Tag: 2002

Categories
Australia Carbon Capture and Storage

December 5, 2002 – Australian Government CCS support begins…

On this day, December 5 in 2002 the Australian “Prime Ministers Science and Industry Council” released a report called  “Beyond Kyoto- Innovation and Adaptation.”

This can be seen as the starting gun for Carbon Capture and Storage in Australia (it had already started moving in the UK).

[The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 373ppm. At time of writing it was 419ishppm- but for what it is now, well, see here for the latest.]

The context was this – 

John Howard had managed to get an absurdly sweet deal for Australia at the Kyoto conference in December 1997. Nonetheless, Australia had delayed ratifying, and on World Environment Day in June 2002 Howard finally did what people had long assumed – he copied George W. Bush in saying “nope.”  That meant that he’d have to put forward some other”solutions” to a problem he did not believe (and still does not believe?) is a problem.

It didn’t hurt that the chair of the PMSEIC, his chief scientist, Robin Batterham, was only doing the job part-time, i.e. when he wasn’t working for … Rio Tinto.

Why this matters. 

CCS for energy systems is absurd (CCS might have a role to play for industry, if the business models can be made to work).

What happened next?

A really good critique of the PMSEIC report was released shortly afterwards – see here.

Large sums of public money in Australia got wasted on CCS, with really nothing to show for it. But it’s too useful a rhetorical move to ever be finally killed off… And so here we are, twenty years later…

Categories
Australia

November 22, 2002 – private business battles on #climate become public in Australia

On this day, November 22 2002, the nasty spat within Australian business over whether to call for Australia to ratify the Kyoto Protocol broke out into public., with an article “Big business splits over greenhouse” by Miranda McLachlan in the Australian Financial Review

The dominant big business association, the Business Council of Australia, had backed Prime Minister John Howard in not ratifying the Kyoto Protocol (even though Australia had been able to extort an absurdly generous “reduction” target of … an 8 per cent increase in emissions (more once you added the land-clearing loophole.

But over time, key business leaders – proponents of renewables, carbon trading etc, fought within the BCA for a change in its position.  They fought each other to a standstill, as reported in the Fin, and the BCA went to a “no position” position on Kyoto ratification…

See also – Bell, S. (2008). Rethinking the Role of the State: Explaining Business Collective Action at the Business Council of Australia. Polity, Vol. 40,. 4, 464-487

[The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 373ppm. At time of writing it was 417ishppm- but for what it is now,well, see here for the latest.]

The context was this – 

Why this matters. 

When the business lobby splits, that’s when the fun starts. Which is why incumbent actors work so hard to stop those splits…

What happened next?

Howard held the line. Public pressure on climate only really kicked in in Australia in the second half of 2006.  The BCA promptly moved to various fall back positions.

The emissions kept climbing. The atmospheric concentrations kept climbing. Then came the ‘natural’ disasters.

Categories
Kyoto Protocol United States of America

Feb 14, 2002 – George Bush promises “Clean Skies” to distract from Kyoto-trashing…

On this day, 14th of February, Valentine’s Day 2002, 20 years ago, George W. Bush, the minority US president sent a Valentine’s Day love letter to the future called the “Clean Skies initiative.” And although the wrapping was attractive, the contents were deeply unhealthy. Clean Skies was supposed to solve the political problem created by Bush for Bush when he had pulled the US out of the negotiations around the Kyoto Protocol, and when Cheney (the real Prez?) had tried to kick start, yet more coal fired power plants. Folks weren’t fooled.

Why this matters? 

We need to remember that those in charge of society who got there being elected, or in this case being elected by their mates on the Supreme Court, do not have our best interests at heart. They have been kicking the can down the road, blindly making ridiculous promises based on unproven technologies. 

What happened next? 

Clean Skies was a “failure” if you judge it on reducing pollution. Looked at another way, it was a success, giving enough of an impression of “action” so the issue of air pollution couldn’t be used against him, even had the Democrats been minded to. Bush was reelected, or elected for the first time in 2004, relatively fair and square, if you don’t count, the swiftboating of John Kerry. And the emissions keep rising, the atmospheric concentrations keep rising. The only thing that doesn’t really rise are the viewing stats on this website.

Categories
Predatory delay United States of America

Feb 4, 2002- Global Climate Coalition calls it a day (“Mission accomplished”)

On this day in 2002, the Global Climate Coalition shut up shop, basically declaring mission accomplished. Well, they’d probably done it a few days earlier, but Imma use this – Anon. 2002. Global Climate Coalition Bows Out. Chemical Market Reporter, , Vol. 261, Issue 5, 4 February – as the marker.

The friendly sounding coalition – actually, an industry group dedicated to stopping action on climate change – had been formed in 1989, when it looks like serious action was possible and even probable, with new US President George HW Bush, having declared on the campaign trail, that those who were worried about the greenhouse effect should not discount the White House Effect.

Even then moves were  well afoot within Bush’s administration, especially under Chief of Staff, John Sununu, to make sure that the environmentally concerned people were sidelined. And that the whole issue just got kicked into the long grass. There were those who would cast active actual doubt on the science but usually, the Global Climate Coalition was a little bit more subtle. 

However, in 1995/6, it had gone too far, launching full throated vociferous attacks on the IPCC second assessment report. In 1997 Shell had pulled out because of the reputational risk. And this was followed later, by other groups, including Ford and GM. By February 2002 it was no longer needed. Because the administration of George HW Bush’s son, George W. Bush, was clearly not going to do anything on climate, having already pulled out of Kyoto. The Global Climate Coalition had therefore, lived as long as it needed to.

Why this matters

Don’t be fooled by names. When they say they’re something they are usually the opposite. They’re very determined. They’re very clever. They’re very well funded. They stick around, they do the work. They get what they want, usually, not always, but often. 

What happened next

Although the Global Climate Coalition was dead, individual companies continued to finance both outright denial and also predatory delay. And they’re still at it, of course. Full stop.

Categories
Fossil fuels United Kingdom

Jan 22, 2002: Exxon and on and on

On this day 20 years ago. Lee Raymond, then boss of Exxon met for an hour (or 35 minutes – accounts vary) with UK Prime Minister Tony Blair. Now, of course, prime ministers do and have to meet with big business all the time. But maybe we should know what is discussed, what is agreed. And when people like Blair, talk about climate change, but then pal around with Exxon. Well, I refer you to yesterday’s blog post. 

What happened next

Exxon continued to be a big funder, a funder of fossil fuel denial. Exxon, we should remember, had known about the problem of climate change since the late 70s- see Inside Climate News and Exxon Knew. 

And fossil fuel usage is continuing to soar. Let’s have a look at a graph of fossil fuel usage since the 1750s.

Annual CO₂ emissions from fossil fuels, by world region (ourworldindata.org)

Can you spot the downturn after we were warned in 1988 to change our ways? Yeah, me neither..

“We” pursued precisely the opposite strategy. That little first person plural pronoun is of course, a mystification. “We” might all be responsible, but we are by no means equally responsible. There is always power politics at play, often behind closed doors as they were on the 22nd of January 2000.

Exxon buying up Biogas