Tag: 1969

Categories
United States of America

May 17, 1969 – Ritchie Calder gives a speech

Fifty six years ago, on this day, May 17th, 1969, Lord Ritchie Calder makes his warning again…

“Degradation of the Environment at Centre for Continuing Education, University of Chicago, 15-17th May 1969”

“With this combination fish are migrating, changing even their latitudes. On land the snow-line is retreating, the permafrost line in Siberia as well as in the Western Hemisphere is being altered and the glaciers are melting. In Scandinavia, land which was perennially under snow and ice are melting and the arrow heads of over 1,000 years ago when the black earth was last exposed have been found. I am advising all my friends in Britain not to take 99 year leases on properties at present sea-level.”

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 324ppm. As of 2025 it is 430ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that Ritchie Calder had known about CO2 build-up from 1954 at the latest (possibly earlier). He had warned and warned and warned (see 1963 activities). By 1968 he had become quite apocalyptic – see his Presidential Address to the Conservation Society. 

What I think we can learn from this is that smart people knew. But as per Schiller “against stupidity, the gods themselves contend in vain”.

What happened next Calder warned and warned (see his “Mortgaging the Old Homestead,” article and his 1975 interview on The Science Show). His son Nigel made a documentary that basically warned of a new Ice Age (The Weather Machine). Calder died in 1982, before the world “woke up”…

xxx

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: 

May 17, 1968 – “Some prophets of darkness warn of polar icecaps melting…”

May 17, 1972 – New York Times reports carbon dioxide build-up worries…

May 17, 1979 – Martin Holdgate’s A Perspective on Environmental Pollution” published – All Our Yesterdays

Categories
Australia

 May 6, 1969 – a legacy lunch in Melbourne…

Fifty six years ago, on this day, May 6th, 1969,

Dunbavin Butcher gave a speech to a Legacy luncheon in Melbourne – reported in the Age the following day (see below). Mentions c02 build-up!

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 321ppm. As of 2025 it is 430ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that by the mid-late 1960s it wasn’t just pointy-headed meteorologists and climatologists thinking about carbon dioxide build-up. It was also oceanographers, biologists etc. One reason for this was the 1966 book “Science and Survival” by Barry Commoner.

What I think we can learn from this. We knew. The problem is not knowledge, information, it is – as per Sven Lindqvist’s opening to Exterminate The Brutes – courage.

It is not knowledge we lack. What is missing is the courage to understand what we know and to draw conclusions. Sven Lindqvist, “Exterminate All the Brutes

What happened next

Through the 1970s and 1980s the carbon dioxide issue was being tracked. And it finally “broke through” in 1988. Then the denial campaigns – astonishingly successful – kicked in. Essentially, the species decided to let itself die. But the act of letting itself die has also doomed countless other species. Berserk hairless murder apes – what can you do?

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: 

May 6, 1977 – Bert Bolin article in Science about increased atmospheric CO2 concentrations owing to forestry and agriculture – All Our Yesterdays

May 6, 1997 – The so-called “Cooler Heads” coalition created

May 6, 2004 – Australian Prime Minister John Howard meets business, to kill renewables

Categories
United States of America

April 10, 1969 – Nixon tries to go green to North Atlantic Council

On this day, 56 years ago, US President Richard Milhous Nixon gave a speech at the North Atlantic Council where he bemoans the “gathering torments of a rapidly advancing industrial technology.”

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 324ppm. As of 2025 it is 427ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that in the 1968 presidential election, there had been some fleeting talk of environmental issues ( It would have been more if Bobby Kennedy hadn’t gotten whacked, but there you are) and Nixon had mouthed the right pieties.

But there’s various other contexts. First, days after his inauguration in January 1969 Nixon had to go out to Santa Barbara and look glum and competent when the Santa Barbara oil spill happened and everyone was starting to be worried about where more oil spills might come from, etc. Secondly, Nixon had the problem of the atrocities that the US military, with help from Australia and South Korean mercenaries, were committing in Indochina, and was keen to have a change of subject. So the idea of using NATO to tackle the “challenges of modern society” wasn’t as outlandish as it may seem, in retrospect. 

What I think we can learn from this is that politicians will say whatever they think their marks want to hear – this is surely not controversial. 

