Thirty two years ago, on this day, November 24th, 1992, Leonard Cohen’s The Future released.
Give me crack and anal sex
Take the only tree that’s left
And stuff it up the hole in your culture…
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 357ppm. As of 2024 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
21 years after Meadows gave his briefing at the US Embassy, Leonard Cohen’s album, the Future was released. Cohen had been making a bit of a comeback with “I’m Your Man.” The Future is a brilliant album that you should all own a copy of, or download or whatever. I’ve seen the future baby it is murder. Everybody knows the war is over. Everybody knows the good guys lost, etc. It’s a staggering artistic achievement. In my opinion.
What we learn is that Buddhism provides poetry, provides a good way of looking at the world, thinking about the world.
What happened next, Leonard Cohen played at being a monk and then had to go on the road to make money because he’d been looted.
My wife and I saw him twice. It was brilliant, it was absolutely bloody brilliant.
Here’s a video I made, of Hitler discovering his Cohen tickets are fakes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhRuLBb1b1M
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.
Thirty-two years ago, on this day, November 9th, 1992,
Australian entertainment personalities joined forces last night (Monday) [9th] for the launch of Ark Australia, a local chapter of the English group launched in 1988- an international non-political, non-lobbying, positive action environmental organisation.
Anon, 1992. Celebrities join forces for environment . Greenweek, November 10, p.5.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 357ppm. As of 2024 it is 4xxppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that this was the Australian version of the Ark. There had been a short-lived group in the United Kingdom called Ark from November of ‘88 to July really, of ‘89. And here was the same kind of business model; a bunch of celebrities smiling and gurning and telling people about how they can turn off the tap or pull the curtain.
What we learn is that, you know, these ideas or these tactics, techniques go around the world for all the good that they do.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘soThe what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
Thirty years ago, on this day, September 12th, 1994, a nice article by a Greenpeace policy guy explains what is at stake. Is ignored, of course.
The Federal Government this week conceded that its current policies will not meet our international commitments to cut greenhouse gases by 20 per cent by 2005. The practical solutions needed to meet these targets are available, in the form of energy efficiency, solar power and public transport. What is missing is the political will to implement them.
Tarlo, K. 1994. Time to grasp greenhouse nettle. Sydney Morning Herald, 12 September, p15.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 359ppm. As of 2024 it is 422ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that Greenpeace had been banging on about climate change for a while. They had had a severe bust in their finance because people didn’t renew their membership in 1991-92 because the whole green issue seemed to have gone away after the Gulf War. They’d done a nice advert about Bush senior during his 1992 Australia visit and had also been doing legal challenges to new coal fired power stations without much success.
And here was Keating shitting on climate policy, calling greenhouse an “amorphous issue”.
Anyway, the specific context was that Keating’s Environment Minister John Faulkner was proposing a carbon tax with the money to be spent on things like energy efficiency and solar energy r&d.
What we learn is that you just have to stay in the game when the good times pass, but you just have to stay in the game. Keep your capacity to act going. Greenpeace managed it. Grassroots groups, not so much…
What happened next? Greenpeace kept going. Faulkner’s Carbon Tax died in February 1995. Keating was toast in ‘96. And the emissions kept climbing.
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 356ppm. As of 2024 it is 424ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that everyone was running around “getting their house in order.” There was still money sloshing about for greenhouse stuff. Although the tap had dried up. Mostly there was still old water coming through the Rio Earth Summit that happened and now Local Agenda 21 was going to kick in and everyone was supposed to hold hands, sing Kumbaya, and do local energy audits and so forth, to “save the world.”
What we learn is that there was a period between 1988 and 1993 when and – this was crucial, because it happened as I was hitting adulthood, or at least chronologically, if not emotionally – when it looked like we might do something, or that something could be done. And then neoliberalism which had been there, got turbocharged because it was now for a while, a unipolar world. There was nothing outside the market.
And all that is gone and forgotten. And this All Our Yesterdays is in part a project to remember that sense of possibility.
