Tag: Adelaide

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Activism Australia

September 24, 1989 – Petra Kelly disses the Australian Prime Minister

Thirty four years ago, on this day, September 24, 1989, German activist and member of parliament Petra Kelly opined on Australian government policy

WHEN BOB HAWKE cried at a press conference in 1984, his face was plastered all over German newspapers.

That was about the last time matters of any relevance to Australian domestic politics rated even a centimetre of German news space.

That is, until Bob Brown and his team of green independents made it on to the Tasmanian Government benches in May.

According to the founder of the West German Green Party, Petra Kelly, the greens’ success in Tasmania was widely reported – even in the smallest German village.

“I think Bob Brown is probably the most well-known Australian in Europe,” Ms Kelly said from her hotel in Adelaide last week.

“He’s much more widely known than Mr Hawke.”

In Australia for an “ecopolitics” conference at the University of Adelaide, Petra Kelly has attracted media attention for describing Bob Hawke’s moves to capture the environment vote as just “green cosmetic surgery”.

Mealey, E. 1989. Petra sees green over Aussie Politics. Sun Herald, 24 September.

(Petra – the diminutive name – wouldn’t be used for Bob or Andrew. But tbf, has been used for “Boris”)

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 353ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that Petra Kelly was a big star from the German environmental movement and antinuclear movement. Adelaide was a good place to do this stuff and I totally missed it. I was not plugged into those networks and it pisses me off but it is what it is. At that time, btw, everyone in Australia was running around talking about the “greenhouse effect.”

What I think we can learn from this is that the mass media will use diminutive names, first names for women, in a way that they would not for men 

That there were linkages between German and Australian movements and learning; see Christopher Rootes’ article about this which appeared in Environmental Politics.

What happened next is that Petra Kelly died in 1992 – it was probably murder-suicide or possibly an agreed pact we can never know. And Hawke made grand promises about climate action that, well, never got kept. 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.

Categories
Australia Nuclear Power

July 27, 1977 – Pro-nuclear professor cites #climate concerns at Adelaide speech

Forty six years ago, on this day, Wednesday July 27, 1977, a professor visited the country town of Adelaide to talk about his book…

Canberra Times, Thursday 28 July, page 7 

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 334.9ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was

11 years before yesterday’s blog post, a pro-nuclear Professor was in Adelaide giving a speech – basically part of his book tour for “Uranium On Trial.” And yes, climate change was high on his list of reasons why we should have nuclear. 

The broader context is that the Ranger inquiry was ongoing in Australia around uranium mining. And as the Professor noted, the National Academy of Sciences in the US was putting the finishing touches on its two year study of climate change. 

What I think we can learn from this is that even people in sleepy country towns like Adelaide had had news of climate by 1977. 

What happened next 

“if nothing was done”… We’re all going to die. And if you are under 40 or even under 50, you’re going to see that unfold properly in your lifetime. If you are 20 or under, my advice is to start carpe the diems right now.

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 Denial

July 16, 1990 – Canberra Times gives denialist tosh a platform

Thirty three years ago, on this day, July 16, 1990, the asinine comments of Hugh Morgan, culture warrior and businessman, are reported in the Canberra Times

 ADELAIDE: Western Mining chief Hugh Morgan has criticised the former Minister for the Environment, Graham Richardson, and the scientific community for treating the greenhouse theory as fact rather than hypothesis.

Mr Morgan told an Australian Institute of Energy conference dinner on Monday [16th July] that he was concerned at the way in which some scientists and Senator Richardson expounded the theory as if it were truth.

1990 Anon. 1990. Public ‘unaware’ of alternative scientific theories on greenhouse effect. Canberra Times, 18 July, p. 6

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 354.9ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that having won the Federal election in March of that year, the Labour Party was having to follow through on promises to the environmentalists about a so-called “ecologically sustainable development process.” Hugh Morgan, who probably felt the Liberals and Nationals had been robbed, was predictably furious, and predictably spouting his climate denial bollocks, saying that there were alternative theories. This was a common proposal at the time and still is. Morgan’s “alternative theories” being possible somewhat like Kellyanne Conway’s “alternative facts”. 

There is that letter from Guy Callendar to (I think) Gilbert Plass about people being able to criticise theories, but it’s very hard to come up with a good one. And there is also the editorial in Climatic Change by John Eddy, where he cites Kipling’s poem, In the Neolithic Age – “nine and 60 ways to calculate the tribal lays and every one of them is right.” 

But that’s not what Morgan is saying. Morgan is saying that he’s gonna shop around until he finds a “theory” that allows us to keep burning coal and the oil and the gas and spitting on and shitting on the environmentalists. That’s what Morgan means by “alternative theories.”

What I think we can learn from this

Brittle old white men are bad for your health. And your planet’s health, at that.

What happened next

The ecologically sustainable development process did indeed start. Morgan kept funding denialist efforts including his consigliere Ray Evans and all the other Goon Squad types who have made the Australian response to climate change change so shameful and wasteful.

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

September 2, 1972 – Adelaide FOE asks “is technology a blueprint for destruction?” (Spoiler – ‘yes’)

On this day 2nd-3rd September 1972 the then new Friends of the Earth Adelaide held a two day seminar in Adelaide asking the question  “Is technology a blueprint for destruction”?

