Y’ was to become part of the early 1970s environmental message.

(Herring, 2001)

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 320ppm. As of 2024 it is 422ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that awareness of environmental problems was growing. Whether it was Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, or the Buchanan report about traffic in cities. And it was clear that there were unmet political needs because both main parties were all about economic growth. And the proposal for a technocrat party and an ecological party as we would never call them was a sensible one. But there are simply too many cross cutting needs and myths. These are not the official lines as people see them, because people think they can have their cake and eat it. And for a certain amount of time you can, but eventually, you look down and you have an empty plate and a face full of food. You no longer have your cake.

What we learn is that these debates about technology “versus” ecology whatever, they go back. Well, they go back earlier than 1964. But they were expressed plainly in New Scientist in 1964.

What happened next? The article was, I’m told, influential in some circles, largely ignored more broadly.

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.

References

Xxx

Also on this day: 

October 8, 1959 – Shell says “nothing to see here” on carbon dioxide build-up

October 8, 1971 – Lord Kennet pushes back against Nature’s “John Maddox” on the greenhouse effect.

October 8, 1978 – The Times runs an “ice caps melting” story

October 8, 1988 – Aussie poet and activist Judith Wright in final speech, warns of environmental problems ahead…

Categories
Activism United States of America

October 1, 1964 – The Free Speech Movement kicks off in Berkeley

Sixty years ago, on this day, October 1st, 1964, the Free Speech Movement is launched on the campus of University of California, Berkeley.

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 319ppm. As of 2024 it is 4xxppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that the black civil rights movement was underway. The upsurge had been going on, especially since sort of ‘57, didn’t pause: the sit ins and SNCC. And white people had gone (in relatively small numbers) to the Deep South, to help with voter registration, and education, and so forth. And then these people had come back and wanted to continue campaigning on university campuses. And those in control of university campuses, especially University of California Berkeley, weren’t having any of it. And this confronted the activists with a dilemma. They were battle-hardened. They had been arrested and brutalised in the South. So what campus cops and so forth could dish out was not as big a deal as it had been. They’ve also been battle-hardened by the House UnAmerican Activities Committee and its roadshow, which by the way, had not come to California since 1960 because they’d been basically beaten out of town with their tail between their legs. But I’m digressing.

What we learn is that the histories and I think they’re right, suggest that the Free Speech Movement on Berkeley campus is that kind of bridge incident and bridge organisation between the black civil rights movement and what would come next. Of course, people involved didn’t know what would come next, but it would be anti-war, feminism, gay rights. And yes, also the environment, not to mention Indian rights, Puerto Rican rights, etc. And these bridge moments, you don’t know that you’re in them, probably.

What happened next, Mario Savio gave his “throw your body on the gears of the machine” speech. 

The issue became not just free speech on campus, and black civil rights, but also the war in Vietnam, which in a few months would pick up serious momentum with Operation Rolling Thunder. 

What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.

Also on this day: 

October 1, 1957 – US Oil company ponders carbon dioxide build-up…

October 1, 1997 – Global greens gather in Melbourne, diss Australian #climate policy

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United States of America

April 4, 1964 – Revelle’s PSAC Working Group Five

Sixty years ago, on this day, April 4th, 1964, a working group of the President’s Scientific Advisory Council got looking at climate change…

PSAC was the second presidential task force to whom Revelle had introduced the issue of CO2. The first was a subgroup of President Johnson’s Domestic Council, which released a report in 1964. Joseph Fisher, Paul Freund, Margaret Mead and Roger Revelle., “Notes Prepared by Working Group Five, White House Group on Domestic Affairs,” April 4 1964. 

(Howe, 2014:219) [Mead and 1975 conference, with Stephen Schnenider)

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 319ppm. As of 2024 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that Roger Revelle, Conservation Foundation people, Charles Keeling, etc were looking at the carbon dioxide numbers and thinking, “you know, this is one to keep an eye on” as per the 1963 meeting.

And so on to Johnson. Within the Presidential Science Advisory Committee, which had been set up in the immediate aftermath of Sputnik, the climate issue was just one of those things that people thought about. (I’m not sure how Margaret Mead came to be involved, but I’m glad she was!)

The thing that we learned is that there they are within the policy subsystems beavering away, trying to get people to take this stuff seriously. 

What happened next? 

Well, a little under a year later, Johnson gave a special address to Congress about environmental pollution. And you know what? It mentioned CO2 buildup in the atmosphere. And that was thanks to Revelle. 

In November 1965 there was a long report, led by John Tukey, that kinda-sorta emerged from this PSAC group, but went much broader.

How did Margaret Mead get involved? She and then-husband Gregory Bateson will already have known about the issue via G. Evelyn Hutchinson, I’m sure. 

What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.

Also on this day: 

April 4, 1957 – New Scientist runs story on carbon dioxide build-up

April 4, 1964 – President Johnson’s Domestic Council on climate…

April 4, 1978 – UK Chief Scientific Advisor worries about atmospheric C02 build-upApril 4 – Interview with Ro Randal about “Living With Climate Crisis

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United Kingdom

January 18, 1964 – Nature mentions atmospheric carbon dioxide build-up

Sixty years ago, on this day, January 18th, 1964, Nature published an article about the British Association for the Advancement of Science (BAAS) meeting in September 1963, at which Peter Ritchie-Calder (yes, him again!) had spoken about CO2 build-up,

 “Discharge of combustion products into the atmosphere had increased its content of carbon dioxide by 10 per cent in a century. The ‘green house effect’ could be expected to increase average mean temperature by 3·6° C in the next 4Q-50 years. This would radically affect the extent of glaciers and ice-caps with resultant rise in sea- and river-levels and increasing precipitation. 

