Tag: 1995

Categories
Australia Carbon Pricing

February 15, 1995 – Australian Financial Review editorial, gloating in the aftermath of the defeat of a small carbon tax proposal, groks Jevons Paradox

Thirty years ago, on this day, February 15th, 1995,  the Fin editorialises…

“But no-regrets policies cannot be counted on to significantly reduce Australia’s total greenhouse emissions. The reason is that making the economy more efficient and competitive will lead to higher levels of output.”

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 361ppm. As of 2025 it is 427ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that there had been a vigorous, indeed vociferous and ultimately successful campaign to stop the carbon tax. One of the inevitable arguments was, oh, but, you know, we’ll make everything more efficient. And the Australian Financial Review, to its credit, sort of at least understood something that economists had understood for at that point, I don’t know 130 years; that increasing the efficiency of a process doesn’t mean that less of it gets used overall, but rather more. i.e., Jevons paradox. 

What I think we can learn from this is that basic economic concepts (which doesn’t mean they’re right, but in this case, it seems to be) are sometimes seemingly too complex, or perhaps merely too inconvenient for some politicians who want to be able to use motherhood words like efficiency without being challenged.

What happened next The Fin has deteriorated as a paper, I would say. The carbon price, rather, was instituted very briefly and then became toxic and was killed 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.

Categories
Australia Carbon Pricing

February 13, 1995 – Federal Environment Minister John Faulkner runs up the white flag on a carbon tax.

Thirty years ago, on this day, February 13th, 1995

CANBERRA, Feb 14 (Reuter) – Australian Environment Minister John Faulkner said the government had decided not to go ahead with a tax on carbon dioxide emissions, known as an environment levy.

“I’ve indicated that it’s just not going to go forward,” Faulkner told 2GB Sydney radio. “As far as I’m concerned a greenhouse levy is off the agenda.”

Australia govt drops plans for carbon tax-minister. Reuters, 14 February 1995

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 361ppm. As of 2025 it is 426ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that there had been a fierce and ultimately successful resistance to the first serious proposal for a carbon tax in Australia. It was on this day that John Faulkner had to admit he just wouldn’t have the numbers to get it through Keating’s cabinet. Australia was already muttering about finding loopholes in the UNFCCC or exploiting them, of course, John Howard, who by this time, was Liberal leader would, shortly after this, say that Australia should never have signed the UNFCCC climate treaty. 

What I think we can learn from this is that 30 years ago, there was an effort to get a small, sensible economic measure going. It would have been grossly inadequate, but it would have been a start. 

What happened next is the proponents of the carbon tax switched to an emissions trading scheme proposal, hoping that would suit neoliberalism a bit better. And of course, that was also the prevailing wind from the United States in its attempt to water down any international action. And eventually, Australia did get a carbon price in 2012 and it was very quickly abolished. 

And the emissions rise, as do the concentrations.

Categories
Australia

February 7, 1995 – Australian Treasurer claims UNFCCC treaty contains loopholes and get-out clauses

Thirty years ago, on this day, February 7th, 1995,

Treasurer Ralph Willis stated that the UNFCCC contained ‘let-out clauses’ and that the government might decide that a less ambitious target was appropriate Parliamentary Debates, House of Representatives, 7

February 1995, 582 (Ralph Willis, Treasurer).

The Government also confirmed yesterday that it would be forced to renege on international targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by the turn of the century.

The Treasurer, Mr Willis, told Parliament the Government would examine the “let-out clauses” of the United Nations agreement to stabilise greenhouse gas emission levels to 1990 levels by 2000.

“Those are not unimportant clauses (and) they have to be taken into account when considering whether we need absolutely to tie ourselves to achieving the (targets),” he said. “(But) we are concerned with ensuring that Australia does everything in its power to try to live up to its obligations to the convention.”

The backdown would be highly embarrassing for the Government in the lead-up to the International Convention on Climate Change in Berlin next month

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 361ppm. As of 2025 it is 426ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that very day, there was a round table about a carbon tax. Ralph Willison was in Parliament and was busy saying that there were get out clauses in the UNFCCC document that Australia would investigate and, if necessary, exploit so much for Australia as a middle power. 

What I think we can learn from this is that there is no bit of paper that anyone will sign that won’t be ignored if it becomes inconvenient to them.

What happened next

There was no carbon tax. There was finally a carbon price in 2012 that didn’t last very long. Tiny Abbott abolished it. The emissions kept climbing, and we’re absolutely doomed. 

