Twenty eight years ago, on this day, April 19th, 1996, climate campaigners took to the web…,
Australian environmental education has been launched onto an international stage, with local group ARK Australia yesterday going live on the Internet with a World Wide Web site called Planet Ark.
The product of a significant cooperative effort involving the Seven Network , Austereo, Reuters and Sanitarium, the site will provide on-demand 24-hour environmental radio news on the Net, along with environmental software and celebrity campaigns that can be downloaded free of charge, including the “Save the Planet” videos featuring stars such as Pierce Brosnan, Dustin Hoffman, Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman.
Helen Meredith. 1996. Planet Ark’s world-first on the Net. The Australian Financial Review, 19 April 1996 p48
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 362ppm. As of 2024 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the World Wide Web and cyberspace were just arriving. And therefore it was newsworthy when someone set up a website. The deeper context is that the Australian outpost of Ark seemed to have taken some sort of hold, though it had sunk in the UK.
What we learn is that celebrities have always been yammering about environmental issues, but are also often celebrities that are spectacularly badly placed. Because pretty much by definition, their lifestyles are high carbon, and they can be accused of being hypocrites, so out of touch, e.g. “Carbon Cate” in 2011…
What happened next? The World Wide Web gave us a highly intelligent fact based public sphere. Now I’m just playing with you: look around you for a minute…
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:
April 19, 1973 – first film to mention global warming released (Soylent Green)
