Thirty two years ago, on this day, February 14 1994, Friends of the Earth UK tried to get councils to take action on climate change.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 359ppm. As of 2026 it is 428ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The broader context was that the UNFCCC had been signed in 1992. Part of it was “Local Agenda 21” – we were all supposed to be doing governance together…
The specific context was that FoE was trying, bless it, to get the system to change itself from within. It had already tried this sort of thing with environmental issues more broadly a couple of years previously. Twenty plus years of boredom and futility and all that…
What I think we can learn from this is that we had our chances, we blew them.
What happened next: FoE kept campaigning. People kept ignoring them. Emissions and atmospheric concentrations kept climbing.
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:
February 14,1967 – John Mason (Met Office boss) dismisses carbon dioxide problem