Fifty-four years ago, on this day, December 3rd, 1970, Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme tries to get some future-thinking going,
When, on 3 December 1970, he expressed the government’s intention to appoint a working group for futures studies, Olof Palme reiterated this outlook on futures studies, seeing them as a tool for national policy choices and based on Swedish values of neutrality, independence, and solidarity. If Sweden did not engage in the study of the future, Palme said, it would be dependent on future visions foreign to Swedish values. The study of the future was to seek a Swedish path between two seemingly existing alternatives of the future. Heidenblad 2021
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 325ppm. As of 2024 it is 424ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that all sorts of futurology, horizon-scanning stuff was getting done. And Olof Palme had just been talking about the threat of climate change. And his point about if you’re not doing it yourself, you’re gonna have to accept someone else’s vision is a really solid one.
What we learn. Palme was a cut above.
What happened next. More futurology work got done. You can read about it here. All of Palmer kept doing stuff until 1986.
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.
In what follows, I explain what’s a COP – hopefully telling you some things you don’t already know, offer a history of South Australian awareness of climate change, and then make some brief idle speculations on how Adelaide’s bid might fair – could it do a Bradbury?
Oh no, it’s the COPs!
COPs are the “Conferences of the Parties.” While there are plenty of parties at COPs, in this case the “parties” refers to the countries (almost the whole world) which have signed up to the UNFCCC;, which was one of the international treaties signed at the pivotal “Earth Summit” in 1992, held in Rio de Janeiro.
The first COP was in Berlin in March-April 1995 (a young Angela Merkel was a key player). There have been 28 since, and COP29 is starting today, in Azerbaijan
The basic problem is that the original treaty never specified targets and timetables for emissions reductions by rich countries. The French and most European countries were keen, but Uncle Sam said “nope. Do that and we won’t come.”. That has meant a series of efforts to get emissions cuts agreed – Kyoto 1997 (agreed, but USA and Australia pulled out), Copenhagen 2009 (ended in tears and little else) and Paris in 2015 (warm words, no teeth). In the meantime, the burning of oil, coal and gas has soared. This means that the amount of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has gone way up (and is increasing faster and faster, as the things that take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere give up the ghost – or as the scientists call it – ‘sink failure’).
Of course, by the time Adelaide finds out if its bid is successful, the whole COP circus might be grinding to a halt, if Donald Trump repeats what he did last time round, and withdraws from negotiations.
Why Adelaide?
Anthony Albanese announced that Australia would bid to co-host COP31 with South Pacific Island nations in November 2022 (giving up on the idea of hosting it in 2024)]. It isn’t automatically capital cities that host the COP. For example when the UK hosted in 2021 Glasgow got the gig in any case. Let’s start with the obvious reason why Adelaide might not succeed; it’s not on the Pacific Coast. However, unlike Sydney and Brisbane which are, Adelaide is not the capital of a state with an enormous coal export industry that has enraged the South Pacific Island states – “awks” as the kids used to say.
A history lesson
South Australians have always known that the weather matters, and is unpredictable. Go north of the Goyder line and you’ll see the abandoned buildings of those who thought they could buck the system. Over the last 55 years though, awareness has grown of man-made problems.
In March 1970 a newly-elected Labor politician, Richard Gun, referred to carbon dioxide build up in his maiden speech (see this article on the Guardian website by Royce Kurmelovs).
In July 1970 as alarm at “ecology” (as it was then called) reached an early peak, a group of business leaders at an Adelaide luncheon were told the following
“And so the sprawling city, the maimed country, and even the air we breathe and the sea that gives us life, combine into what can only be described as a coming nightmare unless we as a people are prepared to become violently Australia-conscious and to replan, decentralise, preserve, prohibit and police. We won’t correct the situation unless first as individuals and secondly as a nation we are prepared to think, to take care and to spend money.”
But this was not a protestor who’d stormed the stage. It was in fact Bede Callaghan, managing director of the Commonwealth Banking Corporation
Already in February of that year the Liberal government of Steele Hall created a committee (of course!) on the environment. It held hearings and in May 1972 produced the “Jordan report,” which included a mention of C02, though largely a dismissive one.
And yes, it included a section – albeit understandably equivocal – on carbon dioxide.
A South Australian senator, Don Jessop mentions it in Federal parliament, in November 1973
“It is quite apparent to world scientists that the silent pollutant, carbon dioxide, is increasing in the atmosphere and will cause us great concern in the future.
