Tag: 1969

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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.

Categories
Science United States of America

October 22, 1969 – American Meteorological Society symposium on the Future of the Atmosphere, Madison, Wisconsin

Fifty years ago, on this day, October 22nd, 1969,

AMS Symposium on the Future of the Atmosphere, Madison, Wis., 22 October 1969.

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 324ppm. As of 2024 it is 422ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that President Lyndon Johnson had made his special address to Congress in early 1965. It had included a short section (from Roger Revelle) about CO2 buildup. And were things going to get hotter or colder and no one knew for sure. So it’s logical that the American Meteorological Society would want to hold a seminar on the future of climate. One of the people present was Canadian scientist Kenneth Hare, who had been at a Guy Callendar’s talk in 1938 at the Royal Meteorological Society. And in his talk at this seminar, Hare talked about CO2 as one potential issue. 

What I think we can learn from this is that by the late 1960s, people in the know were beginning to take note…

What happened next The issue was ‘there’ in the lead up to Stockholm, but there was not the hard evidence yet. By the late 1970s, it was obvious to anyone with intellectual integrity that there was a serious problem ahead (but ‘ahead’ might mean another thirty years).

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

Hare, F.K. 1971. Future climates and future environments
F. Kenneth Hare Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, Vol. 52, No. 6 (June 1971), pp. 451-456 (6 pages)

Also on this day: 

October 22, 1969 – Edmund Muskie mentions CO2 build up 

October 22, 1997 – US and Australian enemies of #climate action plot and gloat

Categories
Cultural responses

September 26, 1969 – Death on All Fronts, says Allen Ginsberg

On this day, September 26, 1969…the American poet Allen Ginsberg Death on all fronts

Death on all fronts (English)

“The Planet is Finished”

A new moon looks down on our sick sweet planet

Orion’s chased the Immovable Bear halfway across the sky

from winter to winter. I wake, earlier in bed,

  fly corpses

cover gas lit sheets, my head aches,

  left temple

brain fibre throbbing for Death I created

  on all Fronts.

Poisoned rats in the Chickenhouse and myriad lice

Sprayed with white arsenics filtering to the brook,

  City

       Cockroaches

stomped on Country kitchen floors.

  No babies for me.

Cut earth boy & girl hordes

  by half & breathe free

say Revolutionary expert Computers:

Half the blue globe’s germ population’s

  more than enough

keep the cloudy lung from stinking pneumonia.

I called in the Exterminator Who soaked the Wall

  floor with bed-bug death-oil.

Who’ll soak my brain with death-oil?

I wake before dawn dreading my wooden

  possessions,

my gnostic books, my loud mouth, old loves silent,

  charms

turned to image money, my body sexless fat,

  Father dying,

Earth Cities poisoned at war,

  my art hopeless —

Mind fragmented–and still abstract–Pain in

left temple living death —

Sept. 26, 1969

https://www.babelmatrix.org/works/en/Ginsberg,_Allen-1926/Death_on_all_fronts

Also on this day: 

September 26, 1989 – Australian Union body tries to add green to red…

September 26, 1998 – Howard decision only to ratify Kyoto if US does leaks.

Categories
Australia Scientists

September 19 1969 – ABC Radio warns listeners about carbon dioxide

Fifty five years ago, on this day, September 19th, 1969, ABC Radio has the following programme, starring Professor Frank Fenner… Scroll down to the bold bit…

title:A MAN & HIS SCIENCE, 3

Subject Person: MACFARLANE BURNET, CHAIRMAN THE COMMONWEALTH FOUNDATION 1966-69, PRESIDENT AUSTRALIAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCE 1965-69

Description:

TALK BY PROFESSOR FRANK FENNER ON SIR MACFARLANE BURNET – HIS CONCERNS.

Descriptive Log:

00:00:00, Log, JOHN CHALLIS: FENNER WORKED FOR SOME YEARS WITH BURNET AND CURRENTLY BOTH ARE DEEPLY CONCERNED WITH ECOLOGY. PARTICULARLY THE WAY CHANGES IN THE ENVIRONMENT AFFECT LIVING SPECIES. DRAWS URGENT ATTENTION TO POSSIBILITY OF MODERN TECHNOLOGY COMPLETELY DESTROYING MAN’S NATURAL ENVIRONMENT.

