Sixteen years ago, on this day, September 27th, 2010,
J Gillard (Prime Minister), Prime Minister establishes Climate Change Committee [and] Terms of Reference, media release, 27 September 2010.
Transcript 17390 | PM Transcripts
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 390ppm. 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 Australian political elites had been well aware of carbon dioxide build up as a problem stretching back to the early 1970s They had, of course, ignored the problem for as long as possible, because there are no easy solutions, and it would interfere with the power, privilege, and profit of the donor class.
Also it’s just not easy to fix. It’s really not, or not easy to fix within the parameters set.
After successfully tamping down concern by elites in the early 1990s and then again through the 2000s in 2006 the issue had exploded onto the public agenda, Labor had used it as a stick to beat the Liberal National Government. However, Labor in power had then monumentally fucked it up, Kevin Rudd, Penny Wong, etc.
The specific context was Julia Gillard was forced to try to clean up the mess because there was no way of having a government without carbon pricing. Therefore, she set up the multiparty climate change committee, the MPCCC. She extended invites to everyone; the Independents and the Greens took her up, and the Liberals and Nationals, of course, did not.
What I think we can learn from this is that politics is the slow boring of hard boards, as per old Maxie [Weber] and but meanwhile some solutions, some problems rather just keep growing if you ignore them or a half-assed and solution solving them, i.e. wicked problems, and of course super wicked problems.
What happened next The MPC beavered away, produced its reports and recommendations, and this became the legislation for the clean energy package, which passed in September 2011 and the emissions trading portion of that began on first of July 2012 and may have helped reduce emissions for a bit. Then it was of course abolished by Tony Abbott.
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On this topic, you might like these other posts on All Our Yesterdays
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References
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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.
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Also on this day:
September 27, 1962 – “Silent Spring” published as a book
September 27, 1988 – UNEP should become world eco-regime
September 27, 1988 – Margaret Thatcher comes out as a lentil-eating greenie…
September 27, 1995 – Greenhouse progress in Australia? None. Zip. Zero.