The Age of Global Warming: A History
Page 13
Barbara Ward, the conference’s other star, addressed delegates in her sunglasses; it was unsustainable if two thirds of humanity stayed poor so that one third could stay rich. Robert McNamara, president of the World Bank, claimed that the evidence was ‘overwhelming’ that a century of very rapid growth had contributed to a ‘monstrous assault on the quality of life in the developed [sic] countries’.[46]
China, making its first appearance at a major international conference since taking its seat at the UN, used the conference to attack imperialism and colonialism. It tried to turn the proposed Preamble to the Declaration on the Human Environment into a Maoist diatribe. The environment had been endangered by ‘plunder, aggression and war by colonialists, imperialists and neo-colonialists’. Theories of over-population were attacked along classic Marxist lines (‘the notorious Malthusian theory is absurd in theory and groundless in fact’).[47]
As the conference drew to a close, it was touch-and-go whether it would end in failure. Exhausted delegates haggled about the final wording of a draft declaration and argued what had been achieved during the eleven days of the conference. Strong had to deal with the prospect of a walk-out by the Chinese, as Beijing hadn’t instructed them how to vote on the final declaration. He astutely suggested that instead of leaving the room, they should just stand behind their seats. That way, they’d neither vote, nor abstain, but be reported as present. It enabled the conference chairman to declare the resolution passed by consensus.
‘What came out of Stockholm is about what we expected – not much,’ said Brazil’s Carlos Calero Rodrigues.[48] In his speech to the conference, Strong admitted that the draft declaration was less than the inspirational and comprehensive code of international environmental conduct that was needed. It was, he claimed, an indispensable beginning.[49]
The Stockholm declaration enshrined the Founex contradiction, that the economic development of advanced nations caused environmental problems; in developing countries, the same process reduced them. It then went on to set out twenty-six principles. These included a condemnation of apartheid and all foreign and colonial domination (principle one); that natural resources should be subject to ‘careful planning or management’ (2); the benefits from finite resources should be shared by all mankind (5); the need for the transfer of ‘substantial’ financial and technological aid to developing nations (9); that schools and the mass media should disseminate information on the environment (19); and that international policy should be decided cooperatively by all countries ‘on an equal footing’ (24), i.e., making it more difficult for the West to impose its environmental priorities on the rest of the world.[50]
The conference also agreed nearly a hundred recommendations ranging from the need for genetic cataloguing to measuring and limiting noise emissions. These included half a page of recommendations concerning the atmosphere. Governments should be ‘mindful’ of activities in which there is appreciable risk of effects on climate. Ten baseline stations should be established in remote areas to monitor changes in the atmosphere that might cause climatic changes. The World Meteorological Organisation should continue to carry out its Global Atmospheric Research Programme to understand whether the causes of climatic changes were natural or the result of man’s activities.[51]
Compared to the half page given to global warming, the oceans and marine pollution took four and a half pages. Lured by the prospect of near limitless supplies of minerals on and beneath the seabed, in the first decade after Stockholm, the environmental and developing world agenda focused on the oceans. Attention only switched to the atmosphere and global warming from the mid-1980s.
The G77 backed Kenya’s bid to host the new UN Environment Program based in Nairobi and Strong became its first head. Stockholm’s most important legacy was the twinning of global environmentalism with the Third World’s aid and development agenda as a way of managing their inherent contradictions.
The first environmental wave had risen with great suddenness and force. A decade separates Silent Spring and the Stockholm conference. Even more sudden was the speed of its apparent collapse.
When Barbara Ward died in 1981, obituarists ran out of superlatives, the Guardian calling her one of the most brilliant contributors to economic and political thought since the 1930s.[52] Her contribution to the forging of global environmentalism and her role at the world’s first conference on the environment barely rated a mention.
* The encyclical also gave the Catholic Church’s sanction to the expropriation landed estates in the name of the ‘common good’ – a position espoused by Catholic distributists such as G.K. Chesterton earlier in the twentieth century. Ward, like Schumacher, was a successor to the distributists.
* Ehrlich has a record of making predictions that turn out spectacularly wrong. In 1970 he said that if he was a gambler, he would take even money that England would not exist in the year 2000. Quoted in Julian L. Simon, The Ultimate Resource (1981), p. 101.
[1] Maurice Strong, ‘Our common future – 15 years after the Stockholm conference’ in World Media Institute, TRIBUTE …to Barbara Ward: Lady of Global Concern (1987), p. 79.
[2] Maurice Strong, Where on Earth are We Going? (2001), p. 51.
[3] ibid., p. 58.
[4] ibid., p. 118.
[5] ibid.
[6] Strong, ‘Our common future – 15 years after the Stockholm conference’ in World Media Institute, TRIBUTE …to Barbara Ward: Lady of Global Concern (1987), p. 94.
[7] Strong, Where on Earth are We Going? (2001), p. 156.
[8] ibid., p. 86.
[9] ibid., p. 190.
[10] ibid., p. 125.
[11] Paul Lewis, ‘British Economist Dies’ in New York Times, 1st June 1981.