What happened next Well, within a few months, “Earth Day” was announced. Weirdly though, a good emote wasn’t enough – the environmental problems kept on coming, and the pressures to legislate kept on coming, so you had the National Environmental Protection Act signed into law, and then in a few months after that, you had the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency, which will possibly not last much longer, and may, in fact, be killed off between me recording this on the third of March, and you reading it on the 10th of April.

You also had the Council on Environmental Quality, releasing a report in August 1970 that has an entire chapter about the atmospheric implications of carbon dioxide build up, written by Gordon MacDonald.

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 10, 2006 – “Business warms to change” (Westpac, Immelt) – All Our Yesterdays

April 10th, 2010 – activists hold “party at the pumps”

April 10, 2013 – US companies pretend they care, make “Climate Declaration”

Categories
United States of America

March 23, 1969 – US TV network CBS asks “What are we doing to our World?” 

Fifty six years ago, on this day, March 23rd, 1969,

15 March 1969 CBS documentary Edmond Levy – What are we doing to our world? pt. 1. Telecast: Mar. 16, 1969. © 15Mar69; 

MP20651. What are we doing to our world? pt. 2. Telecast: Mar. 23, 1969. © 22Mar69; MP20652.

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 324ppm. As of 2025 it is 427ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was

the second part of a “what are we doing to the earth?” CBS show. The context was that throughout the 1960s concern about growing air pollution, water pollution, litter, ugliness, deforestation,  and general angst about the consequences of modernity had been building. One obvious marker of this was Rachel Carson’s 1962 Silent Spring. 

Anyway, things really kicked off in ‘69 because of the Santa Barbara oil spill and Nixon wanting to get ahead of the environment issue. But of course, the documentary was two part 

Oh, sidebar, that 15th of July report, that’s probably the memo from Kennet, explicitly mentions Barry Commoner. 

What I think we can learn from this is that there has been hand wringing and pearl-clutching and worry about environmental issues long before Earth Day in April 1970. 

What happened next

Six months later, Senator Gaylor Nelson decided that there should be an Earth Day, and he deliberately chose Vladimir Lenin’s birthday as a secret signal to his fellow crypto-Marxists… I’m just kidding. And his intern, Dennis Hayes, did a good job of coordinating. And then on April 22 1970 everyone was out proclaiming their Love of Mother Nature. 

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 23, 1989 – cold fusion!!

March 23, 1993 – UK “The Prospects for Coal” White Paper published.

 March 23, 2011 – Ditch the Witch rally in Canberra

Categories
Australia

February 6, 1969 – Senate Select Committee warned about CO2 build up by Professor Harry Bloom

The text below is from Royce Kurmelovs’ book Slick. You can read more about Bloom (and also the South Australian politician Richard Gun, who was the first parliamentarian to raise the question of C02 build-up, in early 1970), here.

Fifty six years ago, on this day, February 6th, 1969, Australian senators investigating air quality were warned about the carbon dioxide build-up problem by a Tasmanian chemistry professor, Harry Bloom..

But it was 6 February 1969, at a hearing in Hobart, when they heard from University of Tasmania professor Harry Bloom.

Prof Bloom was a man cursed with unique foresight. He would later carry out the first tests showing the Derwent River was contaminated by heavy metals but would largely be ignored until independent testing confirmed his assessment. It was an experience he would unfortunately be familiar with when he called attention to the catastrophic risk posed by climate change.

“Carbon dioxide build-up in the world has been calculated to be such as to be able to produce serious changes, not only in climatic conditions but also in health conditions all over the world in not too many years, say 50 to 100 years. I think the whole situation is one which needs very desperate and immediate action. I think we have to know what is at present in the atmosphere, and one ought to do something about it.”

Kurmelovs, R. (2024) Slick

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 323ppm. As of 2025 it is 426ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that the Senate Committee on Air Pollution had been agreed against the backdrop of growing concern about air quality in cities and awareness of issues both local and global.

What we can learn is that intelligent people and academics – the two are not always the same – were paying attention to the scientific literature and becoming informed about the carbon dioxide build up problem in the late 1960s, which is earlier than many think.

