Nineteen years ago, on this day, September 19th, 2007,
Former New South Wales state premier Bob Carr displays a copy of former US vice-president Al Gore’s 1992 book ‘Earth in the Balance’ during the opening of the FEX Sustainability and Cleantech Investment Market (FEX-SIM) in Sydney, 19 September 2007. FEX-SIM is an Australian initiative aimed at concentrating sustainable and clean technology businesses to provide coherent sector-specific investing opportunities and capital raising.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 384ppm. 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 a young Bob Carr had been switched on to environmental problems by watching an ABC discussion programme with Paul Ehrlich on a visit to Australia in September 9th, 1971 and Ehrlich had talked about the greenhouse effect. You can read all of this in Carr’s book.
Carr had then on gone on to become premier of New South Wales and had tried in his way to get some environmental action going within the constraints of neoliberalism, which means frankly not much, but you know, emissions trading schemes and so on and after leaving office.
The specific context was Carr had continued trying to get climate action going, and here we see him in 2007 as the issue has exploded, clutching a copy of his mate Al Gore’s book, Earth in the Balance, from 1992 (on Gore, you might want to watch Mindwalk, where Sam Watterson plays a thinly veiled Gore) and Carr then went on to serve as foreign affairs minister in Julia Gillard’s government.
What I think we can learn from this is that people try within the system that they’re given, understandably, and you can criticise them as deluded or cynical or whatever, and that will make you feel good about yourself. I’m not sure it will automatically tell you much about the world. This is not to say that anyone whose heart is in the right place is above criticism, but it’s also a warning about the pleasures of denunciatory history, and if anyone needs warnings about the pleasures of the denunciatory history, it’s me.
What happened next The carbon trading delusion is I think largely dead now. Still functional as a money making scheme, but the delusion is dead.
On this topic, you might like these other posts on All Our Yesterdays
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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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If you want to invite me on your podcast, that would boost my ego and probably improve the currently pitiful hit-rate on this site (the two are not-unrelated).
Also on this day:
September 19 1969 – ABC Radio warns listeners about carbon dioxide
September 19, 1991 – Ötzi the Iceman is discovered by German tourists
September 19, 1997 – John Howard condemns the South Pacific to hell. Again.
September 19, 1998 – Public Health Association calls for “life-saving green taxes”