Forty-three years ago, on this day, January 15th 1981, as the Reagan gang were about to take over, there was a plaintive plea…
Shabecoff, Philip. “U.S. Calls for Efforts To Combat Global Environmental Problems.” New York Times, January 15, 1981.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 340ppm. As of 2024 it is 422ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context
This is the last throw of the dice for the Council on Environmental Quality under Jimmy Carter. It had done some good stuff. The CEQ staffer Gus Speth had spent the last four years trying to push climate up the agenda. There had also been the Global 2000 report, which was produced by a separate body. Carter had lost the November 1980 election to Reagan who literally does not give a damn about conserving anything but is keen for ever greater exploitation.
What we can learn from this is that we knew what needed to be done. And we kept electing people who didn’t want to do it because they appealed to our ego, or our greed or something.
What happened next? Reagan came in and shat all over climate action, environment action. See James Watt, etc, etc. And the emissions kept climbing and it was 1988 before presidential candidates were forced to speak about it. (There’s a more interesting story of Republican senators like John Chafee and so forth, actually understanding what was at stake in the mid-80s.) And the journo who wrote this story, Shabecoff? He also wrote the June 24th 1988 story on Hansen.
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.
On July 24, 1980, President Carter addressed the public about his signature achievement.
“Never before had our government or any other government attempting to take such a comprehensive, long-range look at interrelated global issues . . . I believe America must provide special leadership in addressing global conditions,” he urged
(Source – Henderson thesis)
The context was that the concerns raised about “The Limits to Growth” hadn’t gone away entirely, but morphed. By the mid-1970s, they’d been able to gain a toe-hold in the US science policy-making bureaucracies, and in 1977 Carter had announced that a report would be produced…
What we can learn
Any attempt to get environmental limits onto the agenda will be met with fierce resistance.
What happened next
The Global2000 people tried to keep the momentum going, even after Reagan’s victory. The Heritage Foundation did everything it could to slow that momentum, with considerable success. And here we are.
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.
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.
Forty-five years ago, on this day, January 4, 1977,
“Representative George Brown, Jr. (D-CA) introduced legislation to serve two functions: (1) improve the scientific reliability of climate prediction, and (2) fund applied climatological research to improve the resilience of American society in the face of climate-induced stresses. Frustrated that his previous attempt to pass climate legislation had failed to translate into any national climate policy during the Ford Administration, Brown believed that the time had come to firmly integrate climate into national planning.10 ‘‘I believe we have reached a maturity and urgency of scientific and popular interest which makes possible a successful drive toward scientific, executive branch, and legislative consensus on the design of a national and coordinated climate program,’’ he reasoned on the House floor.11 “
(Henderson 2016)
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 333.8ppm. As of 2023 it is 419.
The context was
By the mid-1970s, scientists from various countries (including the US, the UK, Sweden, Germany) were starting to look at carbon dioxide build-up and say “you know, shit could get real” (I paraphrase). Some politicians, including Brown, were listening. So was Olof Palme, Swedish Prime Minister. Other politicians were not, and are still not.
What I think we can learn from this
Some politicians have been trying to get money for research for a long time, with varying success. Since 1988, some politicians have been trying to help the species be less stupid on climate change. With much less success. We needed radical social movements, but instead we got captured and tamed eco-modernisation shills. Oh well…. (see this letter in the Financial Times).
What happened next
President Jimmy Carter did, later in 1977, sign some legislation. Things were moving, a bit. Then came Reagan…
On this day, December 30 in1976 Congressman George Brown(of the Democrats) wrote to incoming President Jimmy Carter
“In his letter to President-Elect Jimmy Carter [on 30th] December 1976, for instance, Brown hesitated to put the blame on human factors, given serious uncertainties about the influence of other causes of climatic change. ‘‘Our knowledge,’’ he noted, ‘‘is primitive concerning the importance of not only natural factors, such as solar activity or orbital behavior, but also of man-made effects due to CO2 and particulate emissions, or fluorocarbon and NOx interaction with the ozone layer.’’
Brown’s tone was certainly not an indictment of efforts to understand the influence of human activities on the global climate system, but rather a preliminary conveyance of urgency to stimulate a much larger effort to understand the nature, causes, and potential impacts of climatic change on human affairs.”
[The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 332ppm. At time of writing it was 419ishppm- but for what it is now,well, see here for the latest.]