[12] Harold Wilson, The Labour Government 1964–1970: A Personal Record (1971), p. 499.
[13] David Satterthwaite, Barbara Ward and the Origins of Sustainable Development (2006), p. 65.
[14] ‘Barbara Ward, British Economist, Dies’, New York Times, 1st June 1981.
[15] Satterthwaite, Barbara Ward and the Origins of Sustainable Development (2006), p. 46.
[16] ibid., p. 16.
[17] http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/paul_vi/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-vi_enc_26031967_populorum_en.html
[18] Satterthwaite, Barbara Ward and the Origins of Sustainable Development (2006), p. 15.
[19] Barbara Ward, A New Creation? Reflections on the Environmental Issue, first published by the Pontifical Commission Justice and Peace in Vatican City in 1973, in World Media Institute, TRIBUTE …to Barbara Ward: Lady of Global Concern (1987), p. 16.
[20] ibid.
[21] ibid., p. 15.
[22] ibid., p. 31.
[23] Barbara Ward, ‘The End of an Epoch?’ in Economist, 27th May 1972.
[24] Barbara Ward, Space Ship Earth (1966), p. 3.
[25] Barbara Ward and René Dubos, Only One Earth – The Care and Maintenance of a Small Planet (1974), p. 10.
[26] ibid., p. 26.
[27] ibid., p. 266.
[28] ibid., p. 268.
[29] ibid., p. 145.
[30] ibid., p. 84.
[31] ibid., p. 85.
[32] Satterthwaite, Barbara Ward and the Origins of Sustainable Development (2006), p. 15.
[33] Strong, Where on Earth are We Going? (2001), p. 125.
[34] ibid., p. 128.
[35] UNEP, In Defence of the Earth: The basic texts on environment: Founex. Stockholm (1981), p. 3.
[36] ibid., p. 5.
[37] ibid., p. 8.
[38] ‘UN secretary-general calls on all nations to meet crisis of a polluted planet’ in The Times, 6th June 1972.
[39] ‘Delegates’ bicycles vanish in Stockholm scramble’ in The Times, 8th June 1972.
[40] John McCormick, The Global Environmental Movement: Reclaiming Paradise (1989), p. 101.
[41] http://www.mauricestrong.net/2008091028/video/video/unche.html
[42] ‘UN secretary-general calls on all nations to meet crisis of a polluted planet’ in The Times, 6th June 1972.
[43] http://www.mauricestrong.net/2008091028/video/video/unche.html
[44] ibid.
[45] ‘Mrs Gandhi blames profits race for crisis’ in The Times, 15th June 1972.
[46] http://www.mauricestrong.net/2008091028/video/video/unche.html
[47] McCormick, The Global Environmental Movement: Reclaiming Paradise (1989), p. 99.
[48] ‘$100m fund proposed to carry on fight’ in The Times, 16th June 1972
[49] http://www.mauricestrong.net/20080626154/stockholm/stockholm/stockholm.html
[50] UNEP, In Defence of the Earth: The basic texts on environment: Founex. Stockholm (1981), pp. 42–7.
[51] ibid., p. 82.
[52] Guardian, 1st June 1981.
9
Breaking Wave
It is almost impossible for historians to understand how in advance of some of history’s great revolutions, it was often not even realised that a change was about to take place.
Henry Kissinger[1]
We have learned that more is not necessarily better, that even our great Nation has its recognized limits, and that we can neither answer all questions nor solve all problems.
Jimmy Carter, 20th January 1977[2]
At 2pm on 6th October 1973, over two hundred Egyptian aircraft flew over the Suez Canal and two thousand artillery guns started a series of barrages. Twenty minutes later, the first Egyptian troops crossed the canal. Using high-pressure water pumps, they blasted passages through the Bar Lev line, a fortification running the length of the canal made of sand and concrete. Sixteen hours later, ninety thousand troops, eight hundred and fifty tanks and eleven thousand additional vehicles were on the east side of the canal.[3] At the same time, the Syrians attacked Israel from the north.
A survey of polls in the US, Great Britain, and Germany suggest that 1972 marked the high point of concern about the environment.[4] The circulation of the Ecologist more than halved between 1973 and 1976.[5] Although membership of the largest environmental pressure groups continued to rise, only half a dozen of the environmental magazines started on or after Earth Day 1970 survived. Though in retreat, environmentalism broadened its reach. During this period, America’s national security establishment became a functional ally of environmentalism as concerns about energy security coincided with environmentalists’ campaign against fossil fuels.
The cause was the same event that led to the sudden disappearance of environmentalism from the world stage. Of all the wars of the twentieth century in which the major powers were not combatants, none had such an effect as the Yom Kippur war. To Henry Kissinger, it brought the curtain down on the post-war period.