And while the warnings and alarms continued through the 1970s and 1980s, with visiting professors (including pro-nuclear ones), ABC documentaries, CSIRO documentaries, and mentions of the problem by groups such as Environmentalists for Full Employment.
It is fair to say that policymaker awareness only took off in the second half of the 1980s.
In 1985 atmospheric scientists met in Villach, a city in Austria. They realised they had underestimated the impact of gases other than carbon dioxide, and that the heating they had expected to arrive in several decades was likely to come much faster. They left Villach determined to warn policymakers. The Australian result of this was that CSIRO started briefing politicians, including the Australian Environment Council. After its June 1986 meeting, South Australia’s environment minister, Don Hopgood, went public with a stark warning about sea-level rise,
The following years saw a flurry of scientific and public/political conferences, promises, exhortations and committees, all about “the Greenhouse Effect.” Internationally this culminated with the climate treaty in Rio in June 1992. South Australia had set up committees and programmes, but all this was basically swept away with the disaster of the failure of the State Bank of South Australia, Premier John Bannon’s resignation and the enormous defeat Labor experienced. The incoming Liberals paid lipservice at most, finding it easier not to kill anything off officially but let it instead die by neglect.
Climate change played little part in the debates over electricity generation that took up the second half of the 1990s. However, a determined group of policy wonks were beavering away, keen to promote renewables and action on climate. The return of Labor in 2002 was a turning point. The first (tiny by today’s standards) wind farm went live the following year. Over the years, Premier Mike Rann skilfully found wiggle-room as the Federal government was forced to continue to offer policy support. As Tristan Edis put it in a 2014 article
“The way it works is SA public servants assess the likely amount of renewable energy that will be installed in the state within the next few years as a result of the federal government’s Renewable Energy Target. Then, the South Australian government take this projection of what will be achieved under business as usual a few years from now, and duly claim it as an ambitious target that they are setting for themselves, but push out the year a bit so they claim they’ve reached it ahead of schedule.”
But Rann had been attending to the broader cultural issues as well. He invited US climate scientist Stephen Schneider to be South Australia thinker in residence in 2006. Schneider’s message – that the Millennium Drought was a harbinger of problems to come and we’d better get preparing now, resonated.
The next Labor Premier, Jay Weatherill, accelerated Rann’s trajectory. The 2016 blackout was perhaps pivotal. Two events stand out – First, Weatherill dishing it out to Federal Environment Minister Josh Frydenberg and the latter just having to take it.
Second- the big battery of Elon Musk, back when progressives could look past some of his, shall we say, foibles.
By the time Labor lost power, the energy transition had such momentum – and powerful people making money from it and popular support, that the state Liberals basically ignored their Federal counterparts.
Labor has returned to power, with even bolder targets. It seems now somewhat starry-eyed about hydrogen, and alarmingly willing to do whatever Santos wants, before being asked.
What will happen?
Who knows? I’ve learned not to make confident predictions about anything other than “higher concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere next year.”
We will all find out in a couple of weeks. Will Edis v2.0 work? It already has in once sense: Win or lose, Adelaide raises its profile and plays the ‘inward green investment’ vibes game. It’s a smart move from a political party that has shown alertness to the opportunities national and international policy games present niche actors.
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.
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’.
Fifty four/Sixteen years ago, on this day, October 3rd, 1970/2008,
In 1970, Nixon created the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), another major center of atmospheric monitoring, forecasting and general circulation modeling.
(Howe, 2014:51)
AND
DECC was formed on 3 October 2008 to focus specifically upon the twin challenges of climate change and energy supply. DECC brings together certain groups from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Energy Group for DBERR (including the team that is coordinating the CCS demonstration competition).
(Bowman and Addison, 2008: 522)
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 325ppm (1970) and 386ppm (2008). As of 2024 it is 4xxppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that in 1970 President Nixon signed off on the Environmental Protection Agency. It was created having been an idea that had been around for a while. And in 2008. In the UK, in a departmental combination reshuffle, the Department of Energy and Climate Change was created under Ed Miliband. In the gap, 38, long, long years of wasted time, where we made things significantly worse.
What we learn is that new agencies and departments of state come into existence. They produce glossy reports. They are a sandpit for middle-class people to play in. Sometimes useful stuff gets done, especially if there is enough external pressure that the people in charge are forced to adopt some of the good ideas that have been ignored/suppressed.. Probably marginally better that they exist than they don’t, I suppose. But if you really want to see meaningful action, it will require an alert vigorous civil society, and that is a different kettle of fish.
