Tag: 1966

Categories
Economics of mitigation

March 8, 1966 – Spaceship Earth blasts off…

Fifty eight years ago, on this day, March 8th, 1966, American thinker Kenneth Boulding was talking about the importance of how we think about our position in the universe. Hint – we are on a fragile spaceship.

March 8 1966 Boulding Coming Spaceship Earth –

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 321ppm. As of 2024 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that we just put people in space, everyone was thinking about space and spaceships and astronauts and spacewalks. And that sense of fragility was growing.

What I think we can learn from this is that Kenneth Boulding was a smart guy. So did other smart people, Bucky Fuller, Lewis Mumford. Barbara Ward, you name it. But our smarts didn’t save us (and our luck always runs out).

What happened next: Three years later, everyone’s got EarthRise posters. Everyone’s talking about her fragile planet. All of that kind of went away in 1972-73, at least publicly. Presumably, there’s a whole lot of people who still believe that but feel powerless and isolated to do anything meaningful about it (that Spiral of Silence). Fortunately, we learned our lessons and from 1989 We’ve been busy saving the world ever since [sarcasm]. 

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:

March 8 – International Women’s Day – what is feminist archival practice? 

Categories
Activism United Kingdom

March 27, 1966 – The “Conservation Society” to be launched

Fifty seven years ago, on this day, March 27, 1966, a letter by Douglas McEwan launching the Conservation Society appears in the Observer newspaper.

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 322.4ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that a previous letter by a woman called Edith Freeman. Freeman had led to the creation of the Conservation Society in the context of enormous concerns about air quality species loss, both within the UK and internationally increased population. There were a series of books such as Silent Spring, but also UK books

You also had the rise of the motorway, the increase in concerns about air, water and noise pollution… So a Conservation Society to tackle these issues and to offer advice to civil servants and politicians seemed like a good idea at the time. 

What I think we can learn from this

We need to understand that groups come and go suiting an ideological setting

There’s a comparison with Amnesty which is still going. It also started from I think, an article about Portugal and torture and then a letter saying “something should be done.”

What happened next

The Torrey Canyon incident of 1967 proved the Conservation Society’s point. The Conservation Society’s high watermark period was really 1968 to 1971. But then, new groups like Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth were formed that were slightly more radical and sexier. And the Conservation Society continued for another 20 years until 1987 and was then wound up, its message about “population explosion” no longer on the money. In the meantime, it produced a lot of useful reports which are still achingly relevant, and some of which have been covered on this site.

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

February 20, 1966 – US Senators told about carbon build-up by physicist

Fifty seven years ago, on this day, February 20, 1966, another US senate hearing got an allusion to trouble ahead, from a particle physicist called Leland Haworth.

“Another thing that is in a strict sense a pollutant but not usually thought of as such is the carbon dioxide that comes from all our burning of fossil fuels — coal, oil, gas, and so forth — which is adding to the carbon dioxide content of the air. It is not a pollutant in the sense of doing any harm to us directly, but it could change the temperature balance of the world.”

 — Leland Haworth, hearing on weather modification

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 321.6ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was

The President’s address to Congress in February 1965 had mentioned build-up of C02, and a report that came out in November did likewise. The National Science Foundation was doing further work on this, which Haworth would have been well aware of. There had been a report, released in late 1965 on the topic, which had looked at David Keeling’s measurements (as per Gordon MacDonald to Oppenheimer and Boyle, 1990).

What I think we can learn from this

A problem can be on the sidelines for a long time, and may even disappear into nothing.  For a problem to become an issue will be, usually, the end result of a lot of hard work, and a few capitalised-upon disasters…. It took a while for “climate change” to break through (30 years, when it probably only needed 20 – there is a plausible alternative history narrative where by the late 1970s, the issue gets dealt with (though probably would have required the late-Brezhnev era Soviet Union to innovate, so, maybe not so plausible?!).

What happened next

By the late 1960s, more work was being done, more talk about it, including in the context of the Americans wanting a non-napalming-babies issue to talk about internationally (see Moynihan September 1969 memo). The American Association for the Advancement of Science was getting in on the act too, and by 1970, most people talking about air pollution would at least mention in passing the (potential) climate problem.

What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong?  Do comment on this post.