Eighteen years ago, on this day, September 11th, 2006 former Vice-President Al Gore was on a flying visit to Australia. Australian writer Murray Hogarth in his The Third Degree” book claims it as ‘the day’ everything changed (i.e. the climate issue broke through)
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 382ppm. As of 2024 it is 420ishppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that concern/activism about Australia, and its potential vulnerability to permanent and escalating climate change had been building for a while. This was partly because of the Millennium Drought. Al Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth had come out. In April a bunch of businesses – Westpac et al – had had another go at saying that John Howard did not have a monopoly on what business wanted. And then in the summer, well, obviously there’d been the UK Climate Camp, which got some global coverage. There were serious moves afoot in the UNFCCC and it was clear that Bush’s and Howard’s technology focus spoiler organisations were inadequate. And along came Al Gore for a flying visit. And according to Murray Hogarth, in his short book, “The Third Degree” this was the straw that broke the camel’s back and gave Australia its big wave of climate concern.
What we learn is that there will be sort of straw that breaks the camel’s back or a spark that sets off the fire, but it’s usually a long time coming.
What happened next. Labor’s Kevin Rudd surfed the wave to topple Liberal John Howard, and then because Rudd screwed the pooch between 2008 and 2010, his deputy, Julia Gillard had to take over and clean up the mess (which she did, though it didn’t last).
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:
September 11, 1961 – New York Times reports “Air Found Gaining in Carbon Dioxide”