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 Carbon Pricing

February 3, 1995 – Senator McMullan sows the CEDA of our doom..

Thirty years ago, on this day, February 3rd, 1995, a Labor Senator – and I hope you are sitting down when you read this – assures business-types that “the economy” [i.e. corporate profits] is a higher priority than reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.

 In a largely unreported speech to the Committee for Economic Development of Australia in Melbourne on Friday [3rd February 1995] , Senator McMullan said: “The levy will be dealt with on the basis of its appropriateness as a measure to reduce Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions rather than on the amount of revenue it might raise.” “What we need to avoid is any situation where we unilaterally place a wide range of export and import-competing industries at a competitive disadvantage without actually contributing effectively to reducing global or domestic greenhouse emissions,” he added.

Gill, P. 1995. Official warns of small cut in gas with carbon tax. The Australian Financial Review, 7 February, p.3. 

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 361ppm. As of 2025 it is 428ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that there was an almighty battle going on within the Keating government about a carbon tax and the opponents of said tax were trying to ally shop and venue shop and water down and weaken as much as they could. This speech to an economics business think tank/talking shop called CEDA should be seen in that context.

What I think we can learn from this is that introducing a new order of things, as per Machiavelli, is extremely difficult, even if it’s urgent and important. Perhaps especially if it’s urgent and important. 

What happened next: The carbon tax was defeated. Emissions trading schemes were defeated. Finally, Julia Gillard in 2011 got one through. But oh my, what a shitshow. 

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: 

February 3, 1994 – Greenhouse burden “unfair” on Australia

Feb 3, 2009 –  Physical encirclement of parliament easier than ideological or political. #auspol

February 3, 2015 – UK tries to puzzle out industrial decarbonisation

Categories
Australia Carbon Pricing

January 20, 1995 – ACF says a carbon tax would be really helpful

Thirty years ago, on this day, January 20th, 1995, ACFto get the ALP to be less crap.

The Federal Government should increase its spending on the environment by $3.3 billion in the May Budget to repair damage to the nation’s land, water and air, the Australian Conservation Foundation said yesterday. Government spending on the environment was paltry, the foundation’s 1995 Budget submission said. About $820 million was spent nationally last year, which amounted to 0.2 per cent of Gross Domestic Product. A carbon tax would fund about one third of the foundation’s proposed $3.3 billion spending increase on energy efficiency, public transport, clean industry production and sustainable agriculture. The tax levied at $2.20 a tonne of carbon dioxide among fossil fuel suppliers would raise $850 million, the submission said. Other revenue-raising measures included the elimination of some diesel rebates, an agricultural water-use levy, increases to personal income taxes and wealth and capital gains taxes. Industry and farming groups are opposed to a carbon tax.

Milburn, C. 1995. ACF Calls For $3.3b On Environment. The Age, 21 January, p.7. 

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 361ppm. As of 2025 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was ACF put out it’s all singing, all dancing “gee it would be great if we get a carbon tax” submission ahead of a couple of round tables to be held two weeks later, (the green performance at the pro-round table was not good, and this  would spell the death for the carbon tax. 

What we learn is that good ideas can very easily get shot down, and usually do, Thirty years, Thirty years. ACF did its best, but there wasn’t that engaged, enraged civil society willing to march into the policy spaces and bang on the table, because that never really happens. That’s not how our societies are currently built. 

That’s not inevitable. You can imagine a different way of governing ourselves, besides technocratic neoliberal capitalism. But we don’t have it at present, and we won’t, because as the disasters pile up, people will become more and more frustrated and disenchanted with messiness and complexity, and they will seek a Savior. And there are always narcissists out there willing to say that they will save the situation, if not the individuals. 

What happened next

Instead of a carbon tax there was a feeble voluntary “Greenhouse Challenge 21C”. And other laughable palaver. Once a carbon price finally came into existence, it was then quickly repealed.

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: 

January 20, 1992 – Gambling on climate… and losing #auspol

January 20, 2011 – Shell tries to change the subject from its own emissions   

January 20, 2014 – Gummer sledges “green extremists”

Categories
Australia Carbon Pricing

January 5, 1995 – Victorian premier comes out against carbon tax

Thirty years ago, on this day, January 5th, 1995,

“The Industry Greenhouse  sought support from the states for its campaign. Participant F says the network lobbied premiers, ministers, and the state bureaucracy, and forward copies of its carbon tax correspondence and reports.  ‘I think Kennett came out with a statement against carbon tax that I think was prompted by some of our lobbying of the Premier’s Office.’ The Victorian Premier sent out a news release on 5 January 1995 opposing carbon tax and using many of the points put forward by the Industry Greenhouse Network….”

