Thirty-three years ago, on this day, June 8th, 1991, the UK Minister for the Environment, Michael Heseltine, went on a (futile) mission to the US to try to get them to be less of a blocker in the negotiations around the climate treaty that had to be agreed at the Rio Earth Summit of June 1992.
You can see lots of gory details here.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 355ppm. As of 2024 it is 426ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the climate negotiations were upon us in full flow. The UK had just adopted the stabilisation target at least. But it was clear that the administration of George HW Bush was digging in its heels and generally being douchey. Environment Minister Michael Heseltine was therefore dispatched to see what could be done.
What we learn from this is that even under John Major the UK was trying to be less terrible than the Bush outfit. And they’re always these behind the scenes games. It is actually one of those little incidents that would be nice to cover. Heseltine was fresh from challenging Margaret Thatcher for the leadership and precipitating her departure.
What happened next? The American anti climate clique went round spreading bullshit about Heseltine and there was actually very unusually a public rebuke of this. See questions in Parliament about the July 12th 1991 article in The Times. For all the good it did. And then less than a year later, the pantomime ended with the British dispatching another envoy, Michael Howard this time, to raise the white flag on behalf of the Europeans. Targets and timetables were dead. A Tale of Two envoys…
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 8, 1973 – Australian Treasury dismisses carbon dioxide build-up. Yes, 1973.
June 8, 1973 – Australian Treasury forced to acknowledge carbon dioxide…