The seemingly inexorable rise in prosperity was abruptly reversed. Simultaneously, inflation ran like a forest fire through the industrialised countries and recession left millions unemployed. … Transcending even the economic revolution was the emergence of oil as a weapon of political blackmail. The industrial democracies saw imposed on them not only an economic upheaval but fundamental changes in their social cohesion and political life.[6]
Environmentalists seized on this as vindication of their arguments. The party is over, Barbara Ward declared. Fritz Schumacher poured scorn on those who expected ‘to get back onto the happy road of economic growth’.[7]
The present situation, I am certain, has nothing in common with any previous ‘depression’ or ‘recession’ … It is not part of a cycle, is not a ‘correction’ or ‘shake-out’ or anything of this sort: It is the end of an era.[8]
Those who couldn’t see this, Schumacher said, were indulging in the psychological exercise of ‘the refusal of consciousness’.[9]
One political leader decided to overcome the refusal of consciousness.
Barely mentioned in the 1976 presidential election, Jimmy Carter made the energy crisis the centrepiece of his presidency. In a June 1979 interview, it was put to Carter that a poll showed that sixty-five per cent of Americans did not believe there was a gasoline shortage. ‘Is there a shortage?’ the president was asked. ‘Yes,’ Carter replied.[10]
The facts suggested otherwise. In 1973 world oil production was 58.3 million barrels of oil a day. Output rose steadily to 65.7 million barrels a day in 1979. The energy crisis was created by governments, not geology. Shortages in the US were the result of government regulation rather than world supply. America’s European allies were also enveloped in a refusal of consciousness. On the first day of the 1979 Tokyo G7 summit, Carter endured a bitter and unpleasant lunch when he was personally abused by German leader Helmut Schmidt. ‘One of the worst days of my diplomatic life,’ as Carter later called it.[11]
The world was not running out of oil. The major oil producers had formed a cartel and were exploiting their pricing power. But the circumstances of its sudden emergence enormously amplified its impact. The success of the initial Arab attacks was the single most traumatic event in Israel’s history. Four days into the war, Israel decided to push deep into Syrian territory towards Damascus. To relieve the Syrians, the Egyptians launched further attacks, enabling the Israel Defence Forces to counter-attack. The Israelis crossed the canal and began to advance towards Cairo and cut off the Egyptian Third Army. Within a matter of days, Israel, Egypt and Syria had felt their existence at risk.
From mid October 1973, the US began a twenty-three-day airlift. It was meant to have been under the cover of darkness. When one of the first aircraft arrived in broad daylight, James Schlesinger, US defense secretary, said ‘much of the population of Tel Aviv went out to the perimeter of the airport to cheer’.[12] The airlift ricocheted around the Arab world. Two days later, Arab oil producers announced they were increasing the oil price from $3.01 to $5.01 a barrel, described by Kissinger as stunning and unprecedented.[13] On 20th October, Saudi Arabia announced it was halting oil exports to the US. The next day Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar and Dubai followed suit. The oil weapon had been unsheathed, triggering a wave of panic buying.
Throughout 1973, the Saudis had threatened to use oil as an economic weapon. In a TV interview in the late summer, King Faisal warned
America’s complete support of Zionism against the Arabs makes it extremely difficult for us to continue to supply the United States’ petroleum needs and to even maintain our friendly relations.[14]
The threat had been discounted in Washington because of the failure of an attempted embargo in 1967.[15] Such had been the Nixon administration’s complacency that when, in 1969, the Shah of Iran offered to sell Washington one million barrels of oil a day for ten years for a strategic reserve, it was rejected out of hand.[16]
By November 1973, President Nixon was telling Americans they faced the most severe energy shortage since the Second World War. They would have to use less heat, less electricity, less gasoline. ‘The fuel crisis need not mean genuine suffering for any American, but it will require some sacrifice by all Americans.’[17] There would be a ten per cent reduction in flights and a fifteen per cent cut in supplies of domestic heating oil (‘we must ask everyone to lower the thermostat in your home by at least six degrees’) and requested highway speed limits be cut to fifty mph.
Invoking the Manhattan project and the Apollo space programme, Nixon announced Project Independence: by 1980, America would meet all its energy
needs without any imports. It marked a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn from the lowest cost, free trade principles of the 1952 Paley Commission and set a course which Jimmy Carter, George W. Bush and Barack Obama followed. It was also a complete flop. In 1973, the US imported 6.3 million barrels of oil a day. By 1980, this had risen to 6.9 million and, in 2007, the last year before the onset of recession, America imported 13.5 million barrels of oil a day, more than double the 1973 level.[18]
A December meeting of Persian Gulf producers in Tehran decided to increase the oil price from $5.12 to $11.65 a barrel. ‘One of the pivotal events in the history of this century,’ according to Kissinger.[19] The oil price increase from the beginning of the Yom Kippur War was unprecedented. Expressed in March 2009 dollars, it rose by $41.14 in four months and peaked $2.40 higher in June 1975, before trending down to a low of $46.33 in November 1978. Unprecedented but not unsurpassed. The oil price increase from January 2007 of $72.24 (in March 2009 dollars) to $123.73 in July 2008 was two thirds bigger than the 1973 oil price shock.[20] By then, the world had learned to live with high and volatile oil prices without turning it into a crisis.