(Worden, 1998: 111) 

(On the same day the greenhouse interdepartmental committee met for first time to plan Faulkner’s next submission… (see Henderson, 12 Jan 1995) 

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 361ppm. As of 2025 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that John Faulkner, Federal Environment Minister, morning, was pushing for a small carbon tax that would help fund renewables research and development. The fossil fuel industries were up in arms about this, and were drawing in as many allies as they could. One of them was state premiers who were that way inclined, including Jeff Kennet, who of course, had famously privatized the State Electricity Commission of Victoria, and with that, destroyed any hope of a response to the greenhouse effect. 

What I think we can learn from this  is that, as well as “venue shopping,” policy entrepreneurs will go “ally shopping.” And in this case, they went for allies at the state level, as well as trades unions, the real two pronged approach. 

What happened next was that the carbon tax proposal was defeated because Faulkner realized he didn’t have the numbers in Keating’s cabinet.  Australia eventually got a carbon price, an emissions trading scheme in 2011/12, and it was then abolished by the next government, of Tony Abbott. The emissions have kept climbing, and we’re toast. 

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:

Categories
United Kingdom

December 14, 1995 – Monbiot nails it with “it’s happening” article

Twenty nine years ago, on this day, December 14th, 1995, George Monbiot wrote in Guardian “It’s Happening”

As memories of the scorching summer are soothed away by snow, the 600 water tankers trundling around Yorkshire have been all but forgotten.Yorkshire Water regards the situation as exceptional – the Met Office has told them that the drought was a once in 500-year event. The possibility that it might reflect a long-term trend, the company confesses, hasn’t even been raised.

The findings of the world’s foremost climate scientists, officially revealed at this week’s conference in Rome, expose a strange disjunction. We’ve all heard about global warming. Most of us are aware that the world has basked in nine of its ten warmest recorded years since the early 1980s, and everyone knows that our own summers have been exceptional. But these considerations don’t seem to connect in our heads. When two Englishmen meet, they talk about the weather, but somehow they seem to have missed the point.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) now agrees that the balance of evidence suggests a discernable human influence on global climate. While they are properly hedged with cautions and uncertainties, its members’ data should be enough – poor thermal insulation notwithstanding – to throw us all into a muck sweat.

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 361ppm. As of 2024 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that the first COP had taken place in Berlin in March/April of that year, and there had been an agreement that rich nations would turn up in a couple of years with proposed cuts to their own emissions, the so-called Berlin mandate. Meanwhile, and this was the hook for Monbiot’s piece, the IPCC had been launching its second Assessment Report and coming under fire from denialists like Jastrow and Singer and so on. They were targeting Ben Santer and so forth. And what Monbiot was doing was trying to say, “hey, we’re in trouble as a species.” 

What we learn is the dynamics of the problem were laid out 29 years ago and here we are having not succeeded in creating social movement organisations and social movements capable of staying in the game. And we’re doomed. So it goes. 

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

Xxx

Also on this day: 

December 14, 1988 – Greenhouse Glasnost gets going…

December 14, 1992 – UK “releases “National programme on carbon dioxide emissions”

Categories
Australia Economics of mitigation

December 1, 1995 – bullshit modelling put out by Keating Government

Twenty-nine years ago, on this day, December 1st, 1995, bullshit “ABARE” climate modelling put out by Australian government, as part of its push for special treatment internationally.

1995 Release of “Global Climate Change” report by Keating Government, based on ABARE AND DFAT “modelling”.

This was hardly a surprise. At the beginning of the year a front page story on The Australian (back when it was still almost a newspaper) had said as much. From January 18, 1995.

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 361ppm. As of 2024 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that the first Conference of the Parties (COP1) had happened in Berlin in March. Australia was one of the nations that, thanks to the Berlin Mandate, was expected to turn up a couple of years later, with a plan for emissions reductions. But Australia had already comprehensively failed to take any action towards its first proposed target, the Interim Planning Target of October 1990. And so it was going to need other ways of responding to the challenge, as in denying the challenge and trying to push it on to other people. ABARE had already done some idiotic plant modelling and now the Department for Foreign Affairs and Trade were happy to take ABARE’s modelling and create an argument that said Australia shouldn’t have to x. In essence, this was not under that wicked, wicked man, Liberal John Howard. It was under St. Paul Keating. 