What happened next. In September ‘69 the air pollution report was released. It included significant mention of carbon dioxide as a problem. There was no serious legislative action – well that’s possibly a little unfair – there was on some things. And over the coming year or two departments of environment were set up, ministers appointed – you know, the usual stuff…

More about Bloom –

Source – https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/261606396

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: 

February 6, 1995 – Australian business versus a carbon tax

February 6, 2001: ExxonMobil Lobbyist Calls on White House to Remove Certain Government Climate Scientists

Categories
United States of America

December 20, 1969 – AGU on climate change…

Fifty five years ago, on this day, December 20th, 1969,

By contrast, the first reference to “global warming” doesn’t appear in Google’s archives until the end of the next decade. This Dec. 20, 1969 story by United Press International headlined “Scientists Caution on Changes In Climate as Result of Pollution” is the first in Google News’s archives to unambiguously use the phrase “global warming” to describe the phenomena. https://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/Bright-Green/2009/0908/why-are-they-calling-it-climate-change-now

On December 21, 1969, the New York Times ran a UPI wire story, “Scientists Caution on Changes In Climate as Result of Pollution,” which reported that scientists discussed the possible threat of manmade global warming at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union, with calls for greater monitoring of the climate:

J.O. Fletcher, a physical scientist for the Rand Corporation in Santa Monica, Calif., said that “man had only a few decades to solve the problem of global warming caused by pollution.” Global warming could cause further melting of the polar ice caps and affect the earth’s climate.

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 324ppm. As of 2024 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that the American Association for the Advancement of Science had held a seminar in 1968. And the American Meteorological Society held one in October 1969. The RAND Corporation had done a piece on fossil fuels, and that was being reported at this meeting of the American Geophysical Union, which readers will remember, is the same place that Canadian physicist Gilbert Plass made his bombshell announcement in 1953. It was one of the first times (and probably the first) that “global warming” was referred to in the press. 

What we learn is that there is a finite number of venues for influential commentary on the science of all this. The AGU was one AAAS was another. 

What happened next? As the 60s turned into the 70s it became less surprising to find carbon dioxide build-up mentioned as a potential environmental problem. Already in the same neck of the woods in San Francisco 9 months earlier there had been “teach-ins” about the issues – about ecology, People’s Park and all the rest of it. Fundamentally, we knew. 

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: 

December 20, 1983 – Documentary on “the Climate Crisis” shown

December 20, 2007 – UK opposition leader David Cameron gives clean coal speech in Beijing…

Categories
United Kingdom

December 11, 1969 – Harold Wilson says “let’s have a Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution”

Fifty five years ago, on this day, December 11th, 1969,

On 11 December 1969, the British Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, announced in the House of Commons that the Queen had agreed to the appointment of a new, standing Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution….. In his statement, Wilson also announced the formation of a new Central Scientific Unit on Pollution, intended to coordinate action within government;3 the role of the Unit was seen as distinct from that of the Royal Commission, with the latter providing ‘that outside focus of inquiry and information, and that outside stimulus to government’ for which a need was urgently felt.(Owens, 2012: 2)

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 324ppm. As of 2024 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was for the previous couple of years – especially since the Torrey Canyon in March of ‘67 – the issue of pollution of air, water, etc. was becoming more and more politically salient. In 1968, one of Wilson’s Secretaries of State had proposed a new department, In ‘69 Wilson had given a speech at the Labour Party conference. So no-one was surprised that he stood there in the House of Commons, and said that he was setting up a standing Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution. 

In the US the National Environmental Protection Act, pushed by Scoop Jackson, Democrat from Washington State, had been passed so not doing anything in the UK would have been standing still. 

What we learn is that by the late 60s, the issue of the environment had pushed its way to the near the top of the political agenda. 

What happened next. Wilson gave a speech proclaiming that he wanted a new special relationship based on care for the environment and then Wilson got it in the neck in Parliament and from the Conservative Christopher Chataway. Wilson also produced the first ever Environment White Paper was released the following May and it had a glancing mention of carbon dioxide buildup. The first RCEP report chaired by Eric Ashby had a slightly longer but still fundamentally glancing, mention of carbon dioxide buildup. That was published in 1971. 

The RCEP kept producing useful work. In the year 2000, its report Energy: The Changing Climate was crucial in changing the mood music among the British political elite, calling for a 60% reduction by 2050. And then, of course David Cameron, that vandal, abolished the RCEP as part of the bonfire of the quangos. All that expertise, all that credibility, because he didn’t want independent watchdogs, doing the proper joined-up thinking. Anyway, here we are. 

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: 

December 11, 1895 – Arrhenius reads his “Influence of Carbonic Acid in the Air” paper to Swedish Academy of Science…

December 11, 1975 – German scientist gives stark climate warning in Melbourne

December 11, 1979 – conference on “Environmental Effects of utilising more coal” in London

Categories
State Violence

December 4, 1969 – Black Panther Fred Hampton assassinated by FBI, Chicago cops

Fifty five years ago, on this day, December 4th, 1969, Fred Hampton and Mark Clark were murdered.