What happened next Well the Environmental Protection Agency is still going and sometimes it does useful stuff, it depends on who’s been appointed boss. So under Reagan they had the wrecking ball woman, whatever her name was – Anne Gorsuch and then under Bush two they declared that CO2 was not their business, it wasn’t a pollutant. Massachusetts took the EPA to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court said actually it IS your business, that was in 2007.
DECC did what it could but under the Coalition it was largely irrelevant. Well that’s a bit unfair: they put together some work on industrial decarbonisation for example. And it kept fighting. DECC was abolished in 2016 and became part of BEIS which also did some good work, ish.
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.
Fifty four years ago, on this day, September 1st, 1970, the “left” conspiracy theory about the environment…
Hay reviews (2002: 259) that in the late 1960s, Marxists reacted to environmentalism with skepticism and hostility; defines it as ―a manifestation of the narcissistic and excessive individualism‖ of counter culture and false revolutionary movement. Sandor Fuchs on his paper, Ecology Movement Exposed, 1970 argues that the US ruling class develops environmentalism ―to divert attention from class-based issues
(Fuchs’ paper was in the September 1970 issue of “Progressive Labour”) f. Sandor Fuchs, “Population, Pollution, and Natural Resources: Ecology Movement Exposed,” PROGRESSIVE LAB (September, 1970): 5 If someone has a copy, please send…
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 325ppm. As of 2024 it is 420ishppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that in April of that year, Earth Day had happened. And lots of middl- class people who’ve come out and held hands and sang Kumbaya, and a certain number of student radicals have been part of that. And then of course, there had been the killing of four students at Kent State by National Guard troops, which I think happened in the beginning of May, in response to the bombing and invasion of Cambodia.
What we learn is that there were two perspectives on Earth Day that kind of get lost in this general nostalgia. One the radical right, saying that it was a communist trick to subvert the American way of life. And they pointed to the fact that this was apparently Vladimir Lenin’s birthday, the 22nd of April. And the other was this promulgated by the Maoists, and so forth, that it was all being done by the nefarious Rockefeller Fund and so forth to “split the anti-war movement” (as if it needed any help…)
Also we learn that any event will have multiple interpretations. So for example, the mere existence of Greta Thunberg is seen as a diversionary tactic somehow.
What happened next? I think the Maoists were mostly gone within a couple of 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
Fifty four years ago, on this day, August 26th, 1970,
The BBC and the newspapers reported on the latest report of the Alkali Inspectorate, which pours scorn on… worries about carbon dioxide build-up.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 325ppm. As of 2024 it is 424ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The Context was that the Alkali Inspectorate was feeling under fire, and thought it would lash out at carbon dioxide buildup which had been noted in public since 1966 with the Barry Commoner Science and Survival book, which featured in the January 1967 BBC science programme Challenge.
And by 1969 Kenneth Mellanby was giving talks in Coventry about the problem. Later in the year the FT was saying that it was a venerable idea. You know, it was “out there” by the late 1960s – it was out there on the radio and on television, Frank Fraser Darling’s Reith lectures, etc.
What we learn is this was the first pushback by the British state. Epic ignorance on their part, still interesting and amusing.
What happened next? The Alkaline Inspector came under more attention for its cosy relationship with industry. F.W. Ireland didn’t last much longer in post, and the Alkali Inspectorate was eventually absorbed within the Environment Agency. And the emissions kept climbing, of course.
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.
Fifty four years ago, on this day, July 21st, 1970, a Tory MP talks climate…
The signs are very clear for all to see, and confirmation of these signs appears regularly in the newspapers. I will give only a few examples. It is said that jet aircraft landing and taking off in New York deposit 36 million tons of carbon dioxide into the air each year. This has a “greenhouse” effect because it allows the sun’s rays to come down but prevents them from escaping into the atmosphere. …
However, if this goes on, it is thought that by the end of the century the temperature of the earth could be raised by two degrees Centigrade, and this would begin to melt the ice caps. Water generated by this melting process could, they say, be sufficient in mass to flood many cities. But all is not lost. We are pumping so much grit into the air that the sun’s rays are not able to get through, and they are deflected back into the atmosphere. The ice-cap thus is catching up with us.
Carol Mather on 21 July in Parliament Conservative MP for Esher
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 325ppm. As of 2024 it is 426ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that this was the European Conservation Year. The Swedes had successfully convinced the UN to hold an environment conference in 1972. In the UK the Wilson government had released an Environment White Paper, the first ever, which had made very minor mention of the potential problem of CO2 buildup. And there was also a Department of Environment on its way. So also, crucially, the environment was a bipartisan issue at this point, and in fact, the sides were competing.
