BRIEF HISTORY OF CLIMATE CHANGE / A NEW VENUS IN THE MAKING

“I.

My blood boils with anger.

What is it with I.humanity?

We just don’t get it.

The word was out by 1979 –

Gordon McDonald and Rafe Pomerance

did their carbon-dioxide road show

throughout the federal hierarchy.

Everyone was on board, even the oil and gas industry.

We needed to act on climate change—pronto!

Efforts to propose climate policy failed in 1979.

Carter signed the Energy Security Act of 1980,

yet planned to invest in synthetic fuel.

Reagan declared war on solar energy,

took down Carter’s solar panels on the White House, and

cut the budget on carbon-dioxide research.

Gore’s hearing in 1981 and 1982 confirmed the science

when James Hansen testified before Congress.

Hansen again testified in 1988 at Wirth’s hearing.

Yet George H.W. Bush did not get it, and Sununu,

his chief of staff, thought it was hogwash.

My blood boils with anger.

II.

Then came the 1990s—the turning point

and the big push to misinform; an aggressive defensive program—

the oil and gas industry worried about the cost.

Before the Rio Conference in 1992,

all action on climate change was watered down in the framework treaty.

With Kyoto, the oil industry paid millions on one ad

to make sure the U.S. did not ratify the new treaty.

Then came the Paris Agreement in 2015—hurray, everyone’s on board!

It’s a binding treaty—But wait!

It has no binding reduction commitments and no sanctions.

Unless we reduce our emission drastically,

we won’t stay below the 2 degrees Celsius limit of warming—

compared to pre-industrial levels

to avoid devastating climate change impacts.

My blood boils with anger. Anita Halvorssen”