Twenty five years ago, on this day, March 4, 1998, Gwen Andrews became the first boss of the “Australian Greenhouse Office”
“With a bureaucratic background in the Department of Finance and an unassuming manner, Andrews was probably useful early on in allaying concern in industry at the creation of the new office. However, as the AGO suffered one Cabinet defeat after another, the hopes of the staff to be part of Australia’s response to the world’s biggest environmental threat were deflated and morale fell. Andrews resigned in 2002 and later said that over her four years in the job she was not once asked to brief the Prime Minister on the issue.
(Hamilton, 2007: 99)
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 367.3ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context for the creation of the Australian Greenhouse Office, was that John Howard had been desperate to minimise the political damage that would accrue from not making a deal or not signing on to a deal at Kyoto.
In late 1997, before the Kyoto conference, in order to get his version of the narrative installed as insurance, he had announced the creation of the Australian Greenhouse Office. As was pointed out by Clive Hamilton, the funding for this was derisory, and it was likely to achieve nothing.
And so it came to pass. Gwen Andrews was the appointed CE.
What I think we can learn from this
It’s easy for naive radicals and for liberals to think that the creation of an office or a task force is somehow progress. It is not. It is at best potential progress, the outcome of which will rely on sustained radical non co-opted action. But this is tremendously difficult because for NGOs in need of easy wins such taskforces are pure catnip, and middle-class people who have mortgages to pay, kids to educate and so forth go and get medium to well paid jobs in such structures. You see it all the time. – see the end of this report about Manchester event about airports and public hearings as a redemption ritual – https://manchesterclimatemonthly.net/2013/07/09/event-report-airports-commission-talks-climate-in-manchester-redemptionritual/
What happened next
The Australian Greenhouse office staggered on as a less and less convincing thing, fig leaf, until it was in the manner of these things discarded in 2003 or 2004.
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..
References
Hamilton, C. (2007) Scorcher: The Dirty Politics of Climate Change. Black Inc.