Fifty five years ago, on this day, February 20th, 1970, a “Committee on the Environment” is set up by South Australian Premier Steele Hall
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 325ppm. As of 2025 it is 427ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that from the middle of 1969 people in Western countries (at a minimum Australia, the UK and the US – probably the same in a lot of other places, idk) were beginning to be up in arms about air pollution, water pollution, species loss, etc, etc, j
And there were calls for immediate action. There had been the Senate, the Federal Senate Committees on air pollution and water pollution was coming too. And so all across the states, you would see these sorts of well, let’s set up a committee with stakeholders, with scientists, with business, with leading lights in civil society and the wise men will come up after a year or two with a series of recommendations. That’s what this was.
What I think we can learn from this is that there was a real push in 1969-1971, to respond institutionally, culturally, to what was clearly a major problem. This was part of that.
What happened next The Environment Committee eventually released a report in May 1972 just before the Stockholm conference. It included mention of carbon dioxide, by the way, as a potential problem but kicked it into the “more research needed” basket (not unreasonably, given the state of knowledge at the time).
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.