Thirty five years ago, on this day, June 13th, 1989, engineers want to get cracking…,
The international community must take immediate steps to revise its energy strategies to ameliorate the greenhouse effect, the Institution of Engineers, Australia, warned yesterday.
Presenting its position paper, The Impact of Energy Use on the Greenhouse Effect, the association recommended action based on the premise that fossil fuels would continue to supply most of the world’s energy needs.
Lewis, S. 1989. Engineers want greenhouse plan. Australian Financial Review, 14 June.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 353ppm. As of 2024 it is 426ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that everyone was running around talking about climate change and something must be done. World Environment Day had just happened. And there’d been a big global pop conference, with all the celebrities imploring us to save the earth. Because that’s what celebrities do. And here come the engineers. And the thing you’ve got to love about engineers, is they’re not much fussed with moral claims. They’re very fussed with numbers, blueprints, plans, actions, assessing whether the actions have worked, coming up with another action intervention. Because that’s how engineers, bless them, are trained to think it’s incredibly important. And we don’t think about it. We don’t think about infrastructure until it goes wrong. So the engineers wanted a plan and they wanted it now.
What we learn is that there was a time when there were demands from civil society for urgent action. The politicians had their own agenda. And we did not push them hard enough.
What happened next? The whole awkward question of “what to do about climate change and environment” is shepherded into the Ecologically Sustainable Development policymaking process and then killed off by bureaucracy. And in the meantime, the issue of climate fell down the agenda. It always does because the media gets bored. And because a war or something comes along, in this case, Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait…
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:
June 13 1963 – Revelle, Von Braun and Teller talk futures
June 13, 1988 – “‘Greenhouse Effect’ Could Trigger Flooding, Crop Losses, Scientists Say”