Forty one years ago, on this day, August 17, 1982, UK diplomat Crispin Tickell warned us all we might get crispy…
Tickell, C. (1982) The experiment that could become too hot to handle. The Times, August 17, p.8.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 341ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that Tickell had been beavering away on the climate issue for seven years by this stage. And earlier in the year, James Hansen and Herman Flohn had made some pretty big bold statements at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Washington DC that had been reported in the New York Times. The IEA and the OECD, were continuing to hold workshops, so was the UNEP. And for Tickell the issue couldn’t wouldn’t go away because he understood what was at stake. Bless him.
What I think we can learn from this
Elites really knew. And didn’t act. Some “elites” (the upper crust is just a bunch of crumbs sticking together).
What happened next
Tickell and others (John Houghton etc) finally got through to Thatcher in 1988. She gave her speech and that made it possible to talk about the issue/impossible not to…
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.
It’s by a ‘big name’ – the diplomat Crispin Tickell. You know Tickell had been on a sabbatical year at Harvard in 1975-6 and had written a thesis about the impact of carbon dioxide build-up on the atmosphere, food production, politics etc. You know that that that document had been circulated in Whitehall and then published, as ‘Climatic Change and World Affairs‘ with a foreword by former Chief Scientific Advisor Solly Zuckerman.
You also know that in February 1980 – two months before the article hit people’s breakfast tables – the Thatcher government had finally, grudgingly, allowed a report on “Climatic Change” to be released (the report had said, in effect ‘meh, probably nothing to see here’).
So you put two and one and a half together and you get… the amount of heating the Earth will experience this century. No, you get a narrative that says Tickell got this published as a kind of – if not ‘rallying the troops’ (were there any?) but a way of reminding people that the issue is actually real and important, despite what the official document said.
And you write a blog post to that effect, and then that’s okay – it’s not wrong, per se.
And you’re dimly aware that Tickell had been involved too in European Community (later, after 1992 it was called the European Union) politics, and also that the G7 had mentioned climate change the year before. And that Margaret Thatcher’s Chief Scientific Advisor had, at some point in all this, tried to get Thatcher to take climate change seriously.
But you don’t really think much more about it, and there’s no need to think differently about the Times article…
But THEN you re-read a really good (albeit incomplete – because everything is incomplete) article about the British government’s response to climate change. And you see something that your eyes simply passed over last time you read it.
“The timing of this sighting of Margaret Thatcher’s scepticism towards climate change is highly significant. It comes a week after Crispin Tickell presented on the carbon dioxide problem at a preparatory meeting for the Venice G7 summit”
(Agar 2015: 623)
And then you do some more digging via GoogleBooks and find more interesting things (1)
And you realise that the Times article you had situated in one context is almost certainly (2) a condensation/popularisation of the briefing he was going to give, and perhaps a way of letting those who would attend his briefing (who presumably took the Times, not the Morning Star) to get familiar with the issue beforehand
And it changes the way you think about the Times article – you see it in a different context. You weren’t wrong before, but you didn’t know the ‘whole story’. And, tbh, you probably still don’t.
And this goes on and on. Presumably historians with real training (rather than self-taught) have a name for this kind of palimpsest thing, this re-layering, this re-examining as new surrounding facts come to light? Anyone want to tell me what that word is?
Footnotes
“By [the meeting] held in Venice in 1980 [Roy] Jenkins’ participation was complete. Likewise his personal representative was able to play a full part in the preparatory discussions, without needing to fear French walkouts or boycotts. The fact that climate change—an unfashionable topic in the late 1970s but a subject upon which Tickell had become a prominent expert—featured on the agenda for the Venice summit is for instance a fairly clear indication that the Commission sherpa was now sufficiently well established within the preparatory group to persuade his counterparts to direct their leaders’ attention towards an issue that was unlikely otherwise to have been discussed at so exalted a level.”
(Ludlow, p109-110, emphasis added)
Ludlow, N.P. (2016). Growing into the Role: The Battle to Secure G7 Representation. In: Roy Jenkins and the European Commission Presidency, 1976 –1980. Security, Conflict and Cooperation in the Contemporary World. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-51530-8_4
(2) You can’t say for sure, because Tickell is dead and didn’t leave a memoir (and even if he had, this kind of granular detail doesn’t usually make it into memoirs).
