Back in 1990 climate change – or global warming as we called it then – barely got a mention in much of the media. Yet the warnings about its impact were already there. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) had just published its first assessment report, warning that emissions caused by human activity were increasing the concentration of greenhouse gases which would result in a warming of the planet.
In his opening editor’s letter for our 1990 magazine on global warming, Wayne Ellwood pointed to the impacts of climate change already being felt, including the knock-on effect of already lighter winter snows in his home country, Canada. The magazine was constructed as a series of lessons in ‘how to turn down the heat’ from saving trees to boosting renewable energy. This piece from Anuradha Vittachi came under the teaching ‘Love your neighbour’, alongside these words: ‘Attempts to deal seriously with the problem will require co-operation on a global scale. Bridges must be built between nations in the search for
