The child environmental activist of the 1990s

The History Hour

BBC

History, Society & Culture, Personal Journals

4.4 • 879 Ratings

🗓️ 30 October 2021

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

To mark the start of the UN Climate Change Conference, or COP26, taking place in Glasgow in the UK, we’re looking back at the history of our awareness of climate change with some of the scientists and activists who have been trying to solve this global crisis in recent decades. We hear from environmental activist Severn Cullis-Suzuki, who was just 12 years old when she implored world leaders to take action, at the 1992 UN Earth Summit in Rio De Janeiro. Plus, how a pioneering American scientist provided compelling evidence of man-made global warming back in the 1950s, and measuring melting glaciers at the top of Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania.

Photo: Severn Cullis-Suzuki (2nd left) and her friends at the Earth Summit in Rio in 1992. Courtesy of Severn Cullis-Suzuki.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to the History Hour Podcast from the BBC World Service with me Max Pearson this week
0:05.4	to coincide with the COP26 conference some key moments from the climate debate over the decades,
0:11.2	including from the 1950s the discovery that CO2 levels were rising in the
0:15.9	Earth's atmosphere.
0:17.3	He showed me a graph of the measurements of the CO2 and then another graph of the temperatures of the areas.
0:27.2	It was incessantly rising.
0:30.4	Also, the very first UN conference on the environment way back in 1972.
0:35.0	I am convinced that the prophets of doom have got to be taken serious.
0:40.0	In other words, Doomsday is a possibility.
0:42.0	Plus, the professor who delivered a breakthrough submission to the US Congress in the 1980s.
0:48.0	The stories you're going to hear are both inspiring and baffling.
0:51.0	Inspiring because these are people who spotted the problems and challenged the world to put them right.
0:57.0	If it's not already too late, it's thanks to them.
1:00.0	Baffling because many of the arguments that we hear today around what's happening to the planet
1:04.4	and who has to do what to save it are the same arguments which emerged as far back as the 1950s.
1:10.8	Oh well. So let's get stuck in. The stories you will hear are both inspiring and baffling.
1:16.4	Inspiring because these are people who spotted the problems and challenged the world
1:21.0	to put them right. If it's not already too late, it's thanks to them.
1:25.2	Baffling, because many of the arguments that we hear today around what's happening to the planet
1:29.7	and who has to do what to save it, are the same arguments which emerged as far back as the 1950s.
1:36.0	Oh well. So let's get stuck in.
1:38.0	Net zero by 2050, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,
	...

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