Tag: Richard Nixon

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United States of America

April 10, 1969 – Nixon schmoozes North Atlantic Council on environment

Fifty five years ago, on this day, April 10th, 1969, new US President, Tricky Dick Nixon, was schmoozing, trying to get ahead of the environment issue (huge since the Santa Barbara Oil Spill) and also distract from the ongoing atrocities in Vietnam.

Nixon to North Atlantic Council April 10, 1969 – “Having forged a working partnership, we all have a unique opportunity to pool our skills, our intellects, and our inventiveness in finding new ways to use technology to enhance our environments, and not to destroy them.”

https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/address-the-commemorative-session-the-north-atlantic-council

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 324.6ppm. As of 2024 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that Nixon was bombing the crap out of Vietnam. It turned out he had not got a “secret plan for ending the war”, as he had promised during the 1968 election campaign. Bombing Vietnam back into the Stone Age was causing a certain diplomatic froideur. And so he was hoping to throw the environment onto the table as something for the Europeans to focus on instead of all the dead, napalmed, Vietnamese babies. 

What we learn is that there are dead cats and fluffy cats. You throw a dead cat on the table when you want to distract from something but you can also throw some kittens onto the table and say, “Aren’t they nice?” Both tactics are used. 

What happened next? The Europeans were largely unconvinced. They had their own European Conservation Year. There were talks about NATO and its Committee on Challenges for Modern Societies. And Daniel Patrick Moynihan was writing memos by September.

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

Hamblin, J.D. Arming Mother Nature: The Birth of Catastrophic Environmentalism 

Also on this day: 

April 10th, 2010 – activists hold “party at the pumps”

April 10, 2013 – US companies pretend they care, make “Climate Declaration”

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United States of America

January 28, 1969 – Santa Barbara Oil spill

Fifty five years ago, on this day, January 28, 1969.

“Oil from an offshore rig had covered the Santa Barbara beaches, trapping and killing the shore birds. College students and other young people had been enlisted to try to save the birds, by hand, one at a time. So night after night, television carried pictures of crying young people with dying birds in their arms. The networks picked this up… and across the continent environmental pollution came to be viewed as a highly personal, deeply involving part of people’s lives. The television viewers identified with the young volunteers and felt their pain.” (Sachsman, 2000)

1969 Blow out leading to Santa Barbara Oil Spill http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1969_Santa_Barbara_oil_spill

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 324ppm. As of 2024 it is 422ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that offshore oil drilling had been underway off the Santa Barbara coast for a number of years. There had been rising concerns about environmental pollution starting first in the cities and the air quality but also a river had caught fire or was to later in the same year, but it really caught fire before and generally a sense of fear about the consequences of industry.

What we learn – the Santa Barbara oil spill happening in a rich place managed to act as a kind of lightning rod for all of this stuff. It’s really the starting pistol for a lot. And it jolts people into awareness of the costs attached. The fact that it happened to rich people who were powerless to overcome the bureaucracy is kind of entertaining. So there’s some rather useful chapters in Wholly Round. There’s also “GOO” “get oil out”, which is akin to “Just Stop Oil.” And a sense that things were going tits up. 

What happened next? There’s a three year flurry of concern. Earth Day happens in April of 1970. And then it kind of peters out by ‘72, after the Stockholm conference. You start to get other issues impinging especially stagflation economic crisis, the oil shock, etc. 

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

SEE ALSO HARVEY MOLOTCH 1970 AND Raina Galaitas “Wholly Round” book
And Gordon MacDonald about The Environment

Also on this day: 

January 28, 2013 – Doomed “Green Deal” home insulation scheme launched in the UK

January 28, 1993 – Parliament protest – “Wake Up, the World is Dying” – Guest Post by Hugh Warwick

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Chile

September 11, 1973 – CIA coup topples Chilean democracy

Fifty years ago, on this day, September 11, 1973, the planes started bombing the Parliament, the troops started shooting, and the elected leader of Chile, Salvador Allende, was killed.

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 329ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that Allende had been in the rifle sites for a while. “Make the economy scream”, Nixon had said. Meanwhile, various theorists of technology were trying to figure out how you could have the advantages of automation computers feedback loops without creating a dictatorship of the higher order. So how could technology be used to make smarter more democratic decisions? One of the people thinking in these terms was Stafford Beer who was trying to get a program around this going in in Chile. Would it have worked? Almost certainly not. But it would have been nice to learn from the failures and try again and again until there were ways it could succeed? Yes.

