On this day, December 11, 1975, German scientist Hermann Flohn addressed a number of Australian scientists at Monash University, Melbourne, as part of a conference about… climate change.
“Now if we allow man’s interference with climate to increase exponentially as it has done in recent years, we sooner or later come to a state where this 10% rises to 100%, resulting in continuous warming made by man superimposed on these natural fluctuations of cooling and warming. This would be a really dangerous situation in that in the Northern Hemisphere we have this extremely sensitive area of the Arctic sea-ice. The few people who have dealt with models of the sea-ice have the feeling that this is in fact an extremely sensitive system which will reflect very early and very substantially any sizeable warming of the Northern Hemisphere. The lifetime of individual ice floes is 5 or 10 years, certainly not more than 10 years, and once the ice is removed the present situation would not allow the reforming of permanent ice cover as we have it today. My feeling is that if man’s interference with the climatic system is uncontrolled for some decades, together with uncontrolled growth of energy use, sooner or later during the next century the warming will overwhelm natural factors which usually produce cooling. Then the Arctic sea-ice could disappear rather rapidly, some models say in a period of 10 years or less.”
[The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 331ppm. At time of writing it was 419ishppm- but for what it is now,well, see here for the latest.]
The context was this – In 1974 legendary Australian civil servant Nugget Combs had convinced the Whitlam government to ask the Australian Academy of Sciences to investigate the possibility of climate change (this was partly in the context of the CIA report and US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger talking about potential food shortages). The AAS researched the matter and on this day in 1975 at Monash University Herman flown eminent German climatologist said the above.
Why this matters.
We really did know enough to be worried by the mid late 70s and to start acting on the fact that the climate issue did not hit the headlines until 1988 is a travesty but the fact that since 1988 human emissions have gone up by over 60% is beyond a travesty. It is the beginning of a nightmare, or rather the continuation and amplification of a nightmare.
What happened next?
The AAS report was released in early 1976. It sank without trace because it did not say “yes there most definitely is a problem” (to have done so would have been ahead of the evidence). And in any case, Australia was in political turmoil because the elected government of Gough Whitlam had been removed by John Kerr the governor-general (If this had happened in another country we would have talked about it being a CIA coup there have been more dead bodies but I digress).
On this day, 13 October 2005, a comprehensive book explaining climate change, by the Australian scientist Barrie Pittock was released. It was called, aptly, “Climate Change: Turning up the Heat.”
People like Barrie Pittock, working on climate change from the 70s onwards, deserve all the accolades for their patient, long work on trying to get Australians to take climate change seriously. It is not their fault they were overwhelmed by the forces of greed and wilful ignorance.
What happened next?
The following year, in late 2006, climate change re-emerged as an ‘urgent’ public policy issue. Nowt got done, of course…
On this day, July 21, 1991, a three-day international conference “Greenhouse Action for the Nineties”, co-hosted by UNEP, The Climate Institute (the US version) and the short-livedNGO “Greenhouse Action Australia” began in Melbourne. At the end of it, a declaration. It gives you a sense of the earnestness and the technological primitivism (by today’s standards) that this
“was approved at the final plenary… constructed by a consensus process, using computer projection of wordings drafted in workshops conducted throughout the conference.”
The declaration called on
Australian governments at all levels to accelerate the development of programmes to convert interim planning targets into action, with priority funding for implementation;
local government authorities to participate more actively in the global climate debate and develop sustainable cities and living areas;
industries to seize opportunities afforded in the development of new and environmentally sound technologies to meet the global climate challenge; and
individuals to take personal responsibility for life-style changes that would lead to climate stabilisation and ecological sustainability.
Specifically on energy, there was this –
The context is that, around the world – and especially in Australia (thanks to the ground-laying work of Barry Jones (Hawke’s Science Minister 1983-1990), the Commission for the Future and the CSIRO Atmospheric Research Division (Graeme Pearman, Barrie Pittock and others) – people were taking “the greenhouse effect” seriously. Greenhouse Action Australia was part of that –
People thought something could and would be done about the problem. They saw it was, unless dealt with, going to lead to horror. They started groups, they held conferences, they made declarations….
Looking back, it’s “obvious” that they underestimated
a) the difficulty of keeping an issue (and groups) “live” and vibrant.
b) the sheer ferocity and skill of the industry-led pushback and the way that it would lead to a “culture war.”
That wasn’t their fault, on the whole. The reason we are in this godawful mess is not the fault of the people who tried (though they could have tried harder, smarter – but you can always say that). The fault – and the indictments at the Hague – though we had best hurry on that score – lay elsewhere.
Why this matters.
We need to (try to) learn from past mistakes (but remember that Hegel jibe too).
What happened next
The “greenhouse effect” became old news (pushed out by the first Western military action against Iraq, and by the sense that an international treaty, signed in Rio in 1992, had ‘solved’ the problem.
But the industry figures knew it would come back, as an issue, and they made sure they were ready. By then, most of the groups that had sprung up – like Greenhouse Action Australia – had died, so the industry figures had a much easier time spreading their lies. And with the 1996 arrival of the Howard government, it got easier still. The rest is “history”…
A friend and supporter of this project has asked me to write about “carbon credits,” which are right now a ‘hot topic’ (sorry) in Australian climate politics.