In December 1969, Hampton was drugged,[7][8] then shot and killed in his bed during a predawn raid at his Chicago apartment by a tactical unit of the Cook County State’s Attorney‘s Office, who received aid from the Chicago Police Department and the FBI leading up to the attack. Law enforcement sprayed more than 100 gunshots throughout the apartment; the occupants fired once.

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 324ppm. As of 2024 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that some Black Panthers were running around waving guns, and that made them ultimately unimportant. Fred Hampton was smarter than that, and knew that all the imagery and rhetoric wouldn’t help build community networks. And he was really the FBI’s worst nightmare. A smart, dedicated black man who was capable of building links with other groups across racial lines. So of course, they had to whack him. And that’s what they did. 

What we learn is that the most dangerous radicals are the ones who you can’t easily dismiss. 

What happened next? The FBI had to patyo out a load of cash, but would not admit that they whacked Hampton, and others. COINTELPRO at its finest, eh?

In 1982, the City of Chicago, Cook County, and the federal government agreed to a settlement in which each would pay $616,333 (equivalent to $1.95 million per payee in 2023) to a group of nine plaintiffs, including the mothers of Hampton and Clark.[81] The $1.85 million settlement (equivalent to $5.84 million in 2023) was believed to be the largest ever in a civil rights case.[81] G. Flint Taylor, one of the attorneys representing the plaintiffs, said, “The settlement is an admission of the conspiracy that existed between the FBI and Hanrahan’s men to murder Fred Hampton.”[82] Assistant United States Attorney Robert Gruenberg said the settlement was intended to avoid another costly trial and was not an admission of guilt or responsibility by any of the defendants.[82]

Wikipedia

Fun fact: Hampton’s assassination was the final impetus for the Weather Underground to want to bomb shit. But instead, they blew themselves up in March of 1970, next door to Dustin Hoffman. 

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: 

December 4, 1989 – first anti-climate action economic “modelling” released in Australia

December 4, 1989 – Greenhouse tax urged…

Categories
United States of America

November 21, 1969 – the first permanent ARPANET link

Fifty-five years ago, on this day, November 21st, 1969,

The first permanent ARPANET link is established between UCLA and SRI.

And computer shall talk unto computer… And all will be fine…

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 324ppm. As of 2024 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that computers had been getting smarter and smaller. And there was the bright idea of getting them to talk to each other via phone lines. This is all part of the Advanced Research Programme Agency? There’s an entirely fictitious scene near the beginning of Sneakers, the 1991 Robert Redford film of some hacking on these lines. 

What we learned is that the internet is 55 years old though of course, it wasn’t until HTML came along that things started to get really interesting. 

Fwiw, I think that Smartphones have really screwed the pooch, because we don’t have the capacity to really understand how to use it. We’re trying to sip from a fire hydrant. 

What happened next. I for one welcome our new digital overlords.

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: 

November 21, 1994 – Skeptic invited to engage with IPCC (Spoiler, he doesn’t)

November 21, 2013 – “Cut the Green Crap” said UK Prime Minister

Categories
Australia

Richard Gun, South Australian politician, makes first #climate warning, March 1970

My friend Royce Kurmelovs (you should buy his book Slick: Australia’s toxic relationship with Big Oil, which has been lauded by critics and is short-listed for a Big Award) has a typically stonkingly good article on the Guardian Australia website.

The Australians who sounded the climate alarm 55 years ago: ‘I’m surprised others didn’t take it as seriously’

It’s based on two things. First, an interview he did recently with Richard Gun, who was the first Australian politician to say – in Federal Parliament at least — that carbon dioxide build-up was a very serious problem. Gun said this in his maiden speech, in March 1970. Full disclosure, as stated in the Guardian article, it was me who pointed Royce to this fact).

Second, it takes details from Royce’s book Slick (have you bought it yet? Have you?) about a chemistry professor called Harry Bloom who, a year before Gun’s speech, had told Australian senators pretty much the same thing. The article adds further context to the portion in Slick (which you should buy).

What do we learn?

a) People knew enough to be worried (and in some cases quite emphatically so) a very very long time ago.

b) (Therefore) the problem is only in part about ‘information deficit’.

c) Royce is a journo to watch, and to learn from.