What I think we can learn from this is that in general socialist democracy scared the s*** out of Nixon, Kissinger ITT etc. The threat of a good example and all that… And it reminds me of that anecdote from Carl Rogers about the experimental factory where profits remain high but managers realise they would have to give up a lot of their power and they don’t want to.

What happened next is that Pinochet ruled until 1990. He made the mistake of holding a referendum, believing he was popular… He was then pursued legally and and of course the Blair government was never going to let him be extradited to Spain because they were doing what the Americans wanted. Pinochet would have blown the gaff and put the spotlight on Nixon who by this time was dead but also on Kissinger who was still very much alive. There would have been teachable moments about  the CIA and its behaviour. 

Stafford Beer, well he died in 2002. Cybersyn never took off.

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

See also https://www.academia.edu/23198933/A_critique_of_pure_cybernetic_reason_the_Chilean_experience_with_cybernetics

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Science United States of America

December 3, 1972 – #climate scientists write “gizza grant” letter to President Nixon

On this day, December 3 in 1972, some climate scientists wrote a “give us money to study climate” letter to President Nixon.

“After the conference the conference organizers, (the late G. J. Kukla and R. K. Mathews) wrote to President  Nixon (December 3, 1972) calling for federal action on possible climate change. At that time, with no consensus on climate change, their letter was an important impetus to expanding research. The letter noted that the “main  conclusion of the meeting was that a global deterioration of climate, by order of magnitude larger than any hitherto experience by civilized mankind, is a very real possibility and indeed may be due very soon.” On the question of “artificial heating” of the atmosphere, as opposed to orbital changes for ice ages, the letter concluded  that “knowledge necessary for understanding the mechanism of climate change is lamentably inadequate and the ultimate causes remain unknown” (Kukla and Mitchell, 1972) [4]  

Hecht, A. 2014, Past, Present and Future: Urgency of Dealing with Climate Change. Atmospheric and Climate Sciences
Vol.04 No.05

[The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 327ppm. At time of writing it was 419ishppm- but for what it is now,well, see here for the latest.]

The context was this – 

Everyone knew there’d be new money for this sort of science, and wanted a piece of the action. Not to be cynical or anything.

Why this matters. 

Kulka and Mitchell were wrong.  We need to remember that there isn’t this “straight narrow line” from ignorance to knowledge. The real world is messy af.

What happened next?

Iirc, they got some dosh, but within a couple of years it became obvious they were wrong

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United States of America

November 7, 1973 – Energy security avant la Ukraine: Nixon announces “Project Independence”

On this day, November 7  in 1973 US President Richard Nixon announced “Project Independence” to increase domestic US energy production (especially from coal), in the immediate aftermath of the first Oil  Shock.

Nixon had been warned about carbon dioxide build-up, it was a known thing (see for example August 3, on this site, from 1970 “Nixon warned about climate change and icecaps melting”) But, as with Shale Gas and synfuels slightly later (under Carter), all bets are off when consumers are facing higher energy prices.

[The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 326 ish ppm. At time of writing it was 416ppm- but for what it is now, well, see here for the latest.]

Why this matters. 

The first oil shock was part of the turbulence that ended the “Glorious Thirty” – three decades of sustained economic growth in the West.  See also “The Great Acceleration”, which has continued non-stop

What happened next?

Vietnam, Watergate, Second Oil Shock etc etc etc.

Categories
United States of America

September 17, 1969 – trying to spin Vietnam, Moynihan starts warning about #climate change

On this day, September 17 1969, Patrick Moynihan, wrote a memo to the Nixon administration warning of the build up of carbon dioxide.

See here.

To quote yesterday’s blog, which was also about 1969, the context is that by the late 1960s smart people were paying attention to – and starting to get worried about – carbon dioxide build-up. Burnet was not alone in this.

But the broader context – which I have not seen in the popular accounts of Moynihan’s warning (it crops up on Twitter occasionaly). Tricky Dick Nixon was keen to get Europeans thinking about, well, anything other than Vietnam, and was seeking to retool NATO to include “challenges to modern society” – including ‘the environment’.

Connecting with President-elect Richard Nixon in 1968, he joined Nixon’s White House Staff as Counselor to the President for Urban Affairs. He was very influential at that time, as one of the few people in Nixon’s inner circle who had done academic research related to social policies.