Thirty nine years ago, on this day, June 7, 1984, Crispin Tickell kept plugging away…
In 1984, back at the UK Foreign Office as Deputy Under-Secretary of State for Economic Affairs, he was instrumental in attracting the attention of the UK DoE and developed countries to the subject. He traces official British interest in climate change to the 1984 G7 Summit in London. As British permanent representative to the United Nations, a position he still held when first advising Mrs Thatcher, and as policy adviser to research bodies in the USA, Sir Crispin was able to stress the politics of fear, as well as diplomatic opportunities arising from the climate change issue in many national and international fora.2
Boehmer‐Christiansen (1995; 176-7)
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 347.1ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was Tickell had been switched on to the climate problem, in 1975-76. He’d written a book, he’d tried to get it up the g7 agenda in the late 1970s. There had been a push back against this, I think. So in 1980-3, the G7 just didn’t really talk about environment, because there was a new Cold War to worry about etc. But Tickell kept going, as problem brokers are wont to do, and was able to apparently reframe the issue.
What I think we can learn from this
There are always individuals within the system, working with patience and skill to get leaders on board. It requires a certain kind of person. I am not that kind of person.
What happened next
Four years later, Tickell was finally able to convince Thatcher to take climate change seriously, at least rhetorically. She could have taken the initiative when John Ashworth had advised her in 1979/1980. And here we are
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.
Forty three years ago, on this day, April 8, 1980, UK civil servant Crispin Tickell had a stonking article in the Times. The conclusion to it (spoilers!”) is below.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 340.9ppm. As of 2023 it is 420ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was
Tickell had become aware of the climate issue in a serious way while on a sabbatical year at Harvard in the mid-1970s, and wrote a book on the subject. He had, as a civil servant, tried to get the G7 interested (there had been some mention in Tokyo in 1979, and the upcoming one in Venice had C02 on the agenda), but it wasn’t until the mid-80s that he was able to get any particular traction with Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
This particular article in the Times was in response to a February 12th 1980 report in the Times (link) about the first UK government report – “Climatic Change’, which had been grudgingly released the day before.
What I think we can learn from this
There were smart people who knew about this, and who tried to get leaders to take it seriously. That they failed is on the leaders, not them. Chief Scientific Advisor John Ashworth had tried to brief Margaret Thatcher. She said, with incredulity “you want me to worry about the weather?”
What happened next
Tickell kept beavering away (he had another article, in August of 1982 in the Times). Thatcher would only admit that maybe she should worry about the weather in 1988….
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.
Forty two years ago, on this day, February 11, 1980, the first UK Government report on climate change was grudgingly released, after suggestions it should simply be filed away…(you’ll have to wait till July 27 for the gory details).
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 338.3ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was
After much internal lobbying and discussion from 1976 onwards – and resistance from Met Office supremo John Mason, an Interdepartmental Committee on Climate Change had finally been formed and held its first meeting in October 1978. It delivered its report in early 1979. The timing was bad because the new Thatcher Government was not particularly interested shall we say.
The report was lowest common denominator and trying to dismiss or minimise the issue.
What I think we can learn from this
Official reports are always – whether it’s obvious or not – “political”, and often intensely political. There have been battles about how strong the statements will be, whether it will even get released, when it will get released (Friday night before Christmas or a cup final or whatever). This was the UK government’s first Climate report and it wasn’t anything to write home about…
What happened next
Civil servant Crispin Tickell tried to keep the flame alive. There’s a column from him in April 1980 In the times, which we will address in due course. But the climate issue bubbled under until 1988, with Thatcher paying no attention.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Do comment on this post.
Twenty seven years ago, on this day, January 22, 1995, John Major was given an opportunity to have a legacy that wasn’t a cones hotline or sleaze. Oh well…
“THE PRIME Minister’s own advisers will this week publicly challenge him to introduce green taxes to ‘radically change the way society works’. They could even replace income tax. In their first annual report, experts appointed by John Major urge him, as a priority, to put environmental protection at the heart of government economic policy. The panel, headed by Sir Crispin Tickell, warden of Green College, Oxford, and Britain’s former ambassador to the United Nations, will argue that conventional taxes on wages and employers’ national insurance contributions should gradually be replaced by taxes on the use of energy and natural resources by industry and consumers.”
Ghazi, P. (1995). Go for green tax, says Major’s team. The Observer, 22 January, p.5.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 360ppm. As of 2023 it is 418.
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The context was that the UK government had signed up to the UNFCCC at the Rio Earth Summit, and there was rhetoric flying around about not merely stabilising emissions but reducing them. This was underway because coal plants were being closed, but some people were trying to get longer-term thinking going, including Crispin Tickell, who had been trying to get the British state to take climate seriously since the late 1970s… To be fair, their task was that much harder because of an attempt in 1993 to dress up a VAT increase as an environmental measure, which had poisoned the well (see a blog post in March for more details…)
What I think we can learn from this
Possibly good ideas have been lying around for decades. Getting any of them implemented requires more than just mandarins (i.e. mandarins are necessary but not sufficient).
What happened next
Nothing significant
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Do comment on this post.
References
Ghazi, P. (1995). Go for green tax, says Major’s team. The Observer, 22 January, p.5.
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