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 319ppm. As of 2024 it is 422ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that by 1963 people like Ritchie Calder were speaking publicly about CO2 buildup. It was no secret among the scientific elite in the United Kingdom. And well. You know, Nature was covering it. This is probably before John Maddox came along as editor.

What we learn is that there’s an entire history of admissions about CO2 build up. It’s not a secret, it’s not considered outlandish. It’s just one of those things. This is also two years after Mariner had gone to Venus and captured a lot of information. 

What happened next? It would be 1967 before the CO2 issue really received a boost with the BBC programme Challenge and so forth. 

What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.

Also on this day: 

January 18, 1993 – Australian unions and greenies launch first “Green Jobs” campaign

January 18, 1993 – Job’s not a good un. “Green Jobs in Industry Plan” achieves … nothing. #auspol

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United States of America

April 14, 1964 – RIP Rachel Carson

Sixty nine years ago, on this day, April 14, 1964,  Rachel Carson died. Her second book, based on three long articles in The New Yorker, was Silent Spring. It is surely one of the most influential books of the twentieth century.

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 321.8ppm. As of 2023 it is 420ppm, but check here for daily measures. ,

The context was

Carson had written a previous book, on the oceans, in which she mentioned that the Arctic climate was warming. However,  her work on “Silent Spring” serialised in three long articles in The New Yorker was a publishing sensation, coming just as a series of anxieties about the consequences – social and environmental – around the 1950s boom were coming to a head.

By this time, Carson was already seriously unwell with the cancer that was to kill her.  She was, of course, ferociously attacked by the chemicals industry and its allies. This is what happens…

What I think we can learn from this

Vale Rachel Carson!!

Her enemies were instructive.

Other doom-critics were less guarded in their attacks. Few were more indignant than Thomas R. Shepard, Jr., the publisher of Look magazine. In his remarkable 1973 book The Doomsday Lobby, coauthored with Melvin Grayson, he clearly allowed outrage to divert him from the path of reason. Particular invective was reserved for Silent Spring. The book was, the two men argued, an attack on the business establishment, an attack on scientific and technological progress, an attack on the United States, and an attack on man himself.  Millions of Americans had bought the book “as avidly as the buxom hausfraus of Bavaria had bought the garbage of Adolf Hitler, and for much the same reason.”

(McCormick, 1991:85) Reclaiming Paradise

See also Lewis Herber (aka Murray Bookchin), who wrote a book called “Our Synthetic Environment” covering the same territory. See here for more info – https://blog.oup.com/2015/08/murray-bookchin-climate-change/

And see tomorrow’s post for Herber/Bookchin’s next book, in 1965…

What happened next

DDT came under the microscope, and went from more-or-less wonder chemical to pariah in 8 years…

The global environment movement took off in 1968/9

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.

Categories
United States of America

April 4, 1964 –  President Johnson’s Domestic Council on climate…

On this day, April 4, 1964, 

“Revelle had painted a similar picture of the CO2 problem before President Johnson’s Domestic Council a year earlier, and in 1964 he called for similarly bold action. “With the advance of science and technology,” he wrote, “our power to change nature has grown enormously both for good and for ill. …by gaining greater understanding, we will be able to make conscious changes—to bring more water to deserts, to bring cooler summers and warmer winters to the Middle West and the Northeast. In thinking about how we can make our country a better place in which to live by changing our environment, we must not be afraid of big things that can be done only on a national or international scale. We must be sure to make more than little plans.”

Joseph Fisher, Paul Freund, Margaret Mead, and Roger Revelle, “Notes Prepared by Working Group Five, White House Group on Domestic Affairs,” April 4, 1964, President’s Committee [White House Group on Domestic Affairs], File 42, Box 20, Roger Revelle Collection MC 6, Scripps Institute of Oceanography Archives, La Jolla, California. 

Howe, J. 2010  MAKING GLOBAL WARMING GREEN: CLIMATE CHANGE AND AMERICAN ENVIRONMENTALISM, 1957-1992

and

“PSAC was the second presidential task force to whom Revelle had introduced the issue of CO2. The first was a subgroup of President Johnson’s Domestic Council, which released a report in 1964. Joseph Fisher, Paul Freund, Margaret Mead and Roger Revelle., “Notes Prepared by Working Group Five, White House Group on Domestic Affairs,” April 4 1964.

(Howe, 2014:219)

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 319ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that Revelle had been aware of the potential problem of carbon dioxide build-up for almost a decade, and Dave Keeling had been taking accurate measurements at Mauna Loa for 6 years by now, with a steady increase…

What we can learn

Revelle was there, inside the bureaucracy, keeping the (potential) issue on the agenda… 

What happened next

In 1965 Lyndon Johnson mentioned carbon dioxide build-up in his address to congress. The National Science Foundation kept doing work on weather modification and climate.  Gordon Macdonald and Margaret Mead kept going on the topic…