Forty six years ago, on this day, October 14, 1977, the head of the United Nations Environment Program mentions climate at an UNESCO conference on environmental education.
Tolba at Tblisi UNESCO conference on environmental education 14 Oct 1977 https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000032763
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 333.7ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the United Nations Environment Program, although small and weak compared to other UN bodies, still had some weight. One of its sticks was environmental education. Mostafa Tolba here was well aware of the climate problem and was helping Bert Bolin stitch together the kind of international cooperation and collaboration that you need for an international problem.
What I think we can learn from this is that in the 1970s people were banging on about climate change in the context of Environmental education.
[insert screen grab of 1983 thesis abstract that you sent Jenna Ashton]
What happened next
Here we are 40 years later and environmental education is still not on the agenda. I think part of this is if you did teach children about the fragility of the planet and and how to do systems thinking then it would be harder to keep them in line as obedient production and consumption units
see also Noam Chomsky quote on the Kyoto Protocol and what they teach you at university highly educated people is to conform and consume.
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.