What we learn is that when the environment first burst onto the scene, as an issue, this is crucial before anyone suggested oxen get gored. regulations and banning would be required. There was bipartisanship – shallow bipartisanship but bipartisan nonetheless.
What happened next? In September 1970 The UK Department of Environment opened for business with Peter Walker as its Secretary of State. He did a pretty good job, all things considered though. That’s in the context of course, not really grappling with the core issues, but who was it that was, outside of the “lunatic fringe,” who were, of course, right…
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.
Fifty four years ago, on this day, July 8th, 1970, a crucial new US state organisation came into existence.
Environmental Protection Agency formed. President Nixon works with Congress to establish the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), a new Federal agency primarily responsible for United States environmental policy.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 325ppm. As of 2024 it is 426ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that Nixon at the beginning of 1970, had signed the Environmental Protection Act. Democrats had been pushing for this for years. That hadn’t happened under Lyndon Johnson. He was too busy fighting the Vietnam War and then trying to extricate himself and so, it happened on Nixon’s watch, and people around Nixon are happy for him to take the credit. But he doesn’t deserve any. Nixon had looked at environmental issues as a chance to distract attention from that war in Vietnam. See his early 1969 speech for the North Atlantic Council, and Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s memos and so forth, none of which had entirely convinced West Germany. And the British had probably thought to themselves, “are they trying to play Athens to their own Sparta?”
What we learn is that politicians are cynical bastards. I hope you were sitting down when you read that.
What happened next? The EPA is still with us, despite the efforts of Republicans to kill it off, especially in the early 80s, when they went too hard and in public and basically stepped on a rake. Slow defunding, and stripping of its powers is a more clever way of doing it. Leave the husk there. That doesn’t satisfy the real culture wars lunatics who need a bloody corpse.
EPA should be included as a page in the list of organisations, of course it should. Other Greatest Hits as it tried to say that under Bush Jr. had tried to save the carbon dioxide wasn’t a pollutant. And then it was 2003. And then in 2007, the Supreme Court had said you don’t get away with that. But I think it was Massachusetts under Mitt Romney, who had forced that case there.
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.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 325ppm. As of 2024 it is 426ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that Earth Day had happened. Everyone was writing articles about how booming we were. And the US Senator was giving a speech, probably reading into the Senate record, an article from a newspaper, or magazine. But crucially, this guy said that there should be a World Ecology Unit because the problems are global, it will need forms of global governance. Now this is the whole kind of One World Government black helicopters stuff that gets nut jobs in the States so riled. It came two years before the Stockholm Conference, which gave us an underpowered under cooked United Nations Environment Program. As late as 1988 people were talking about it. On the same day as Thatcher’s speech at the Royal Society, Eduard Shevardnadze was telling the United Nations General Assembly that there needed to be a global eco government sort of outfit.
What we learn is that we’ve known that this was a massive coordination problem across nations across generations, we’ve been unable to solve it.
What happened next, the idea came to nothing, of course.
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.
Fifty four years ago, on this day, April 18th, 1970, UK Prime Minister Harold Wilson was trying to get some kudos for wrapping himself in the issue of the day…,
In April 1970, Wilson gave a speech to the United Nations Association in York, in which he espoused the virtues of international cooperation on the environment:
We need a new charter of international rights – and obligations. This is how it might read. All States have a common interest in the beneficial management of the natural resources of the Earth. All States should cooperate in the prevention or control of physical changes in the environment which may jeopardise the quality of human life, and which may endanger the health or the survival of animals or plants.102
102 TNA: FCO 55/429, Prime Minister’s Address to Annual General Meeting of the United Nations Association in York, 18 April 1970
(Sims, 2016: 212)
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 325ppm. As of 2024 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that Harold Wilson had been talking about environmental issues since September of the previous year, at the Labour Party Conference, in a period of competitive consensus. In January he gave a speech up in New York about a new special relationship on pollution. The Conservatives were yapping at his heels. Wilson in his head was probably thinking about the next election. And the green issue was an important one for voters. This is long before the Ecology party, which later became the Green Party.
What we learn is that there was a period of alarm and competitive consensus in the late 60s early 70s. And compare and contrast that with what happened in the periods of 2006 to 2008. And the coupled lack of ambition in 2023-4. We’re so doomed.
What happened next? Well, a month later, the first ever Environment White Paper was released. It mentioned carbon dioxide buildup as a potential issue. Wilson then went on to lose the June 1970 election. He returned to office in 74 and stepped down in 76.
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.
