Forty eight years ago, on this day, July 11st, 1979,
“We will protect our environment. But when this Nation critically needs a refinery or a pipeline, we will build it.”
1979 15 July – Carter’s Address to the Nation on Energy and National Goals: “The Malaise Speech”
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 336ppm. 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 from the mid-1960s US Presidents had been getting warnings about carbon dioxide build-up. It meant some nice speeches and reports, but not much else. Carter didn’t mention carbon dioxide build-up in his malaise speech – it would have been very cool if he had, but the politics of it would have been terrible.
The specific context was that Carter was putting his finger on something, for all the good it did him.
What I think we can learn from this – people cannot handle very much truth, now can they?
What happened next- those bastards stole the summer
On this topic, you might like these other posts on All Our Yesterdays
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References
There is a book about Carter’s malaise speech, its genesis, its reception and aftermath.
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.
If you want to get involved, let me know.
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:
July 15, 1968 – first(?) UK government attention to the possibility of climate change
July 15, 1972 – Soviet Weekly on how man affects the weather…
July 15, 1977 – “Heavy Use of Coal May Bring Adverse Shift in Climate”
July 15, 1988 – “Racing on Capitol Hill for Title of “Mr Greenhouse”
July 15, 1991 – RIP Roger Revelle
July 15, 1994 – ALP and BCA in good cop bad cop routine
July 15, 2005 – The “Stern Review” into #climate is announced…