Former Australian MP Recalls Warning Of CO2 And Climate Collapse In His Maiden Speech - 54 Years Ago

Half a century ago, Richard Gun stood on the floor of parliament and became the first known Australian political figure to warn about the “sinister” threat posed by climate breakdown. Today his maiden speech is a distant memory. “I never thought of myself as the first politician to issue a warning about climate change,” he says. “At the time it seemed to me an existential threat to our civilisation and it seemed like a sufficiently important issue to mention.

“Looking back, I’m a bit surprised other people didn’t take it as seriously.” As Australia prepares to participate in Cop29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, Gun’s largely forgotten warning provides a poignant milestone to help measure the country’s action on the climate emergency. With greenhouse gas emissions rising, fossil fuel production expanding, and devastating fire and floods becoming more frequent, the scale of these threats underscores the warnings given by political and scientific leaders all those years ago – and the amount of wasted time.

Gun is a retired doctor who remains involved with the University of Adelaide and is still active on the issue of climate breakdown. When he first entered parliament in 1969 as the newly elected Labor member for Kingston in Adelaide’s southern suburbs, he was 33 years old. He began his March 1970 speech by addressing what he called “the problem of cities” and highlighting “an alarming tendency to put cars first and people last”. Halfway through, he pivoted to another issue he was deeply concerned about – growing concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

“But, whatever these ingenious proposals can do in reducing smog, they still cannot prevent consumption of oxygen and production of carbon dioxide,” he said. “It is the rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide which may be the most sinister of all effects. “The only way that this can be controlled is by reducing the amount of combustion taking place.”

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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/nov/10/cop29-climate-summit-baku-azerbaijan-richard-gun-marc-hudson