Tag: 1973

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United Kingdom

March 31, 1973 – Protest in Piccadilly Circus

Fifty one years ago, on this day, March 31st, 1973, there was a demo in London.  

We found out about it first when we went down on 31 March to London, where Commitment were blocking off Piccadilly Circus from cars. There were about 400 people there and a lot of police, who swooped in and arrested the obvious ringleaders”. The attempt to block the road was in fact not much of a success as most of the remaining protesters seemed unwilling to do anything. “I ended up as one of the organisers – it became that ridiculous!”

http://www.muthergrumble.co.uk/issue17/mg1708.htm

Horace Herring, H. 2003. Energy Utopianism p.104

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 329ppm. As of 2024 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that the Young Liberals had been banging the drum about environmental issues. There had already been a similar style protests in 1971. This one seems to have garnered even less press but will have influenced some people I guess? The war against the car or the war against motorists. What can you do? What a species we are! 

What we can learn is that antipathy towards cars being taken over by cities goes back a long way. “Reclaim the Streets” goes back a long way. And our failure to succeed goes back a long way. 

What happened next, Commitment could not be maintained. But people within it stayed committed to the broader cause of ecological sanity. Including Victor Anderson…

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 31, 1998 – another report about #climate and business in the UK

March 31, 1998 – two business-friendly climate events in UK and Australia

Categories
United Kingdom

December 17, 1973 – “Global warming will make nuclear war look like a fire cracker in your backyard.”

UPDATE – Ooops. I got this wrong. See here. (17 Dec 2023)

Fifty years ago today, on 17 December 1973 the physicist Mike Pentz (Open University, and Cambridge) gave a public talk warning of the trouble ahead…,

Compare with 14 and a half years later-

Anon, 1988. Scientists warn of devastation. Canberra Times, 2 July, p.6.

TORONTO, Friday (KRD).—Toronto scientists and policymakers from 46 nations say global damage from “greenhouse” warming and other man-made atmospheric changes may ultimately be second in magnitude only to the devastation of a nuclear war.

They also called on industrialised countries to tax fossil-fuel consumption to finance a fund to protect the atmosphere and drastically cut carbon-dioxide emissions.

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 329ppm. As of 2023 it is 420ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that the scientific consensus around carbon dioxide as a major problem was still in its early phases, but plenty of people could see real trouble ahead, on the basis of 19th century physics.

What we can learn

It was basic physics. You didn’t really need that big a crystal ball to figure it out.

What happened next

The British State faffed its way through the 1970s on this question. The first report, finally released in 1980 was a “maybe, yeah, nothing to see here” effort. Only in 1988 did the issue finally break through.

What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs..

Categories
United Kingdom

December 13, 1973 – Edward Heath announces Three Day Week

Fifty years ago, on this day, December 13, 1973, in the UK,

 Prime Minister Edward Heath announced a 3-day working week to ration electricity use. Parliament was recalled on January 9th 1974 to hear that a new Department of Energy was being set up to co-ordinate the government’s response. However, the crisis brought down the government the following month. The incoming Labour government, under Harold Wilson, settled the miners dispute, and the new Energy Secretary, Eric Varley, ended the 3-day week on March 7th 1974.

Mallaburn & Nick Eyre (2014)

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 329ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that those troublesome miners had the defenceless and innocent government by the throat. Meanwhile the Arab oil embargo meant that oil prices were going through the roof. In an absence of secure supply what do you do to reduce demand?

What I think we can learn from this 

is that the year 1973 was pretty eventful for energy. And energy efficiency is still not a thing. And we are radically unprepared for the future.

What happened next

Heath went to the electorate in February 1974 asking “who runs Britain?” And the answer came “not you chum, not you.”

What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs..

Categories
Australia

October 17, 1973 – the coup at the Australian Conservation Foundation

Fifty years ago, on this day, October 17, 1973, a “coup” happened at the Australian Conservation Foundation.  The ACF had been set up by “Great and Good” figures in the mid-1960s. By the early 1970s its membership had shot up (as part of the global wave of concern about pollution. Lots and lots of the newcomers had a different understanding of what the root causes of the problems were, and how to solve them.  Matters came to a head…

“How The ACF Was Taken Over: A report to ACF Members on the events of 17th October, 1973, by the Seven Councillors who resigned on that day” 

From Hutton and Connors, 1999.