What happened next, the community energy audits, either dried up or weren’t done or they continued to be done, but they were ignored, because the greenhouse issue was irrelevant, and it had been “solved” anyway because we’d held a meeting in Rio and everything was going to be fine because something something technology something something promises something something Emissions Trading something something.
The lies we tell ourselves so that we can turn over and go back to sleep and not challenge power are astonishing. Challenging power is very very costly because power by definition can make your life miserable. And 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.
Thirty two years ago, on this day, August 24th, 1992, the last chance to do something differently is killed off.
The Canberra Times has a front page story that begins thus:
Federal and state bureaucrats have watered down and fatally weakened recommendations agreed to by industry, conservationists and scientists to lessen the greenhouse effect, according to the Institution of Engineers, Australia.
The IEA’s claims are similar to those made by Australia’s green groups, who have pulled out of the final stages of the Ecologically Sustainable Development process in protest at what they see as undermining by the Federal Government.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 357ppm. As of 2024 it is 424ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the greenies (small g because the Green Party didn’t exist,) had forced then Prime Minister Bob Hawke to launch an Ecologically Sustainable Development policy-making process in 1990. This had come up with some good ideas, which were then watered down. And the whole thing was then being vigorously killed off by 1992. Not so much by Paul Keating, but by federal bureaucracy henchmen, who were determined that Australia’s future was about digging up more and selling it, chopping down more and selling it. And then for them, development meant growth, industrial growth, GDP growth at any cost, and they didn’t see why they should have to pretend to listen to a bunch of Luddite hippies. Now that the media was bored of listening to the “Luddite hippies”, and there was this ridiculous summit had been agreed.
What we learn is that when we only pay attention to politicians, and business, we miss an important aspect of the resistance to sanity. Namely, the permanent bureaucracy that thinks it runs the show and often does run the show. But activists are very loathe to talk about this – some activists anyway – perhaps because it seems like a conspiracy theory. And also you’re beating up on people who can’t talk back to you but can sabotage you. Assholes, in other words.
What happened next: A carbon tax, which would have been one small part of an overall intelligent response, was defeated in 1995. The emissions kept climbing. And the consequences are beginning to pile 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.
Thirty-two years ago, on this day, May 25th, 1992, the Cabinet of new Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating discussed the upcoming Earth Summit in Rio. Cabinet was (mostly) not in favour of making any big splash, and Keating himself would not attend the event (the only leader of an OECD country not to go…)
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 356ppm. As of 2024 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that as early as 1987, there had been an agreement that there would be an Earth Summit in 1992 in Rio. The following year, climate change had exploded onto the public consciousness and the Earth Summit had become the place where the climate treaty would be agreed. Australia had been initially seen as a leader on this, one of its diplomats had helped the IPCC processes as a co-chair on working group one (WM Tegart), and there had been an extremely hedged promise in October of 1990 for a so-called interim planning target.
However, since then, the champion of action Bob Hawke had been toppled. His replacement, Paul Keating was actively hostile to greenies. And Australia was in/emerging from a recession, “the recession we had to have.” And Keating wasn’t gonna go to Rio, (he was the only head of an OECD member who didn’t).
There had also been a successful campaign against introducing a carbon tax. This had been a suggestion as part of the Ecologically Sustainable Development process. So all in all, the Cabinet meeting was just signing off on allowing the environment minister to go. But pretty much saying to her that she wasn’t allowed to be exuberant or make any promises. And so it came to pass.
What we learn is that Australia had an opportunity to behave differently, but the leadership of the time had other plans and other priorities. And we are living with the consequences of that. And future generations will live and die with the consequences of that. And here we are.
What happened next, RosKelly went to Rio, was the ninth person to sign up to some misogynist flak from the denialists, of course. And Australia had another bite at the carbon tax for domestic purposes. This also failed, and then Australia carved out an insanely generous steal at Kyoto, which it then didn’t ratify. Poisonous, horrible, horrible political, economic elite. But what do you expect of an extractive settler state, a quarry with a state attached to it.
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.
