Nineteen years ago, on this day, June 17th, 2007,
“Carbon Sense Coalition is a voluntary group of people concerned about the extent to which carbon is wrongly vilified in Western societies, particularly in government, the media, and in business circles. We aim to restore balance and reason to the carbon debate, and to explain and defend the key role of carbon in production of most of our energy for heat, light, and transportation, and all of our food.”
June 17th, 2007
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 384ppm. As of 2026, when this post was published, it is 432ppm. This matters because the more carbon dioxide in the air, the more heat gets trapped. The more heat, the more extreme weather events. You can make it more complicated than that if you want, but really, it’s not. Fwiw, I have a tattoo of the Keeling Curve on my left forearm.
The broader context for this was from the late 1980s in Australia and elsewhere, and the United States especially, there was an active – what’s the word phrase I’m looking for,? – fucking stupid climate denial movement, or bunch of individuals occasionally coalescing as a “movement” in the Australian context that would be people like John Daly with his demented book the Greenhouse Trap. Daly died in 2004 and also outfits like the so called Lavoisier group.
The specific context was that the carbon dioxide build up issue had been actively suppressed by John Howard as Prime Minister of Australia from 1996 to 2007.
But this had become impossible for Howard to do in late 2006; the issue just burst onto the scene again thanks to the endless, or seemingly endless, Millennium drought, Al Gore and his film An Inconvenient Truth, ratification of Kyoto Protocol, leading to new UN negotiations, social movement activism like Climate Camp in the United Kingdom and so forth. Then you had new Labor leader, Kevin Rudd, having toppled Kim Beasley, using the climate issue as a stick to beat John Howard with, especially over ratification of the Kyoto Protocol, which Australia had famously not done.
Therefore it was clear that the climate issue would be live for another year or two, at least (in the end, it was until 2011).
What I think we can learn is this: So here you have a bunch of intellectual inadequates giving themselves the title ‘carbon sense’, which is, of course, a play on common sense. And this invocation of common sense tells you a lot in the same way that it was common sense, that the world was flat, that women shouldn’t vote, that black people should be slaves, that blood letting made you stronger, etc, etc, that kind of common sense.
What happened next: I am sure they are still around. Gaia help us all.
On this topic, you might like these other posts on All Our Yesterdays
References
You can see the chronological list of All Our Yesterdays “on this day” posts here.
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.
If you want to get involved, let me know.
If you want to invite me on your podcast, that would boost my ego and probably improve the currently pitiful hit-rate on this site (the two are not-unrelated).
Also on this day:
June 17, 1957 – Guy Callendar writes more truth bombs – “On the Amount of Carbon Dioxide in the Atmosphere”
June 17, 1994 – Moron versus physics. Sorry, “Moran” – All Our Yesterdays