Twenty six years ago, on this day, March 14, 1997, a Liberal senator spews his usual nonsense.
Senator Parer seems to be an exception. For instance, at the Australasian Institute of Minerals and Metallurgy Annual Conference at Ballarat Senator Warwick Parer said: “I don’t have any figures to back this up, but I think people will say in 10 years that it [greenhouse] was the Club of Rome” and “The attitude of this government is to look for ways to allow projects to go ahead.” The SMH (14.3.97 ‘Greenhouse effect? No worries says Parer’.).
(Duncan, 1997:83)
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 364.6ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was
Warwick Parer – and I can say this because he’s dead – was a shonk and he caused political problems for Howard. He was the kind of old white man who wants to believe that physics doesn’t exist. And so he came out with that idiotic line about in 10 years, dot, dot dot. And Howard was busy, by this time, trying to do nothing or commit Australia to nothing around the Kyoto Protocol.
What I think we can learn from this
Old white men who don’t like the consequences of industrialization will try to wish it away. And they will predict that the whole fad will die. And it hasn’t, and it won’t
The basic question of how we’re supposed to survive the 21st century behaving as we do, has not yet been answered.
What happened next
Parer was sacked as Minister in 1998. He produced an anti renewables report in 2002. He died in 2014.
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
Transcript of Kerry O’Brien and John Howard –https://pmtranscripts.pmc.gov.au/release/transcript-10644