Forty five years ago, on this day, May 3, 1978, the first and last “Sun Day” organised by Dennis Hayes took place
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Day
QUOTE FROM In the rain! (Graetz, 2011: 117)
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 338ppm. As of 2023 it is 420ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was Denis Hayes had been neck deep in the Earth Day organising of 1970 and spent the rest of the decade trying to get people to take alternative energy solar energy seriously.
The National Academy of Sciences report on climate had come out in July of 1977. Carter had signed the Climate Change Act that had been proposed by George Brown. People were beginning to think that carbon dioxide might really screw us. Increasing the amount of solar energy was clearly a good idea, but didn’t get implemented.
What I think we can learn from this
Solutions technological, political, economic, social, have existed and they have constantly been out fought, outspent by existing vested interests and the natural small c conservatism and inertia and obduracy of large technical systems.
Getting a new technology to be accepted is a very very hard task.
What happened next
Well, famously, the Reagan administration took the solar panels off the White House in 1986. But by then Reagan’s goons had already done a very good job in destroying momentum towards ecological sanity (not that a second Carter term would necessarily have delivered).
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.