In 1969, on the initiative of Nixon, NATO tried to establish a third civil column, establishing itself as a hub of research and initiatives in the civil region, dealing as well with environmental topics.[6] Moynihan[6] named Acid Rain and the Greenhouse effect as suitable international challenges to be dealt by NATO. NATO was chosen, since the mutual defense organization had suitable expertise in the field and experience with international research coordination. The German government was skeptical and saw the initiative as an attempt to regain international terrain after the lost Vietnam War. The topics, however, gained momentum in civil conferences and institutions.[6]

https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Daniel_Patrick_Moynihan

Why this matters.

Let no-one tell you this was a sudden surprise in 1988 (and even if it were, we’ve had a generation to start taking action).

What happened next?

More and more people became aware of the problems. But awareness is not political and economic power, and those who were doing nicely from the sale of deliciously cheap and abundant fossil fuels saw no reason to stop. And every reason to stop those who wanted them to stop. So that’s what they did, very well, for a very long time. Eternity, effectively.

Categories
Ignored Warnings Science Scientists United States of America

August 3, 1970 – Nixon warned about climate change and icecaps melting

On this day, 3 August 1970, the first report of the Council on Environmental Quality was delivered to Preside Nixon. It contained a chapter on inadvertent weather modification, carbon dioxide build-up and icecaps melting. 

The CEQ had been set up as part of the legislative process that had gathered momentum under Johnson and come to fruition by late 1969.  

On this day the PPM was 324.69ppm

Now it is 421ish- but see here for the latest.

Why this matters. 

By early 1970s, folks were going “you know, this really might become a problem.”  By the mid-late 1970s the smarter ones dropped the “might”…

What happened next?

The CEQ didn’t return to the climate issue until Carter, best I can tell. And then Gus Speth, as its boss, got cracking with getting things moving, having been nudged by Gordon MacDonald and Rafe Pomerance of Friends of the Earth.

Gordon MacDonald had already been writing about this stuff (see his chapter in the Nigel Calder book). He would go on to be important in the fight against synfuels.

Categories
Economics of mitigation Predatory delay United States of America

1971, Jan 6: the whiff of sulphur (taxes) and 20 more years of #PredatoryDelay

On this day 51 years ago the idea of – gasp –  putting a tax on something that was causing environmental damage (cuh-razy communist idea) was kicked around within the Nixon administration.

We know this thanks to a really great book called Behind the Curve, by Joshua Howe, which looks at the climate issue before it became famous (see review in Environmental Politics here [paywalled]).

“As early as 1970 the Nixon administration considered levying a tax on SO2 tied to energy production from coal.”

(Howe, 2014:148)

And the footnote has it – John C. Whitaker to Ken Cole, memorandum, Jan 6 1971 “Sulfur Dioxide Emissions Charge,” memo for John B. Connally [sic] Jr. secretary of treasury, Nov. 11 1971. The tax was never implemented, in part because the Office of Management and Budget showed that it would work too well, taxing SO2 emissions out of existence before the program could generate enough revenue to meet Nixon’s pro-business political goals. (Howe, 2014:244) 

Why this matters – we are told that this is all impossible to do anything about – over-emphasised complexification, as part of the predatory delay.  Of course, climate is a much bigger/wider issue than acid rain, and carbon (in the form of fossil fuels) is far harder to replace in the production chain than CFCs or sulfur.  But the basic point – that you can put up taxes on things you are trying to discourage, as long as you think about/do something serious about  the distributional effects on the poorest and most vulnerable – should be entirely uncontroversial. As we will see, this has not been the case.

What happened next?

It would be another 20 years before anything substantive got done about sulphur in the US, with the 1990 Clean Air Act.  The question  of whether emissions trading mattered, or whether technological developments independent of a price-on-sulphur has given academics, activists and policymakers something to write and talk about too. 

Further reading

Bohr, J. (2016) The ‘climatism’ cartel: why climate change deniers oppose market-based mitigation policy. Environmental Politics, Vol. 25, 5.  https://doi.org/10.1080/09644016.2016.1156106

Brigham Daniels, Andrew P. Follett, and Joshua Davis, The Making of the Clean Air Act, 71 HASTINGS L.J. 901 (2020). Available at: https://repository.uchastings.edu/hastings_law_journal/vol71/iss4/3

Gabriel Chan, Robert Stavins, Robert Stowe, and Richard Sweeney (2012) THE SO2 ALLOWANCE-TRADING SYSTEM AND THE CLEAN AIR ACT AMENDMENTS OF 1990: REFLECTIONS ON 20 YEARS OF POLICY INNOVATION. National Tax Journal, 65 (2), 419–452


Lohmann, L. 2006. Carry On Polluting: Comment and analysis in New Scientist. The Cornerhouse, 2 December.