The context was this –
Scientists were beginning to say they were fairly sure that additional carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was already – and would be – a problem. But not “sure sure”. Politicians were trying to get more money for them to do better research…
Why this matters.
We need to remember that these things take time – and skill – to get up the policy agenda so that ignoring comes with significant political cost..
What happened next?
Brown was “successful” and Carter, by the end of his fraught four years, had done something towards getting the US government to look at climate (if you ignore the synfuels debacle). All that would be swept aside by Reagan, of course….
On this day, December 12 in 1977, the UK government launched an(other) energy efficiency scheme because … they were embarrassed
“It was the visit of US President Jimmy Carter in May 1977 that brought matters to a head. Carter had just launched a major energy saving programme, and the Prime Minister, James Callaghan, did not want to be outdone. ACEC were asked to design a new programme, and with Prime Ministerial support Benn was able to “bang heads together” in Whitehall. On December 12th 1977, he announced a £470m, 4-year programme (worth £2.7bn today), with the aim of saving £700m pa (£4bn) and cutting energy demand by 10 %.”
(Mallaburn and Eyre, 2014)”
[The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 334ppm. At time of writing it was 419ishppm- but for what it is now,well, see here for the latest.]
The context was this –
The UK government had already launched an energy efficiency scheme in 1974 which had achieved … not very much. All through the 70s there were concerns about energy – how much it would cost whether it was running out, whether you’ll be able to get hold of it and in the background for some people a small number at this point concerns about climate change
Why this matters.
We need to understand that energy efficiency is desperately unsexy and difficult it is much harder to pose with a hard hat and a hi-vis jacket in front of loft insulation than it is in front of new production facilities whether those are nuclear gas offshore wind whatever.
What happened next?
The Labour government was kicked out in 1979 and the new administration of Margaret Thatcher did nothing about energy efficiency and nothing about climate change even though that she herself was briefed on the issue in 1980.
On this day, 23 July 1979, the “Ad Hoc Study Group on C02 and Climate” begins at Woods Hole, giving us the “Charney Report.”
Short version – a scientist (Gordon MacDonald) and a Friends of the Earth activist (Rafe Pomerance) had managed to get President Jimmy Carter’s science advisor (Frank Press) to get Carter to request a study on whether this “greenhouse effect” thing was gonna actually be the problem some were saying.
So folks met, under the leadership of one of the big original beasts of atmospheric science, Jule Charney.
The scientists summoned by Jule Charney to judge the fate of civilization arrived on July 23, 1979, with their wives, children and weekend bags at a three-story mansion in Woods Hole, on the southwestern spur of Cape Cod. They would review all the available science and decide whether the White House should take seriously Gordon MacDonald’s prediction of a climate apocalypse. The Jasons had predicted a warming of two or three degrees Celsius by the middle of the 21st century, but like Roger Revelle before them, they emphasized their reasons for uncertainty. Charney’s scientists were asked to quantify that uncertainty. They had to get it right: Their conclusion would be delivered to the president. But first they would hold a clambake.
They gathered with their families on a bluff overlooking Quissett Harbor and took turns tossing mesh produce bags stuffed with lobster, clams and corn into a bubbling caldron. While the children scrambled across the rolling lawn, the scientists mingled with a claque of visiting dignitaries, whose status lay somewhere between chaperone and client — men from the Departments of State, Energy, Defense and Agriculture; the E.P.A.; the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. They exchanged pleasantries and took in the sunset. It was a hot day, high 80s, but the harbor breeze was salty and cool. It didn’t look like the dawning of an apocalypse.
Why this matters.
“We” really knew enough by the late 70s. Everything since then has been footnotes.
What happened next?
Carter lost the 1980 election, handsomely. It would be another 8 years before the simulacrum of international action began.
On this day, July 18, in 1979, Senator Abraham Ribicoff asked for some advice about “synfuels.”