PROFESSOR FRANK FENNER: WITH DEVELOPMENT OF AGRICULTURE 10,000 YEARS AGO MAN INITIATED PROGRESSIVE AND INESCAPABLE CHANGES IN ECOSYSTEMS. IMPACT BECAME DRAMATIC WHEN MAN TECHNICISED. NUMBERS AND DEMANDS INCREASED. ENERGY USAGE, PRODUCTS OF CHEMICAL TECHNOLOGY. APART FROM POSSIBLE EFFECTS ON HUMAN HEALTH, CHEMICAL PRODUCTS HAD REPERCUSSIONS BEYOND THE ECOSYSTEM TO WHICH THEY WERE APPLIED.

EXPERIENCE WITH IONISING RADIATION AND CIGARETTE SMOKING MADE IT CLEAR THAT MANY EFFECTS OF ENVIRONMENTAL POLLUTION VERY SLOW IN DEVELOPING, SO DIFFICULT TO ESTABLISH LINKS BETWEEN CAUSE AND EFFECT.

INCREASING COMBUSTION OF FOSSIL FUELS MEANS ADDING MORE CARBON DIOXIDE TO THE ATMOSPHERE FASTER THAN OCEANS CAN ASSIMILATE IT. POSSIBILITY OF MELTING POLAR ICECAP OR CREATING ICE AGE.

WAYS AUSTRALIA POLLUTING ENVIRONMENT. VULNERABLE TO EFFECTS OF LARGE NUMBER OF PEOPLE BECAUSE THE DRIEST CONTINENT, NATURAL RESOURCES LIMITED, AND CLIMATE LESS DEPENDABLE THAN AMERICA’S, BUT STILL SUFFICIENTLY EMPTY TO PLAN IF PERSONAL GREED AND SOCIAL APATHY DON’T CONTINUE TO DOMINATE OUR LAWMAKERS. CRITICAL REAPPRAISAL OF ‘GROWTH’ MYTH NEEDED. MINERAL RESOURCES OF AUSTRALIA.

SCIENCE ALONE CAN’T SOLVE PROBLEMS IT HAS LARGELY CREATED. UNLESS THE RIGHT STEPS ARE TAKEN QUICKLY MAN ON EARTH HAS TO FACE A FUTURE OF INCREASING MISERY.

Depicts Person:

FRANK FENNER, PROFESSOR, DIRECTOR JOHN CURTIN SCHOOL OF MEDICAL RESEARCH, ANU 1967-1973

JOHN CHALLIS, ABC EXECUTIVE PRODUCER SCIENCE UNIT

Miscellaneous:

RECORDED AT THE MACFARLANE BURNET BIRTHDAY SYMPOSIUM.

BROADCAST 19.10.1969 AT 10.45am ON 2nd NETWORK

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 324ppm. As of 2024 it is 422ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that MacFarlane Burnett had already been talking about this to an Australian Conservation Foundation seminar in Melbourne. (This is back when ACF was still very much an establishment outfit.) And so we have ABC radio talking about CO2 buildup as well. This is a good five years before the Science Show’s first episode where Richie Calderr talked about it. This is a year after the BBC Radio 4 people whatever it was called, in 1968 were talking about it as per Ritchie Calder and his the UNESCO sponsored series “Science Peace and Survival”.

What we learn is that by the late 60s (and certainly by ‘68). people knew that this was a possible long term threat. You didn’t have to be a genius. You didn’t even have to have paid a lot of attention to it. The Senate Air Pollution committee, Harry Bloom nine months earlier had told them where things were going.

What happened next? There was the two to three year period of everyone freaking out about all forms of pollution (including climate change caused by carbon dioxide build-up) and then gone away because people can only bear so much reality. And also, the oil shock.

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: 

September 19, 1997 – John Howard condemns the South Pacific to hell. Again.

September 19, 1998 – Public Health Association calls for “life-saving green taxes”

Categories
Australia

September 16, 1969 – Aussies warned about carbon dioxide build-up by top scientist

Fifty five years ago, on this day, September 16th, 1969,

Call to keep world at 2,000m

MELBOURNE, Monday. — The world population should be adjusted and maintained at perhaps 2,000 million, distinguished scientist Sir Macfarlane Burnet said today.

It was one of five minimum requirements that he set down for a “stable human eco-system” or an harmonious world.

Sir Macfarlane was delivering a paper at the Felton Bequests Symposium at the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons in Melbourne.

Sir Macfarlane said the other requirements included a stabilisation of the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to avoid the possibility of disastrous climatic change.

The theme of the symposium was the influence of scientific advances on the future of mankind. It was arranged by the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in honour of Sir Macfarlanc’s 70th birthday.