What we learn is that the Australian political elites’ mendacious and rapacious hostility towards climate ambition is essentially bi-partisan and has been going on for 30 however many years and here we are, 

What happened next? Keating lost office in March of 1996. Howard simply turbo-charged the hostility to all things environmental and especially climate. 

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

Xxx

Also on this day: 

December 1, 1976 – Met Office boss still saying carbon dioxide build-up a non-issue

December 1, 2005 – David Cameron says “low carbon living should not be a weird or worthy obligation”

December 1, 2008 – Climate Change Committee fanboys carbon capture

Categories
Australia

November 13, 1995 – no Aussie savings of greenhouse gases so far

Twenty-nine years ago, on this day, November 13th, 1995,

Asked yesterday [13 November] for an update on Australia’s domestic performance, Dr Hamilton told the Herald that he still could not identify any savings. “I’d like to be able to,” he said.

Dr Hamilton said a major reason for the Government’s failure was that the advice from the bureaucracy was “very skewed” and came from sections that shared a world view with the coal, oil and gas industry.

Gilchrist, G. 1995. Greenhouse Gas Policy Has Failed. Sydney Morning Herald, 14 November, p.4. 

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 361ppm. As of 2024 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that there had been a battle over whether to have a carbon tax. The carbon tax had been defeated in February and the consolation prize, the booby prize, was the Greenhouse Challenge, entirely voluntary, self-reporting…  all that nonsense, no punishment for failing to hit targets. You know the drill. And this made it entirely obvious that the Toronto target for reducing emissions by 20% by 2005 was no longer even worth pretending about.

What we learned is that unless you can keep the pressure on the politicians, they will pretend they never made those promises. And then, when it’s no longer possible to meet those promises, they’ll say, “Well, we must be pragmatic.” You know the rest. “I’m not here to pick over yesterday’s failings. I’m not stuck in the past. I’m looking to the future.” They are taught this in “Being Corrupt Spineless Dickheads 101.” 

What happened next, the Greenhouse Challenge kept being used to soothe enough of the people who needed soothing. Not all of them by any means but enough. It was replaced by a Greenhouse Challenge Plus, which must be hard to keep a straight face to. And then, alongside this, emissions trading schemes were proposed and defeated. And the emissions kept rising. 

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: 

November 13, 1963 – Ritchie Calder warns of trouble ahead because of carbon dioxide…

November 13, 1975 – climate testimony to House of Reps committee

November 13, 2008 – Coal industry tries to get some ‘love’

Categories
Australia

September 27, 1995 – Greenhouse progress in Australia? None. Zip. Zero. 

Twenty-nine years ago, on this day, September 27th, 1995, the government has to admit that there has been no progress on reducing emissions.

The Keating Government’s action plan to curb emissions of harmful greenhouse gases has failed to produce any significant benefits in the almost three years since it was endorsed by the Commonwealth and all State and Territory governments.

Despite the plan, and a further commitment for action in this year’s Greenhouse 21C, independent analysts can find no evidence that any measure is working.

Six months after the launch of Greenhouse 21C, no director has been appointed to run its key initiative. Interviews were held only last week.

The director’s position carries only a middle-management grade in the Public Service, even though that person’s task will be to hammer out voluntary agreements on cutting greenhouse gas emissions with the heads of some of Australia’s biggest companies.

Gilchrist, G. 1995. Greenhouse Project Fails To Curb Gases. Sydney Morning Herald, 27 September, p11.

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 361ppm. As of 2024 it is 422ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that Australian governments had been making big promises about climate action, for some years. The most notable had been the “Interim Planning Target” in October 1990. And here we were five years later, with the carbon tax defeated in February, with new coal-fired power stations, new freeways. It was totally clear that the Australian Government was not pressing industry, and that the upward trajectory and emissions would continue. 

What we learn is that getting governments to make promises is not actually that difficult. Getting them to keep those promises is. 

What happened next? Well, two months after this story in December of 1995, the Keating government started promulgating ridiculous ABARE modelling on the global level to try and be more aggressive against the Berlin Mandate. In March of 1996, John Howard took office. And then the fun and games on climate delay and denial really kicked in. 

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

Xxx

Also on this day: 

September 27, 1962 – “Silent Spring” published as a book

September 27, 1988 – Margaret Thatcher comes out as a lentil-eating greenie…

September 27, 1988 – UNEP should become world eco-regime