Twenty years ago, on this day, July 11st, 2006, newly-appointed Climate minister David Miliband gives a speech
“Furthermore, if we wait until the problem is at crisis point, it will be too late to put right.“
D. Miliband, The Great Stink: Towards an Environmental Contract, Audit Commission Annual Lecture, Wednesday, 19 July
https://www.darkoptimism.org/DavidMiliband.pdf
2006, http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20061209022624/http://www.defra.gov.uk/corporate/ministers/
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 382ppm. As of 2026, when this post was published, it is 430ppm. This matters because the more carbon dioxide in the air, the more heat gets trapped. The more heat, the more extreme weather events. You can make it more complicated than that if you want, but really, it’s not. Fwiw, I have a tattoo of the Keeling Curve on my left forearm.
The broader context was that after a flurry of announcements and pronouncements from 1988 to 1992 or so, the climate issue had slipped down the agenda, wheeled out for election point-scoring (swing voters etc etc). However, from about 2005, with the EUETS, the ratification of Kyoto and Blair’s desperation that the G7 meeting he was hosting not be about the Iraq War, climate moved back centre(ish) stage. Much as Kevin Rudd in Australia would use climate as a stick to wield, so young David Cameron, new leader of the Conservatives, would do.
The specific context was some of us were neck-deep in making Climate Camp happen. What fools.
What I think we can learn from this Talk is cheap.
What happened next. Oh, lots of stuff, including a possible carbon rationing scheme. Then Miliband lost the leadership contest to his brother Ed, and the rest is history.
On this topic, you might like these other posts on All Our Yesterdays
November 19, 2009 – Ed Miliband on “The Politics of Climate Change”
References
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You can see the chronological list of All Our Yesterdays “on this day” posts here.
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.
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Also on this day:
July 19, 1968 – “man has already rendered the temperature equilibrium of the globe more unstable.”
July 19, 1977 – American public hears from a climate scientist