Fred Bernard Wood was a lifelong environmentalist,
starting in the days of naturalist and photographer John Muir and
the early Sierra Club. However his activism in the environmental
arena seriously intensified in the 1980s in connection, especially,
with the then nascent issue around global climate change. By the
mid-1980s, Fred Bernard was writing papers on climate change. By
the late 1980s, he and his long term colleague, Alden Bryant, President
of the Earth
Regeneration Society (ERS), participated in and helped organize
various climate-related events. Fred Bernard served as Secretary-Treasurer
of ERS for many years, and was an active collaborator with Mr. Bryant
in all major ERS initiatives.
Several of these events are highlighted
here:
California Democratic
Party State Convention
January 30-February 1, 1987
ERS proposed a Resolution
on CO2 Reduction, Climate Stabilization, and Employment, which
was approved by the Executive Committee on April 11 and became part
of the Democratic Party work program. This was one of the first
advocacy actions to link climate change remediation with jobs creation.
The resolution also mentioned the need for international cooperation
on climate friendly agricultural and forest improvements, including
soil remineralization.
California Democratic Council (CDC) Convention, April 24-26, 1987:
The ERS resolution was endorsed, with recommendations to send the
resolution to interested advocacy groups and to the California Congressional
delegation. The resolution in the form passed by the CDC, with the
support of ERS, added the encouragement of development of renewable
energy sources. The resolution also referenced a draft bill prepared
by ERS, known as the “Earth
Regeneration/Climate Stabilization Act of 1987.”
World Scientific
Conference on Security and Disarmament,
In Preparation for the Third Special Session on Disarmament of the
United Nations
May 27-31, 1988
Alden Bryant, ERS President, presented a
paper,“The
Global Climate Emergency, Possibilities for Stabilization and Proposals
for Immediate Action". This paper provided considerably
more detail than the earlier California resolutions, and included
references to various news and scientific journal articles on the
ERS updated its earlier draft legislation
and presented the proposed legislation to “climate conscious”
members of the U.S. Congress and staff. This draft
bill outlined the threats to humanity from climate change, and
detailed an ambitious program of monitoring, analysis, and action
to mitigate climate change, protect the environment, and create
jobs. This legislation was one of the first comprehensive climate
bills ever proposed. At the time, there was some debate about whether
global warming could trigger accelerated global cooling, and the
draft reflects that view. But many of the bill’s provisions
are applicable today, perhaps with minor modifications.
United Nations General
Assembly, Draft Resolution on Conservation of Climate as Part of
the Common Heritage of Mankind
October 26, 1988
The Earth Regeneration Society was able
to obtain United
Nations sponsorship of the first U.N. climate conference through
the good offices of the Permanent Mission of Malta. The support
of Malta’s U.N. Ambassador, Dr. Alexander Borg Olivier, was
key to gaining official U.N. involvement. Soon thereafter, Malta
proposed a draft
resolution to the U.N. General Assembly which was one of the
first comprehensive U.N. statements on the importance of climate
change and the myriad likely effects and action implications that
warranted U.N. attention. The resolution was unanimously passed
by the U.N. General Assembly on December 6, 1988.
United Nations Program
on Earth Regeneration and the Environment
December 9, 1988
Due largely to the hard work of ERS leaders,
including Alden Bryant and Fred Bernard Wood, the first ever U.N.
sponsored conference on climate change took place on December 9,
1988, at the United Nations Headquarters in New York City. The program
included several U.N. representatives, including the United National
Environment Program and the U.N. Disaster Relief Organization, and
several eminent U.S. and international academic and advocacy leaders
on the climate change issue. During the final preparations for the
conference, Alden Bryant was traveling in Europe and appointed
Fred Bernard Wood as senior representative for ERS in all matters
relating to the conference, as well as other ERS business. ERS was
represented on the program by ERS president Alden Bryant and ERS
adivor Dr. Kenneth Watt, Professor of Zoology at the University
of California at Davis, both of whom gave presentations: Human
Rights, Environment, and Climate Stabilization and The
Environmental Argument for Alternative Energy Sources and Reforestation.
After the conference, ERS issued a press
release summarizing the conference highlights and related activities.
American
Association for the Advancement of Science Sessions on Climate Change
January 14-19, 1989
By the late 1980s, the U.S. and global climate
science community was beginning to pay serious attention to the
climate change issue. Major science organizations, and especially
the AAAS, started including sessions on climate change in their
conference programs. AAAS has had at least one session on climate
change for virtually all of its annual meetings from the late 1980s
to the present. The 1989 AAAS annual meeting in San Francisco included
a session on
Atmospheric Science Climate. And the AAAS accepted
Fred Bernard Wood’s poster proposal. His paper was titled
“Applying
a Quasi-Completeness Test to Climate Change.” The full
paper can be found in the Papers section
of this website.
Stanford University
Conference on Deciding Our Environmental Future
January 28-29, 1989
Concern over climate change was a factor
contributing to efforts in the late 1980s to revitalize and re-energize
the U.S. environmental movement. Environmentalists at Stanford organized
a major conference
for January 1989, with the cooperation
of numerous Stanford University offices and organizations, along
with various outside organizations. The conference was sweeping
in its agenda, and cover topics from climate change to rainforest
protection, to global population, to offshore oil drilling, to endangered
species protection. The conference speakers included many well known
academic and advocacy leaders in the environmental movement. Alden
Bryant participated on a panel titled “Understanding and Stabilizing
Our Changing Global Climate.” Fred Bernard assisted Alden
in presentation preparations. The conference included involvement
of grassroots environmental activists, workshops on “You
Can Make A Difference,” and an Environmental
Resources Handbook.
The visibility of the Stanford conference
attracted attention from the environmental activists, locally to
globally. For example, locally the Central Coast Greens Now prepared
a list of 101 Green
Things You Can Do. And globally, the Earth Repair Foundation
prepared an Earth
Treaty for the Children of the World and an Earth
Repair Action Guide.
These events in 1988-1989 both helped re-energize the environmental
movement, and put climate change on the environmental agenda.
