Fifty five years ago, on this day, February 20th, 1970, a “Committee on the Environment” is set up by South Australian Premier Steele Hall
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 325ppm. As of 2025 it is 427ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that from the middle of 1969 people in Western countries (at a minimum Australia, the UK and the US – probably the same in a lot of other places, idk) were beginning to be up in arms about air pollution, water pollution, species loss, etc, etc, j
And there were calls for immediate action. There had been the Senate, the Federal Senate Committees on air pollution and water pollution was coming too. And so all across the states, you would see these sorts of well, let’s set up a committee with stakeholders, with scientists, with business, with leading lights in civil society and the wise men will come up after a year or two with a series of recommendations. That’s what this was.
What I think we can learn from this is that there was a real push in 1969-1971, to respond institutionally, culturally, to what was clearly a major problem. This was part of that.
What happened next The Environment Committee eventually released a report in May 1972 just before the Stockholm conference. It included mention of carbon dioxide, by the way, as a potential problem but kicked it into the “more research needed” basket (not unreasonably, given the state of knowledge at the time).
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.
On this day, February 11th, in 1970, Prince Charles attended a film premiere in London, as part of the opening of the European Conservation Year.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 325ppm. As of 2025 it is 426ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that from early 1969 everyone had been banging on about their ‘green’ (not the word back then – ‘ecological’ was more in vogue) credentials. Here are Shell Mex and BP in an early effort at would later become called “greenwashing”
What we learn is that talk is cheap
What happened next – by 1973 Ecology was yesterday’s fad. It has come back several times, with new names and new soothing blandishments about technology or harmony or whatever. But we’re all toast.
Fifty five years ago, on this day, February 9th, 1970, HRH Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands nailed it.
“The pollution of the biosphere is such a danger–only one of the threats to human survival, but currently probably the greatest and most immediate. The effects of carbon dioxide build-up are only now beginning to be recognized and assessed, and we shall have to take a long hard look at the whole question of the burning of fossil fuels. In my view we should be paying much more attention than we do to the collection and storage of solar energy, so that, in terms of power, we can live on income rather than on capital.
H.R.H. (1970). The European conservational scene. Biological Conservation, 2(4), 242–245. doi:10.1016/0006-3207(70)90002-9
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 325ppm. As of 2025 it is 426ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that Europeans had been switched on to climate change. And this is really the apotheosis of it, when His Royal Highness, the king Prince Consort of the Netherlands, explicitly mentions carbon dioxide build up at the beginning of the European Conservation Year, in the midst of a “great environmental awakening”
That’s really happened recently , you can argue Torrey Canyon in 1967 and the Santa Barbara oil spill in 1969 and lots of other events since then (rivers catching fire etc).
What happened next The eco moment lasted for another two and a half years, and then was kind of finished off by a big public event, the Stockholm conference, that it’s like kind of an orgasm, and after all that effort and that moment of pleasure, people feel spent.
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 five years ago, on this day, January 1st, 1970, President Richard Nixon released a statement about the National Environmental Policy Act.
IT IS particularly fitting that my first official act in this new decade is to approve the National Environmental Policy Act.
The past year has seen the creation of a President’s Cabinet committee on environmental quality,1 and we have devoted many hours to the pressing problems of pollution control, airport location, wilderness preservation, highway construction, and population trends.
1The Environmental Quality Council, established May 29, 1969, by Executive Order 11472 and renamed the Cabinet Committee on the Environment on March 5, 1970, by Executive Order 11514.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 324ppm. As of 2025 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that through the Sixties there had been growing alarm at “localised” forms of pollution (air, water etc). The climate issue was there in the background, slowly growing, as demonstrated by many posts on this site. By 1968 the global problems – of population growth, resource use and air pollution – were becoming common knowledge. There had been repeated efforts to get legislation, at a national level. Finally in 1969 these efforts bore fruit. Meanwhile, Nixon was trying to use environmental problems to get the Europeans talking about, well, anything except Vietnam.
What I think we can learn from this
Politicians will say whatever is convenient, and people who want to believe will believe.
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, 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.
