Fifty two years ago, on this day, February 21st, 1972, BBC’s Horizon programme focussed on the “overselling” of ecological concerns.
Horizon – “How They Sold Doomsday” 21-2–1972 – In this episode, Horizon looks the the ecological movement, and the resistance against the movement in Britain, and the USA.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 327ppm. As of 2024 it is 422ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that a backlash against ecological concerns had been underway for a couple of years, and was here picking up momentum.
What we learn
Ecological thinking makes rich, technologically-obsessed, powerful people feel extremely uncomfortable. The idea that there might be limits, to use the apposite word, to their prowess and that the thing that they have thought good, that they have devoted their life to is actually quite bad, is threatening to their sense of self.
Rather than sit and contemplate that idea for any length of time, they obviously find something else to do which is shoot the messenger and attack. And of course, there are always some of the messengers who can plausibly be attacked because they have over-egged the pudding or gone to overconfident predictions. But the core of the message is accurate. And so a straw man gets set up rather than a steel man. And the steel man would have made us all smarter and maybe safer. It wasn’t to be…
What happened next. The attacks on the message and the messengers continued. For example, John Maddox, editor of Nature, has a book called “The Doomsday Syndrome”. And then these were recycled in the 1980s and 90s and in fact down unto this day.
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:
Feb 21, 1978 – “Carbon dioxide, climate and society” workshop
Feb 21, 1995 – an invitation to engage in the IPCC is declined, again…