What follows is not a comprehensive history, and only partly references posts that have already gone up (more are lurking in the near future). The second half is given over more to – well, why the big focus on ‘carbon credits’ – what is allowed and disallowed by that focus?
Comments very welcome, but not about the existence or severity of climate change – the time between now and the Actual Fricking Apocalypse (AFA) is short, and I don’t intend to waste even a minute of it on trolls, bots and poster-children for the Dunning-Kruger effect.
Australia and economic instruments around climate change.
In 1973 (not 1971 as the Tweet says!) Treasury, responding to concerns about the “diseconomies” of economic growth, released a report.
On this day 8 June, 1971, the Australian Treasury released a report "Economic Growth: Is it Worth Having?" On page 11 and 12, it considers… “the greenhouse effect” and the build-up of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.https://t.co/8SiRbmAEVa 🧵 1/6 pic.twitter.com/8Q3Rbt3Doi
— All Our Yesterdays (@our_yesterdays) June 7, 2022
It basically wasn’t that bothered. And with hyper-inflation and all sorts of other economic mayhem, the Whitlam Government seems not to have paid attention.
So, let’s skip forward to the coming of the “Greenhouse Effect” in the late 80s – and we should always remember that thanks in part to Barry Jones (Hawke’s Science Minister) Australians were well-informed (Commission for the Future, Phillip Adams, The Greenhouse Project, Greenhouse 87, Greenhouse 88, Stephen Schneider, Barrie Pittock, Graeme Pearman etc).
In 1988, Barry Jones pointed out that a price on carbon dioxide was a reasonable economic measure. Other people were saying the same – this is uncontroversial – Pigou etc etc – you want to discourage something, you make it more expensive. “The market” then finds a way. So the story goes.
But in Australia, on climate, until 1995, the major focus was on a carbon tax rather than emissions trading. And it had advocates, beyond the Australian Conservation Foundation. And they pushed it within the “Environmentally Sustainable Development” process of 1990-91. And they lost. Or rather, the determined efforts of a growing “greenhouse mafia” (to shoot Guy Pearse’s useful formulation back before the existence of the AIGN) were successful in defeating a carbon tax. Ros Kelly, Hawke and then Keating’s Environment Minister, explicitly ruled out any price on carbon, both before and AT the Rio Earth Summit-
And was defeated, by an even more determined and sophisticated resistance.
And after this, for various reasons (mostly to do with what the Americans wanted/were willing to countenance) taxes fell away (Clinton, don’t forget, had been defeated on his BTU tax in 1994) and “emissions trading became the flavour of the month. You can see it in various Australian Treasury documents, in conferences, speeches etc.
The basic idea is you create a “market” and so its magic then… reduces emissions. Meanwhile, certifiers, bankers, lawyers all get rich.
There were two big efforts under Howard to get a national Emissions Trading Scheme going. Both were defeated – the 2000 one by Nick Minchin, the 2003 one by Howard himself. Check out Guy Pearse’s High and Dry for gory details, and also Marian Wilkinson’s The Carbon Club. And there is the work of Clive Hamilton too (esp Scorcher).
Advocates of emissions trading soldiered on. One key entrepreneur was Bob Carr (there are blog posts on this site about him coming up). At a time when all states had Labor governments, they were co-ordinating on a bottom-up emissions trading scheme. Howard was not happy.
Then, when climate change “took off” in the second half of 2006 in Australia, Kevin “I’m from Queensland, I’m here to help” Rudd latched onto climate as a wedge issue.
BUT he had to go carefully, not to scare Queensland voters.
some sort of carbon trading (he put Ross Garnaut in charge of that, while in opposition).
Howard tried to come back against this, saying he WOULD now introduce a carbon trading scheme if re-elected. But too little too late etc etc
What do we learn here? That carbon trading, carbon credits etc, are regarded as “common sense” (read Tony Gramsci on this!) as normal, reasonable and the best respectable position. Despite zero evidence that they would actually “work” at reducing emissions.
I don’t intend to go through the insane gory details of the period 2007 to 2012 (and onwards) – you have not bought me enough Cooper’s for that. But I will say this.
In early 2010, after Rudd’s “Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme” had failed twice, and while Rudd was being too spineless to call a double dissolution election on the “great moral challenge of our generation” the Greens proposed an interim solution, a … carbon tax. Labor ignored the proposal (hi Penny!).
So, let’s skip over the last 10 years of “carbon pricing.” Except this, from the Turnbull-Frydenberg era, may amuse…
By getting into carbon credits, you can give the appearance of wanting to do something/doing something, and getting everyone focussed on a very small/technical issue which few understand. Perfect! It makes it virtually impossible for civil society actors, with their pesky legitimacy and demands for morality and far-sightedness and courageous decisions, to be involved.
It means you don’t have to piss off those very rich people who are funding you.
That’s the political purpose/attractiveness of carbon credits, over and above any actual “efficiency”.
Two final things. What I am saying is not new, or profound. Check out
Compare it with a so-called “inefficient” tax. Which is easier to collect, offers far fewer opportunities for evasion, gaming, arbitrage, get-rich-quick-scamming. Funny how the complex stuff always wins out, eh?
What is to be done?
Oh, god, I have written about that so much. Try this.