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 329.4ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that the ACF had been set up in the mid 60s by the great and the good. Garfield Barwick etc, as your typical elite conservationist programme. I think there were moves for it to actually be the official offshoot of the then new World Wildlife Fund, but I could be wrong. And for a few years, it was able to put out newsletters and hold conferences. It was fantastically well connected with the Australian industrial and political elite. But then with the coming of the late 60s, many more people started to get interested in and concerned about conservation, ecology, etc. And the fact that the ACF had been founded by and was being still controlled by a bunch of extremely well-connected, what we would now call old white men. began to be a problem. Because people were moving beyond the idea that the problems were caused either by greedy, poor people or a lack of information. And so there was a two or three year power struggle within the ACF – people getting elected to the board with different perspectives from the founders, countermoves, et cetera.

What I think we can learn from this

You see this a hell of a lot when a group has been established and then there’s an influx of people with a different view. Now, on one side, the incumbents can say, “Well, why don’t you just go and found your own group?” and on the other, the challengers can say, “Hang on, I thought this was a democratic organisation? And anyway, we’re the ones who brought in all the extra money and members and ideas. And we shouldn’t have to walk away from that.” It’s an age old dilemma. In this case, it was solved by a putsch. And the old ACF guard had to quit. The document described their version of history, and may or may not be accurate. I don’t care – that’s beyond the point of this website, which to remind you, is here to help people understand the patterns. 

What happened next – The ACF became more “radical” if you want to call it that, it depends what your baseline is. And we also saw the rise of Friends of the Earth and Ecology Action, which is best I can tell was a very New South Wales and especially Sydney focused thing. 

By the mid 70s, because of the enormous economic dislocations, the environment movement in Australia had shrunk. This was a worldwide pattern. “Whatever happened to the revolution,” as the Skyhooks sang 

What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.

Categories
Chile

September 11, 1973 – CIA coup topples Chilean democracy

Fifty years ago, on this day, September 11, 1973, the planes started bombing the Parliament, the troops started shooting, and the elected leader of Chile, Salvador Allende, was killed.

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 329ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that Allende had been in the rifle sites for a while. “Make the economy scream”, Nixon had said. Meanwhile, various theorists of technology were trying to figure out how you could have the advantages of automation computers feedback loops without creating a dictatorship of the higher order. So how could technology be used to make smarter more democratic decisions? One of the people thinking in these terms was Stafford Beer who was trying to get a program around this going in in Chile. Would it have worked? Almost certainly not. But it would have been nice to learn from the failures and try again and again until there were ways it could succeed? Yes.

What I think we can learn from this is that in general socialist democracy scared the s*** out of Nixon, Kissinger ITT etc. The threat of a good example and all that… And it reminds me of that anecdote from Carl Rogers about the experimental factory where profits remain high but managers realise they would have to give up a lot of their power and they don’t want to.

What happened next is that Pinochet ruled until 1990. He made the mistake of holding a referendum, believing he was popular… He was then pursued legally and and of course the Blair government was never going to let him be extradited to Spain because they were doing what the Americans wanted. Pinochet would have blown the gaff and put the spotlight on Nixon who by this time was dead but also on Kissinger who was still very much alive. There would have been teachable moments about  the CIA and its behaviour. 

Stafford Beer, well he died in 2002. Cybersyn never took off.

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

See also https://www.academia.edu/23198933/A_critique_of_pure_cybernetic_reason_the_Chilean_experience_with_cybernetics

Categories
Japan Ozone

September 10, 1973- Ozone concerns on display in Kyoto…

Fifty years ago, on this day, September 10, 1973 

During the early 1970s, the space shuttle was being developed by NASA in the United States. The first significant elaboration of the chlorine-ozone layer hypothesis was offered at a scientific gathering in Kyoto, Japan on 10,11 and 12 September 1973, when Richard Stolarski and Ralph Cicerone, both from the University of Michigan, presented the findings from their research.

(Rowlands,1995: 48 [Cicerone in 2001 was head of NAS, when Dubya Bush asked for review of IPCC]

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 329.4ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that while the question of Ozone depletion caused by SSTs (supersonic transports) such as Concorde had already been a “hot” scientific and political issue it was going to be less of one with the shuttle because by definition they were not going to be many of them. But it was part of the general upsurge of awareness about global atmospheric consequences of human activity and Kyoto, well… 26 years later Kyoto would be by the first test of the climate treaty.

What I think we can learn from this stuff has a long history. I don’t particularly rate this blog post though so rough cicerone pops up elsewhere you could make something about that.

What happened next

The shuttle programme finally got underway officially in 1981 but two shuttles were lost which is about in line with what you’d expect given how is all put together and designed. Was it worth the Enormous cost to put some clowns in on the moon as it were is there really a good case for humans in space it’s not at all clear to me that it’s worth it.

Rowland and Molina were doing their thing – 

By December [1973], Rowland and Molina had completed their calculations, and in June 1974 their paper was published in Nature. The results of their research were startling, but as Rowland recalled afterward, “There was no moment when I yelled ‘Eureka!’ I just came home one night and told my wife, ‘The work is going every well, but it looks like the end of the world.’”

