On this day, January 15, 1990, with a Federal Election looming, the Opposition leader and would-be Prime Minister Andrew Peacock and his shadow Environment Minister Chris Puplick, met with the boss of the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF)… The political journalist Paul Kelly (not the same guy who sings the songs!) tells it thus.
Peacock and Puplick met the ACF’s Philip Toyne for lunch at an Italian restaurant in Melbourne. This discussion has passed into Liberal folklore as a great deception. Peacock and Puplick say that Toyne told them that the ACF would not be actively advocating a vote for either of the major parties in the House. It would be supporting the Democrats and minor parties in the Senate. Peacock and Publick left with a misplaced optimism. The political truth is that there was no way that Labor’s investment in the greens would be denied. The entire ALP was confident that it would have the green’s backing. It is idle to think that Toyne was unaware of these realities.
Kelly, P. (1992) The End of Certainty. p.543
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 353.8ppm. As of 2023 it is 419.
The context was that the Liberals were hoping to form the next government, and had some relatively bold proposals (or rather, targets!). They wanted the environment movement ‘bosses’ to “play dead” during the impending Federal Election campaign.
What I think we can learn from this
Personalities matter. Narratives of betrayal stick, and become ‘folklore’. (But also, this can be overplayed. The Libs and Nats were never going to become Chipko women. The idea that there is a path dependency from January 15 1990 is… heroic).
Ultimately, if you want to have a better future, then you need a broad-based and “uncontrollable” set of social movements that force politicians and businesses to face environmental and social realities. And I do not know how those movements would grow and sustain themselves and each other, in the context of super-wicked problems and the seductions of stale repertoires and the abyss… But maybe that’s just me.
What happened next
The Libs went anti-green, and have basically stayed there ever since. It is finally, in 2023, costing them electorally.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Do comment on this post.
On this day, November 19, 1990, recently-sacked from the White House official William (“Bill”) Nitze (see here and here) had a letter published in the Financial Times (all the smartest people have, of course).
Sir, The US should join other OECD nations in committing itself to the stabilisation of carbon dioxide emissions at current levels by 2000 or shortly thereafter, as I have argued at greater length in my report, Greenhouse Warming; Formulating a Convention, (published by Chatham House). Its refusal to do so at the recently concluded Second World Climate Conference makes no sense economically or politically.
Nitze, W. 1990. Letter: Leadership tests for President Bush. Financial Times, 19 November.
[The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 353ppm. At time of writing it was 421ishppm- but for what it is now,well, see here for the latest.]
The context was this –
Bush was trying to keep the US from having to sign anything that would actually restrict the “freedom” of oil, gas, coal and auto companies having to DO anything. In this he was successful…
Why this matters.
There was a fierce battle. The “good guys” lost. The war went on, but the key battle was lost early on, and we don’t even remember it.
What happened next?
The “targets and timetables in the Treaty, dammit” people lost. Bush and Sununu and that crowd delivered the goods for their mates. The end.
Sakshi Aravind is a PhD student at University of Cambridge. (see her review of Andreas Malm’s book “How to blow up a pipeline” here, and see an interview here) reflects on the 32 years since this-
1990 Shabecoff, P. 1990. Environmental Groups Told They Are Racists in Hiring. New York Times, 1 February. WASHINGTON, Jan. 31— Several members of civil rights and minority groups have written to eight major national environmental organizations charging them with racism in their hiring practices
After thirty-two years, it is a small relief that we do not have to write letters about discriminatory hiring practices in environmental organisations. We have traversed some distance. Let us make past this momentary sense of satisfaction. We can sit down for a hard-headed debriefing about whether this ‘distance’ was noticeably significant in any particular direction or just self-congratulatory posturing about having made it past our front yards. Since I am writing about a small but exceedingly significant letter written in the year I was born, I cannot dismiss all that peoples’ persistence has achieved in these years. The concept of ‘environmental justice’ has found a strong foothold and bided its time in the social, political, and juridical spheres. Social movements for environmental justice, fair and equitable environmental policies, and opportunities for democratic participation are very vibrant. The environmental organisations do not have visible and impenetrable walls obstructing BIPOC members. The phrases ‘diversity’ and ‘equality’ seem boundlessly desired even by vampiric corporations. While it is easy to pin down ‘what changed’, ‘what did not’ is worrying. What have we done with the achievements, transformations, and progresses of the last 32 years as the nature of planetary collapse worsens?
When the racist hiring practices were seemingly remedied, how did the people responsible for those changes define the problem? What did they imagine they were solving when they hired a more representative workforce and opened their membership for all? It is important to document and assess the changes we have witnessed in the last three decades to classify what problems are fully addressed and what others have shapeshifted into another version of themselves. Whilst environmental movements and groups appear to be more representative, ‘representation’ does not fill the shoes of ‘recognition’. Even ‘recognition’ can be a lopsided concept if it is not constructive and does not allow for a plurality of voices across race, class, gender, etc. The big question of what changed between then and now should be: whether the change of heart in environmentalism confronted the entrenched whiteness (and consequently coloniality) that underlies the collective understanding of environmental injustices, policy choices, and the general direction of environmental movements. The problem of racism and coloniality in environmental movements is also structural. Hence, cosmetic changes in representation can only have incremental benefits and not the epistemic shift we need to counter the rapid destruction of the planet. Mercifully, we did not regress. However, environmental organisations also did not build on their knowledge on a required scale. There are no visible and invisible forms of environmental racism and environmental colonialism. There are either visible aspects that are hard to deny or the aspects that are wilfully ignored and diminished without any accountability—through entrenched knowledge and epistemologies that are vital to the sustenance and reproduction of colonial, white supremacist, capitalist nations.
If environmental movements and organisations had understood how ‘spaces’ (emphasis on structures as opposed to a handful of institutions) exclude BIPOC workers, activists, members, and environmentalisms, our responsibilities at the moment would have been lighter despite the number of challenges regarding environmental destruction and climate change. Something as simple as how wilderness is defined, what opportunities are available to benefit from the environment—even simple pleasures such as birdwatching—and what autonomy does BIPOC have on controlling and governing land, natural resources are steeped in relationships of expropriation and elimination. Therefore, it is still easy to please many people with Don’t Look Up as if it were the pinnacle of artistic expression. At the same time, Global South prepares for the worst of climate crises that have been building up due to imperialist plunder. In 1990, they were concerned about the absence of People of Colour in key organisations. Now, we are concerned about the absence of constructive voices that would define climate change as anything but a specific event; dismantle structures of accumulation, theft, and exploitation; demand reparations and imagine world-making practices in terms of kinship, care, cooperation, and justice.
If we think long and hard, a lot changed for the good. Nevertheless, the ways in which environmental injustices have been defined are still largely in the clutches of those who command the resources—social, political, capital et al. Effectively, the epistemic resources need redistribution along with material redistribution. Moreover, epistemic justice must follow environmental justice close at hand. Meanwhile, we keep writing and conversing in the hope that we might have done a little more towards the things we care for than what we inherited thirty years later.
