Fifty years ago, on this day, March 12th, 1974, there was some usual “green” propaganda in the business press.
March 1974 “Clean coal” advert in Wall Street Journal
http://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/422541/1974-03-12-sco-wsj-cleaning-coal.pdf
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 330ppm. As of 2024 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that there was an energy crisis going on. And therefore, more coal was in the offing (see President Nixon’s “Project Independence”) but that would come with serious acid rain issues because of all the sulphur. And therefore the people flogging it wanted to be able to say that they were taking measures to fix that, were responsible corporate citizens, et cetera, et cetera. Now this is a good decade before the term “greenwashing” was invented, but the idea was well and truly in place and had been for a long time.
What we can learn from this is that long before the climate issue became salient, coal companies were very good at painting themselves as responsible and green.
What happened next? Clean Coal battles continued. Eventually in 1990. George HW Bush, under pressure from the Canadians, and some domestic interests, signed into law, a Clean Air Act 1990. That gave us the enthusiasm for carbon trading.
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:
March 12, 1963 – first scientific meeting about C02 build-up
March 12, 1963 – first ever carbon dioxide build-up conference