(Oppenheimer & Boyle, 1990: 44) 

What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.

Categories
United Kingdom

August 26, 1973 – Sir Kingsley Dunham points out the C02 problem

On this day, fifty years ago, Sir Kingsley Dunham gave a presidential address, with the title “The Advancement of Environmental Science”  to the Canterbury Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science.  In it, he noted the following

“Unfortunately, a development of energy sources sufficient to make possible universal living standards equivalent to the highest achieved at present would, according to some calculations, raise the whole temperature of the atmosphere and seas to an extent dangerous to life. Here the meteorologists and oceanographers must assess this risk as they reach greater understanding of all the circulatory processes involved. The great tropical experiment of the Global Atmospheric Research Programme of the World Meteorological Organisation and the International Council of Scientific Unions shortly to begin, is an important step towards fuller understanding of processes in a zone so far too little known. Regarding the possibility of a general global rise of temperature, the effect of accumulation of carbon dioxide in the upper atmosphere producing a greenhouse effect (Wilson & Matthews 1970), has been widely discussed, especially in the light of Swedish observations indicating a possible increase of 18 per cent of this gas in the atmosphere by the year 2000 because of the combustion of fossil fuels. A question, which insufficient data at present makes it impossible to answer, is whether a rise in temperature dangerous to life will have occurred before combustion of carbonaceous fuels comes to its end.”

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly xxxppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm , but check here for daily measures. 

The context was – The Limits to Growth and the Stockholm Environment Conference were just over a year old. But the issues they raised were not going away, and people still wanted to talk about this stuff.

What we can learn – the threat of carbon dioxide wasn’t abstruse.  People knew.

What happened next – the first oil shock meant that politicians and planners had less time/bandwidth for environmental issues (and were using the wrong tools anyway).

What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.

Categories
Activism Education United Kingdom

June 14, 1973 – Education for the Future? Meh.

Fifty years ago, on this day, June 14, 1973, the UK based “Conservation Society” tried to lay out what would be needed for, you know, a future…

It begins with the prescient words – “We are in the presence of another climacteric more dramatic than any the human race has yet experienced.”

Yep.

June 14 1973 The Conservation Society launches “Education for our Future” Fairhall, J. (1973) Preparing young for crisis. The Guardian, June 14, p.6.

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 332ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was

Everyone was running around talking about survival and education. And what that would look like. There had been a seminar in 1972 in London, and this Conservation Society effort probably drew on that.

What I think we can learn from this

We’ve been talking about the skills that we would need to educate the young for 50 years that’s included lots of nice words like holistic and environmental and ecological and we have not done it for the most part.

What happened next

Obviously we did not educate ourselves for a new society. If we had, projects like this would not even exist.

The Conservation Society wound up in 1987, ironically just before the next big wave

What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.

Categories
Australia

June 8, 1973 – Australian Treasury forced to acknowledge carbon dioxide…

Fifty years ago, on this day, June 8, 1973, the Australian Treasury, in a paper about the environment, even mentioned climate change.

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 332ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was this – Australia and the climate issue – it goes back to 1969, MacFarlane Burnett, Nugget Coombs and so forth. By 1970 the issue was popping up in newspapers and in books. Coombs was looking at Steady state economy.

What I think we can learn from this. 

The. Problem. Is. Not. Information. The. Problem. Is. Power.

What happened next

Treasury kept pretty schtum, as best I can tell. By the late 1980s they were muttering about potential carbon pricing. This morphed into emissions trading in the mid-late 1990s. And we all know how THAT ended…

What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.

Categories
Australia Industry Associations

May 5, 1973 – Miners advertise for a greenie to join them

Fifty years ago, on this day, May 4, 1973, the  Australian Mining Industry Council advertised for an environmental policy officer.

1973  AMIC advert for an environmental policy officer in Canberra Times

Canberra Times 5 May p 23

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 332.4ppm. As of 2023 it is 420ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was the relatively new Australian Mining Industry Council is advertising for an environmental policy officer because this hippie bollocks about pollution was clearly not going to go away. I have had the unalloyed pleasure of reading the environmental information bulletins of the Australian Mining Industry Council. They’re available at the National Library of Australia in Tasmania in Canberra. And they are silent as far as I could tell, on the question of greenhouse gases.

What I think we can learn from this

Not entirely surprising, because trade associations are there to help companies fight today’s battles. And greenhouse was not today’s battle in 1973 74 75.

What happened next

AMIC threw its weight around in the 80s and 90s, to the point it became so toxic it had to be rebranded as the Minerals Council of Australia(see Geoff Allen’s consultancy work on this in 1994). 

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