Looking Back In Anger - 20 Yrs After Australian Environmental Summit, Leaders See Grim Outlook - SMH

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Opened by the then Labor premier Neville Wran, the conference had identified four main areas of concern: wildlife; forests and plants; land, rivers and oceans; and atmosphere. The ABC presenter Robyn Williams attended and gave the final address. "That benchmark summit set the standard of concern for the nation, although only green groups attended, not the public, corporates or government," Williams says. "Twenty years later, green politics has become mainstream, but now it may be too late, because the recent collapse of the Wilkins ice shelf in Antarctica confirms global warming is accelerating."

Williams, who also served on the Commission for the Future in 1988, says: "Environmentalists had started addressing climate change through the Greenhouse '88 initiative but we had no idea of the scale of the crisis nor how global it all was. We understand the sheer scale of the problem now but the planet is really up against it."

Indeed, the program notes on atmosphere read prophetically: "The emergence of the greenhouse effect, ozone depletion and acid rain are no longer just local atmospheric problems."

Karen Alexander, who managed campaigns for the conservation foundation during the 1980s, says: "We had a climate campaign back then but we failed dismally to educate politicians. Now we're going out the window horrendously. Climate change is wreaking havoc on the planet but still 95 per cent of campaign funds come from community not government." The foundation's director of strategies, Chuck Berger, says: "Climate change has been the biggest disappointment because scientific evidence was alarming back then, yet we now have one-third greater pollution generated by our energy sector than in 1988."

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http://www.smh.com.au/news/global-warming/looking-back-in-anger/2008/04/29/1209234862878.html