The context was, the Carter Administration, desperate to reduce US dependency on problematic Middle Eastern Oil (not the dictatorships – that’s fine – it’s the interruptions to supply that’s the problem) was proposing an expensive crash program to develop synthetic fuels (synfuels). These would be incredibly energy intensive to produce… Not everyone was convinced this was a good idea…
“In 1979 [Gordon] MacDonald wrote an article for the Washington Post arguing that subsidizing synthetic fuels, as proposed by the Carter administration, would be a mistake. He pointed out that synthetic fuels would produce even more CO2 than the current U.S. mix of fossil fuels. The article drew the attention of U.S. Senator Abraham Ribicoff (D-CT), who had recently been warned about the issue by West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt” (Nierenberg et al. 2010: 324)
“Although many complex factors affect the climate, it is generally thought that the result of continued carbon dioxide production will be a warming of the atmosphere “that will probably be conspicuous within the next 20 years,” the report said. “If the trend is allowed to continue, climatic zones will shift and agriculture will be displaced.”
Gordon J. MacDonald, environmental studies professor ad Dartmouth College, who is one of the authors said in an interview that large-scale use of synthetic fuels — made from coal or oil shale — could cut the time involved by half.
“We should start seeing the effect in 1990 without synthetic fuels. . . . but if you use them, the effect would be much more pronounced by 1990,” he said.
Actually, unless I am missing something, Nierenberg et al. have got this wrong – and they don’t actually cite the “article in the Washington Post,” which is pretty poor form.
What Ribicoff appears to be responding to are articles in the Post and the Times about an actual report. This was to the Council on Environmental Quality. And it isn’t just Macdonald – “ the other authors of the report were George M. Woodwell, director of the Ecosystems Center of the Marine Biological Laboratory; Roger Revelle, a member of the National Academy of Sciences; and Charles David Keeling, professor of Oceanography of the Scripps Institute for Oceanography” (Shabecoff, 1979).
ANYWAY, that was the 11th, and this blog post is about the 18th. And here we are –
“One incident provides a small example of the work that the Academy does outside the formal structure of reports and out of public view. On July 18, 1979, even as the Charney panel was gathering at Woods Hole, the Academy’s president, Philip Handler, got a call from Senator Abraham Ribicoff. The Senator was cosponsoring a bill on synfuels, and he wanted to know the implications of greenhouse warming. Handler went to the National Research Council’s Climate Research Board, and the very next day, it produced a statement on carbon dioxide and energy policy. The statement confirmed that global warming could be a problem. The statement told Senator Ribicoff that the massive expenditures required to create a national synthetic fuels capability should not commit the nation to large-scale dependence on coal for the indefinite future. This is the first time that an Academy group issued a specific policy recommendation, ambiguous although it may be, related to global warming. Olson 2014 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4077050/
Why this matters.
We. Knew. Never forget, we knew.
What happened next?
Synfuels got killed off by Reagan, along with a lot of good stuff. And we had to wait until 1988 to wake up. A decade lost (but then, we would have pissed it against the wall, I guess).
References:
Nierenberg, N. Tshinkel, W. and Tshinkel, V. (2010) Early Climate Change Consensus at the National Academy: The Origins and Making of Changing Climate. Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences, Vol. 40, Number 3, pps. 318–349. [online here]
Olson, S. (2014) The National Academy of Sciences at 150. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2014 Jun 24; 111(Suppl 2): 9327–9364.
On this day, June 20, 1979, US President Jimmy Carter had 32 solar panels put on the White House.
It was organised by Dennis Hayes, who had been one of the co-ordinators of Earth Day in 1970, and then headed of Carter’s Solar Energy Research Institute
There is a brilliant blog post by Oliver Carpenter of the UK Science Museum about this here. See also Scientific American.
On this day, March 23, 1977, Jimmy Carter, then President of the United States, announced that he was gonna look into the future.
”I am directing the Council on Environmental Quality and the Department of State, working in cooperation with … other appropriate agencies, to make a one-year study of the probable changes in the world’s population, natural resources, and environment through the end of the century.”
President Jimmy Carter May 23,1977
This finally came out in mid-1980 as the “Global 2000” report, when he was a dead duck (rather than a lame one, which came later).
The Global 2000 report gave us the phrase “sustainable development” and, of course, had a section on carbon dioxide.
This was, after all, after the Charney Report, after the First World Climate Conference and so on.
Exxon knew, we knew.
Why this matters.
States had been doing these sorts of forecasting things for a few years. This one could have mattered. Oh well.
What happened next?
Carter was thoroughly blasted out of office in November 1980 (with an independent splitting the “progressive” vote), and Ronald Reagan became the meat puppet representative of a whole lot of ever-so-slightly regressive guys, who did everything they could to slow down the awareness of/consensus around the “carbon dioxide problem” as it was then called.