Thirty three/two years ago, on this day, May 7th, 1991 and 1992, the Australian leader of the opposition’s trajectory shows an early (and permanent) retreat by “conservative” parties on the biggest question of the twenty-first century. Such leadership!!
For those coming late to the party: through the 1970s and 1980s a few politicians, from Liberals, Nationals and Labor, had warned of climate problems. The issue “blew up” in 1988 and 1989. The Liberals went to the federal election of March 1990 with a more ambitious carbon dioxide reduction target than the ALP. Yes, you read that right, more ambitious.
But then, as we see below, the new Liberal Leader, John Hewson, changed his tune (meanwhile, Prime Minister Bob Hawke was toppled by Paul Keating, who had no love for environmentalists or environmental issues. Whatsoever). So, with that said, check out the two quotes, a year apart.
The environment could be a victim of the move to reform Federal-state relations, Australian Conservation Foundation executive director Phillip Toyne said in Canberra last week.
He said environment groups see the special Premiers’ conference on federalism as posing a threat to a national ecologically sustainable development strategy.
“We think that substantial erosion of progress in the regulation and control of environmental management could be taking place,” he said.
“Much of the work is at departmental level, with the chairs of all of the various working groups coming from state bureaucracies.”
On Tuesday [7th], Prime Minister Bob Hawke met with the ESD roundtable, the umbrella body that has a general oversight of the work of the ESD working groups. About 30 people were there, including representatives from the greens, industry, the states, welfare agencies and some federal ministers.
Toyne said later: “I thought that there were some rather glib comments on the progress of the exercise.”
“it is absolutely extraordinary that there has been almost no scrutiny of the process by the media, very little information has reached us, and yet it could be profoundly affecting not only the outcomes for ecologically sustainable development but also many other aspects of national policy.”
Anon, 1991. Environment “A Victim of Reform”. Green Week, May 14, p.5.
And exactly a year later…
And in 1992, Dr Hewson captured the full flavour of the initiative in a speech to the Australian Mining Industry Council annual dinner on May 7, 1992, when he described it as sustainable development with a capital D. This move is really an exercise in fast-tracking, with an absolute limit of 12 months on government processes of evaluation, failing which the project gets automatic go-ahead.
This is dangerous, based as it is on the assumption that red, black or green tape is simply frustrating developments, rather than complex issues being carefully evaluated. There is also a quite dishonest attempt to list a long list of stalled projects without acknowledging that many had not proceeded for commercial reasons.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 354ppm. As of 2024 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures.
This is another one of those “What a difference a year makes” Pivotal, blah blah blahs.
The context is that in 1991 the ecologically sustainable development process was underway. Yes, the greenhouse issue wasn’t as sexy as it had been because people have gotten bored. And there’s also been the small matter of Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Iraq, Kuwait, and the military response. But it was still a “hot” issue. And there were concerns about things possibly being watered down. Fast forward to exactly a year later and the Liberals have given up on trying to get green votes. They are still feeling the “betrayal” of the Australian Conservation Foundation.
John Hewson, who had seen off Bob Hawke, and looked like he was going to defeat Paul Keating (because it was before the wedding cake gate), felt that he didn’t have to make the same green noises that people did a couple of years previously.
What we learn is that the mood music changes and that you can track it. And this was the time when, if there had been real leadership, we would have stuck to issues, but there wasn’t. So we didn’t. And here we are,
What happened next. The Liberals came to power in 1996, under John Howard, and dialled the indifference/hostility of the Keating gang up to 11. Or 12. And 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.
Thirty two years ago, on this day, April 26th, 1992 the entirely sensible idea of a carbon tax was killed off (for now), with the Australian Federal Environment Minister running up the white flag again.
A spokesman for Environment Minister Ros Kelly said the Government was not considering a “carbon tax”, which would hit fossil fuels such as petrol and coal. Instead – at least as a first step – it favoured “no-regret” options. These were measures to increase energy efficiency, which will have overall economic benefits even if dire greenhouse scenarios don’t eventuate. The spokesman said: “This Government would be delinquent if it did not take a precautionary rather than a cavalier approach to the greenhouse effect. The worst-case scenarios are terrifying.”
