Tag: John Sununu

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IPCC United States of America

Feb 5 1990 – A president says what he is told…

On this day, 33 years ago, February 5 1990, President George H.W. Bush gave a welcoming address to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which was then meeting in the US to push towards its first report (released May/August that year).

https://www.c-span.org/video/?11033-1/presidential-address

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 354.5ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that Bush had mouthed all the right words on the campaign trail in 1988 “those who worry about the Greenhouse Effect are forgetting about the Whitehouse Effect” blah blah.  Once in office, he’d allowed various attack dogs to slow down any progress.

The speech, we now know, had been the subject of bureaucratic fighting…

REINSTEIN: The President made a welcoming speech at the January 1990 meeting, but it was unusually warm. Every time we hosted an international meeting on climate change, it was exceptionally warm, record warmth for the day.…

As an indication of the White House approach, the leaders of the Energy Department and EPA had collaborated to produce a text for the President for this meeting, and they proudly brought it to the White House and gave it to [pictured, White House Chief of Staff] John Sununu saying, “We have got a statement here that both of us can agree on: Energy and environment.”

Sununu’s response was to tear up the document and throw it in the trash and say, “Thank you but no thank you. Don’t do this again unless I ask you to.” Sununu and I got along for whatever reason….

https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/remarks-the-intergovernmental-panel-climate-change

What I think we can learn from this

Behind most speeches/statements there’s an untold tale of fighting….

What happened next

Bush and his dogs kept on keeping on. In 1992 the Europeans blinked in a staring contest, and targets and timetables were removed from the draft of the text of the climate treaty…

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International processes United States of America

April 21, 1992 – President Bush again threatens to boycott Earth Summit

On this day, April 21 1992, George HW Bush, President of the United States, speaking at something called the “Young Presidents’ Organization” said “I’m not going to the Rio conference and make a bad deal or be party to a bad deal.”  (full speech here).

The context is that countries, especially France, had been trying to get a stronger deal agreed and then signed at Rio  Bush who was up for re-election that November didn’t want to be seen as going along with what the French and everyone else wanted and being too environmental, and didn’t want to upset his oil buddy mates. His recently deposed Chief of Staff, John Sununu, had successfully blocked/watered down various initiatives.

Why this matters. 

We need to understand that the actions of the Americans in this crucial period have shaped everything that’s happened since.

What happened next?

The French blinked. Michael Howard, as Environment Minister for the UK, was able to come up with the compromise. There was a final special meeting of the international negotiating committee in May in New York, and the deal was set for the big photo op…

There were no targets and timetables in the UNFCCC process, and what we have now, since Paris, is a warmed over version of a “pledge and review” model disregarded in 1991 as inadequate.

Did I mention I didn’t breed and that it’s looking like a smarter and smarter decision?

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United States of America

April 9, 2019- brutal book review “a script for a West Wing episode about climate change, only with less repartee.”

On this day, on the 9th of April 2019,, a scathing review of the planning of Rich’s “Losing Earth” was published. The review, which you can read here, included this priceless observation

“Other than Sununu’s vindictiveness and human shortsightedness, we have very little sense of the forces arrayed against Hansen and Pomerance. The inattention to the fossil-fuel industry is most glaring, but Rich also fails to address the consolidation of business interests more broadly against efforts to decarbonize. Nor do we get a glimpse of the movements that might have responded otherwise—say, those outside DC organizing against Reaganomics. So reading Losing Earth often feels like reading a script for a West Wing episode about climate change, only with less repartee.”

FWIW IMO. Nathaniel Rich has told an interesting human scale story of a few individuals in the second crucial decade, the 1980s. But the reviewer is largely correct in what they’ve said. 

Why this matters. 

Mustn’t get bogged down in the he said/she said, the minutiae. Gotta see the big picture, but it can be tricky, especially when you’ve dug up fascinating factoids.