(The word “blueprint” was on everyone’s lips because of the Blueprint for Survival published by The Ecologist.in January of the same year.)

In his opening address, Professor G.M. Badger, Vice-Chancellor of the host institution – University of Adelaide – (and Professor of Organic Chemistry from 1954) had this to say

“I mentioned inevitable pollution, by which I particularly meant carbon dioxide, because when any fossil fuel is burnt, carbon dioxide is an inevitable product of it. Carbon dioxide is not usually considered a pollutant, but it is well to remember that it can be extremely serious for mankind. It plays an important part in the photosynthesis of plants, but its concentration in the atmosphere has increased over the last 70 years from 290 parts/million in the 19th century to 320 parts/million today, and it is still increasing by 0.7 parts/million/annum.

The significance of this increase lies in what is called the glasshouse effect… If this persists, the consequences could be extremely serious. It does not require a great increase in the mean world temperature to start melting the ice-floes and to change the world’s climate.”

The theme was also taken up by at least one of the speakers, Professor Bockris.

“

On this day the atmospheric carbon dioxide level was 324.84 ppm. Now it is 421ish- but see here for the latest.

Why this matters. 

We knew. Fifty years ago we knew enough to be worried. By forty years ago we knew enough to start taking serious action.

What happened next?

The warnings continued. And so did the behaviours that led to the warnings.

Categories
Australia Predatory delay

Feb 20, 2006 – Clive Hamilton names a “Dirty Dozen”

On this day in 2006 Australian academic Clive Hamilton gave a speech in an Australian country town called Adelaide. In it he named his “dirty dozen” of polluters who were preventing climate action. The list included South Australian Senator Nick Minchin, Prime Minister John Howard, journalists and business figures.

Hamilton was, at that time one of scandalously few academics trying to talk about we’re one of the few academics trying to talk about the capture of the Australian state by fossil interests. He had also co-edited a volume called “Silencing Dissent.” 

There was no comeback to his speech. Nobody sued.  

Why this matters

For a long time, from the early 90s through to the mid-2000s, climate change – and especially resistance to climate policy – was a very very niche area.  There really were not that many people trying to keep tabs on who was slowing down what, and how.

What happened next 

The Dirty Dozen continued to be dirty.  The moment of concern was hijacked and wasted. Australia has had an horrific time of it with climate policy, gridlock and mayhem. Carpe the diems.

Here’s an account

http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/dirty-dozen-accused-over-fossil-fuels/2006/02/20/1140284009877.html

Categories
Australia Carbon Pricing Economics of mitigation Politics

Jan 21 (2010) – The flub that sank a thousand policies #auspol

On this day, in 2010, – yes, another Australia one, but it “matters” –  Australian  Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, was caught out having to admit that his proposed “carbon pollution reduction scheme” was dead and that he was kicking the whole climate issue into the long legislative grass.

The CPRS was an insanely complex piece of legislation. Economist Ross Garnaut said of it in December 2008 that  “”Never in the history of Australian public finance has so much been given without public policy purpose, by so many, to so few,”“ – and that’s before the further watering down. Green groups had called it a give-away to the fossil fuel lobby, and the Green Party had refused to support it in parliament in late November 2009, meaning that it failed to become law.

Rudd was in Norwood, a leafy, and relatively affluent suburb of a large country town called Adelaide in South Australia.

As leader of the Australian Labor Party, Rudd had used climate change as a battering ram to differentiate himself from Prime Minister John Howard, and been elected to do something about the issue. As Prime Minister from late 2007, he had been playing chicken with the Liberal National Party, especially its leader Malcolm Turnbull, and had initially rejoiced when Turnbull was replaced by the dark horse (and subsequent wrecking ball) Tony Abbott. 

But the climate conference in December 2009 in Copenhagen didn’t go well. And in the aftermath, Rudd ignored the urging of senior Labour Party members to call a snap election on the question of climate policy, and then didn’t even come up with a plan B. So he was caught on the hop. We know all of this because the period is intensely reported in the battle of the memoirs. And I’d alert you to Philip Chubb’s Power Failure. Julia Gillard’s My Story, Paul Kelly’s Triumph and Demise. 


What happened next?  Australia entered a period of extreme volatility about climate change that  has brought down successive prime ministers and left the country with enormous policy failures around climate, energy, renewables, you name it. If Rudd had had the courage of his convictions, or even just taken on the Green Party idea of a temporary carbon tax while an Emissions Trading Scheme was devised/an election held, none of this needed to have happened. And here we are. 

Why this matters? Because I think you can make an argument that Australia’s confusion and cynicism about climate change and politics is directly related to Rudd’s failure to pursue the climate agenda to the ballot box again, if needs be.,

Rudd had enjoyed going on and on about climate change as “the great moral challenge of our generation” (which it is). People believed him. Rudd’s popularity remained stratospheric. Then, when people decided that Rudd had been using climate as just another “positioning issue,” they felt cheated, betrayed, taken for fools. Rudd’s personal approval ratings took a massive hit. Climate was the only issue, but it certainly was the straw that broke the camel’s back. 

So if you, as a political leader, are going to use climate change as an issue, you better bring your A game and if your A game doesn’t work, you better switch to your B game, which is as good as your A game. And if you don’t, you will cause havoc. And it is now harder than in Rudd’s day, because everyone is cynical, everyone is kinda terrified, whether they can articulate it to themselves or not.