Thirty seven years ago, on this day, March 1st, 1989,
Federal Cabinet is set to back calls for an international treaty to protect the environment, a move which could drastically alter the nation’s future pattern of trade and the development of its resources.
Australia would support an international treaty to guard against potentially dangerous shifts in the earth’s climate and atmosphere, under a submission expected to go before Cabinet’s structural adjustment committee today.
[The Hague]
Dunn, R. 1989. Environmental pact backed. Australian Financial Review, 1 March.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 353ppm. As of 2026 it is 428ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The broader context was that Australia had been warned about climate change build up repeatedly by scientists, the CSIRO had been beavering away on it since the early 70s. There had been a secret report called Fossil Fuels and The Greenhouse Effect in, or done by the Office of National Assessments in 1981. There had been Barry Jones, Minister of Science, organising the Greenhouse Project between the CSIRO’s atmospheric physics division and the Commission for the Future. And the issue had exploded into public awareness. In ‘88 there had been the “greenhouse 88” conference, linked by satellite to 10 towns and cities in Australia, everyone was holding hands and saying, “We will deal with this problem.”
The specific context is that the idea of an international treaty to deal with climate was high on the agenda because the ozone problem had had an international treaty, and then protocols were underway, So there was a meeting at The Hague without the big beasts deliberately. I should look into why the Dutch called it. Anyway, Australia, under Bob Hawke, was going to take a positive and proactive role.
What I think we can learn from this is that Australia, at the outset, was not what it is now. And this is in part because I think the business groups were caught on the back foot, as they often are at the beginning of a window of concern, and just assumed that it would all blow over – they weren’t pushing hard back. And so the pro action forces had kind of an open goal.
What happened next is that business did indeed wake up, and the pushback against any meaningful climate policy kicked into gear in late 1989 early 1990. Perhaps business had thought that they didn’t need to do much because a Liberal government was coming back, and despite the fine words of people like Chris Puplick, a business friendly Liberal government could be relied on to prevent meaningful climate action. That’s just speculation on my part.
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
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Also on this day:
March 1, 1954 – Lucky Dragon incident gives the world the word “fall out”
March 1, 1967 – Carbon dioxide as important waste problem
March 1, 1970 – so many tribes, so few common interests – All Our Yesterdays
