Sixty eight years ago, on this day, February 19 1958,
A meeting at Linneas Society London, from which Council for Nature group forms.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 315ppm. As of 2026 it is 428ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The broader context was that in the 1950s it was becoming clear that industrialization wasn’t just an issue for cities air quality, but also large chunks of the beautiful English countryside and diverse species were being wiped out. This had been going on for ages. Of course, I don’t want to say that it was just in the 50s.
The specific context was -well, I don’t know about the Council for Nature, presumably the Tory government wanting to look like it gave a shit. And there will have been people within the Tory government who did give a shit.
What I think we can learn from this is that there are always these fine sounding names slapped on state bodies that are there ostensibly to regulate and protect. These bodies always run out of steam, get captured, get corrupted, and occasionally renewed, but during their capture and corruption, they waste a lot of people’s time and hope and then cause cynicism, despair, apathy, which you could argue is ultimately a feature, not a bug.
What happened next:
Oh, these groups come and go, get rebranded and waste a lot of everyone’s time and hope.
The Council for Nature. Nature 181, 867–868 (1958). https://doi.org/10.1038/181867a0
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 19, 1971 – Nature editorial on “The Great Greenhouse Scare”
February 19, 1981 – Nature article “Greenhouse Effect: Act Now, Not Later”
February 19, 1981 – Ecology Party meeting in Wells warns of carbon dioxide build-up
February 19, 2003 – “CCS to be studied by IPCC”
February 19, 2007 – Australian gas lobby hard at work…