BCA spokesman Mark Emerson said Australia should not support the EC proposal for a commitment by developed countries to stabilise greenhouse gas emissions by the year 2000. “Business is concerned that, against the background of the enormous scientific uncertainties, inappropriate policy responses might be applied which would have devastating economic and social effects without any discernible environmental benefits,” he said. “None of Australia’s regional trading partners or competitors – except New Zealand – will agree to the EC option.”
Skinner, S. 1992. Greenhouse: Aust yet to set its policy. Sun Herald, 26 April, p. 13.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 356.5ppm. As of 2024 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the idea of a carbon tax had been raised within the Ecologically Sustainable Development groups. Entirely sensible idea. And it had sent business or elements of business into a total meltdown. And now, under the new Keating government, it was off the table. But of course, Kelly would be going to the Rio Earth Summit in a couple of months. And the headbangers didn’t want her trying to sneak things in via the back door.
What we learn is that simple straightforward ideas that would have helped were defeated by powerful greedy actors who had only their own short-term power and comfort in mind. And politicians went along for the ride.
What happened next, Rio happened. There was another attempt to get a carbon tax through in 94/95, after Ross Kelly was forced to resign over sports routes. And it failed. And we as a species failed
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.
Thirty two years ago, on this day, February 5th, 1992, the Leader of the Liberal Party, John Hewson, decided he would not bother meeting with those irritating greenies, who had Betrayed Their Word after the fateful lunch on January 15 1990 (they hadn’t, actually, but it made for a good “Dolchstoss” myth…).
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 357.1ppm. As of 2024 it is 422ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the Liberals felt that they had been shafted by the greens in March of 1990 and that they had not yet let this go. The Liberal view had hardened – they felt that the 1993 election was eminently winnable, especially now the widely disliked Paul Keating was PM. Bob Hawke had given a piss weak response to John Hewson’s Fightback! and so, had been toppled by Labour, who chose Paul Keating, who was deeply unpopular with the Australian public as Treasurer. Meanwhile, green issues were no longer salient. And therefore, Hewson thought that telling the Australian Conservation Foundation to go fuck itself was a no lose proposition which would throw red meat and support to the headbangers.
What we learn is that policies and politics are done by humans who have their senses of status and that can have long-term consequences because there is path dependency.
What happened next Hewson managed to lose the unlosable election in March 1993. Prime Minister Keating went on to shit all over environment issues and especially climate issues which he considered amorphous. You know the rest.
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.
Thirty-two years ago, on this day, January 28th, 1992, the Australian Environment Minister was trying to keep her options open…
The Federal Government will press ahead with plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by the year 2005 despite an Industry Commission report that says such reductions would cut Australian production by about 1.5 per cent, or $6 billion a year. The Minister for the Environment, Mrs Kelly, said yesterday that the report, released yesterday, had a “very narrow focus” and failed to capitalise on the opportunities available for industries….
1992 Glascott, K. 1992. Kelly dismisses attack on greenhouse plan. The Australian, January 29, p.4.
And
The Federal Minister for the Environment, Mrs Kelly, conceded yesterday it would be “very difficult” to achieve global agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 20 per cent – a target endorsed by the Federal Government.
Garran R. and Lawson, M. 1992. Kelly concedes greenhouse difficulties. Australian Financial Review, 29 January, p.5.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 357ppm. As of 2024 it is 422ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that there had been a fierce battle within the Hawke and then Keating governments about greenhouse. And everybody knows the good guys lost. As part of the quid pro quo for declaring an interim planning target of a 20% reduction by 2005 (so that Kelly could go to the Second World Climate Conference with something in her hand) the then-Treasurer Paul Keating had managed to extract the concession or agreement that the Industry Commission (later renamed the Productivity Commission) would study the costs. Once the costs document was released, it was predictably used as a stick to beat advocates of energy efficiency and sanity over the head.
What we can learn is that always these battles within governments and allegedly “independent” “scientific”/economic reports are a key weapon.
What happened next? The Kelly gang lost and we’ve been losing ever since.
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.
