Fifty seven years ago, on this day, March 20th, 1967, a solar energy advocate pointed to carbon dioxide build-up as a problem…
March 20 1967 Introductory address to Solar Energy Society conference in Tempe Arizona by Peter E Glazer – “In addition, concerns were emerging out of the nascent environmental movement about the potential for “certain new technologies” to “imperil the future welfare and safety of mankind.”
The possibility of global warming caused by the accumulation of atmospheric carbon dioxide, and problems stemming from the disposal of radioactive waste, constituted additional “limitations on the tremendously increased requirements expected for electrical power over the next century.”
Charles E Johnson 2015 (PhD thesis)
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 322ppm. As of 2024 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that by this stage, articles were appearing in mainstream newspapers, but also in specialist publications. The nuclear lobby was talking about climate change – see the Glenn Seaborg commencement address in San Diego in 1966. And so it’s not entirely surprising that an advocate of solar energy should pick up on the carbon dioxide problem and communicate it.
What we learn from this is that proponents of different energy systems besides digging up rocks, and oil and gas, were already talking about CO2 build-up. By the late 1960s it was appearing more prominently in scientific journals ( Philip Abelson, the editor of Science mentions it, for example).
What happened next, solar energy didn’t get the kinds of investment that it needed. And it took another 50 years really before it became a serious player. Because the species has a death wish, actually, that’s not accurate; I don’t think the species necessarily has a death wish. I think there are people within the species who are very comfortable getting rich and being rich, flogging fossil fuels, and they’re hardly inspired by the idea that the fossil fuels they’re flogging need to be rapidly phased down or phased out. This is hardly a controversial view. It’s just they’ve been doing it for a lot longer than we think perhaps.
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.
References
Johnson, C. 2015. “Turn on the Sunshine”: A History of the Solar Future. PhD thesis, University of Washington
Also on this day:
March 20, 1987 – The “sustainable development” Brundtland Report was released