Thirty one years ago, on this day, October 4th, 1993,
London, Sunday It was difficult to see how global carbon dioxide emissions could be stabilised by 2000 unless governments implemented politically unacceptable decisions, the new chief executive of the World Coal Institute said last week.
But Dr Alex Toohey, a former director of Shell Coal International who took over as head of the WCI on Friday, said the move toward clean coal technologies would be stepped up in the next five years.
Noack, K. 1993. Emission Cuts A Hard Choice, Says Coal Chief. The Age, 4 October.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 357ppm. As of 2024 it is 422ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the fossil fuel lobbyists had managed to defeat a strong deal at the Rio Earth Summit in June 1992. But the issue clearly wasn’t going to go away because already a bunch of nations had ratified the treaty. And it was clear there was going to be a series of meetings about what to do. The coal industry was still largely helpless because none of the technological options was convincing to them, let alone to anyone else. And so, we see here some hand wringing and some indication of technology as a magic fix. Sprinkle the word “innovation”, bish bosh and you’re done.
What we learn is that the fossil fuel industry was helpless, and naked. The reason it’s fighting so hard now with CCS is because it doesn’t have anything else.
What happened next? The World Coal Institute changed its name more than once. But you can’t really put that much lipstick on a pig and the emissions kept climbing
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.
Also on this day:
October 4, 1978 – the Interdepartmental group on Climatology meets for the first time…