Anon, 1969. Call to keep world at 2000m. Canberra Times, 16 September, p.3.

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 324ppm. As of 2024 it is 420ishppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that Burnet and other Australian scientists were obviously extremely well plugged into the international networks especially around UNESCO which was acting as a key scientific source of information. Burnett was giving a talk to the great and the good because he was one of the great and the good. 

What we learn is that the great and the good heard it from the horse’s mouth. They heard it from a responsible extremely high status source. And were still able to dismiss it as “nothing to worry about.” Well, that’s not entirely fair. Some of them did freak out, like the Commonwealth Bank guy in Adelaide in 1970. 

What happened next. The scientific warnings got stronger. The CO2 emissions kept going up. The atmospheric concentrations went up. The temperatures went up.

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: 

September 16, 1969 – Nobel-prize winning Australian scientist warns about carbon dioxide build-up. Yes, 1969

September 16, 2015 – Turns out big companies are ‘climate hypocrites’?

Categories
Australia

September 4, 1969 – Ivory Tower types tell the truth at ANU

Fifty five years ago, on this day, September 4th, 1969, the Canberra Times is in philosophical mood/mode…

Wood, J. 1969. Man and the new biology: Finding the truth. Canberra Times, 4 September, p.23.

https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/107890419

By JONATHAN WOOD

This year’s University Lectures at the Australian National University, through the contributions of four Australian biological scientists, have formed the genesis of a philosophy and religion appropriate to modern man….

NB Aftermath of AAS in Adelaide in August…. 

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 324ppm. As of 2024 it is 420ishppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that the UNESCO Man and the Biosphere conference had been held in Paris the year before. And everyone who was thinking about life on Earth and its prospects was scratching their head about impacts and what might be done. And here we have some a new Australian National University biologists scratching their heads 

What we learn is that 1969-1970 is the year that eco concern really starts to kick into high gear. 1968 is the year of violence and Vietnam. ‘69 is half fragile, biosphere and all the rest of it thanks to new science and new field configuring events and so forth. 

What happened next? The Australian scientists kept banging on about this stuff publishing books. MacFarlane Burnet, the Australian Association for the Advancement of Science got a serious makeover from a dreary magazine to Search. And for a while it looks like we might do something meaningful. But we didn’t. Ditto the same feeling in the late 80s, early 90s. 

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: 

September 4, 1990 – Industry whines about environment minister’s speech

September 4, 2000 – industry says sky will fall if there’s a carbon tax

September 4, 2006 – Royal Society to Exxon: “Knock it off with the funding to #climate deniers”

Categories
United States of America

July 7, 1969 – Newsweek writes about the “good earth,” mentions carbon dioxide build-up

Fifty five years ago, on this day, July 7th, 1969, Newsweek was pointing to the environmental problems humans had created. Including CO2 build-up.

The article, the Good Earth, by John G. Mitchell, is based in part on a UNESCO conference and statement in May of the same year.

“Transparent to sunlight but opaque to the earth’s radiation, a blanket of moisture and carbon dioxide could conceivably raise the surface temperatures of the earth enough to melt the polar icepacks and raise sea levels 300 feet. Even 200 feet would inundate New York, Boston and most of Florida.”

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 324ppm. As of 2024 it is 426ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that the environment movement, and Malthusian moment had begun. You can say January 28 1969, when the Santa Barbara oil spill happened. Then a couple of months later People’s Park had kicked off in Berkeley. And so newspapers could and magazines could fill up on hand wringing pearl clutching surveys like this one. And they could do if they so chose, illustrate it all with a picture of Earthrise. And throw in some guff about “our fragile planet” “our imperilled Earth”, whatever, this stuff writes itself. 

What we learn is that by 1969, everyone who was reading this stuff was aware that CO2 was probably an issue whether they agreed with it or not. 

What happened next? Newsweek and Time kept running the stuff. Senators started calling for it to be written into the record. In September of ‘69. Senator Gaylord Nelson announced Earth day. I think this was the brainchild of Dennis Hayes. Anyway, Hayes ran it. And everyone held hands and sang Kumbaya and achieved not very much. But what was to be achieved? 

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: 

July 7, 1970 – an Australian banker goes “Full Extinction Rebellion”, 50 years early…

July 7, 1988 – foolish “Jumping the greenhouse gun” editorial in Nature.

July 7, 2008 – Liberals start back-tracking on climate promises.