How Free Market Thatcher First Called for Climate Action

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In the third of three posts charting how climate change became a political issue, we see how Margaret Thatcher, the high priestess of the magical free markets, first took up Hansen’sย callโ€ฆย 

Margaret Thatcher as British Prime Minister would be the first politician of global stature to address the increasingly urgent concerns about climateย change.

Her speech before the Royal Society in September 1988 was a celebration of science but also a clarion call demanding international government action and a personal endorsement of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change which was just being established.ย โ€œA nation which does not value trained intelligence is doomed,โ€ she told theย fellows.ย 

โ€œScience and the pursuit of knowledge are given high priority by successful countries, not because they are a luxury which the prosperous can afford; but because experience has taught us that knowledge and its effective use are vital to national prosperity and internationalย standing.โ€ย 

She waited until the end of her speech to turn to global warming. โ€œEngineering and scientific advance have given us transport by land and air, the capacity and need to exploit fossil fuels which had lain unused for millions of years,โ€ sheย observed.

Fundamentalย equilibrium

โ€œOne result is a vast increase in carbon dioxide, and this has happened just when great tracts of forests which help to absorb it have been cutย down.โ€

She went on: โ€œFor generations, we have assumed that the efforts of mankind would leave the fundamental equilibrium of the world’s systems and atmosphereย stable.โ€

HOW CLIMATE SCIENCE BECAME A POLITICAL ISSUE

Part 1: James Hansen: How Climate Change Becameย Political

Part 2: James Hansen: I Thought There Would Be a Rationalย Response

Part 3: How Free Market Thatcher First Called for Climateย Action

Next Week: Moncktonโ€™s Odd Claim He Inspired Thatcherโ€™s Climateย Call

โ€œBut it is possible that with all these enormous changesโ€”population, agriculture, use of fossil fuelsโ€”concentrated into such a short period of time, we have unwittingly begun a massive experiment with the system of this planetย itself.โ€

She explained that a Commonwealth country, once part of the British Empire, faced immediate danger from climateย change.

Necessaryย expense

She relayed a meeting with the president of the Maldive Islands where the population was then 177,000 and โ€œthe highest part of the Maldives is only six feet above seaย levelโ€.

Regulations, she said,ย in the case of sulphur emissions from power stations had provenย to beย a โ€œgreat but necessaryย expenseโ€.

Thatcher called for more research, โ€œand to consider the wider implications for policyโ€”for energy production, for fuel efficiency, forย reforestationโ€.

She added: โ€œThis is no small task, for the annual increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide alone is of the order of three billion tonnes. And half the carbon emitted since the Industrial Revolution remains in theย atmosphere.โ€

Stableย prosperity

In a soundbite relayed to listeners by the BBC the following morning, she concluded: โ€œStable prosperity can be achieved throughout the world provided the environment is nurtured and safeguarded. Protecting this balance of nature is therefore one of the great challenges of the late twentiethย century.โ€

It was not Marxists, environmentalists and hippies hell-bent on tearing down capitalism that brought climate change from the computer laboratories into the political arena as would later beย suggested.

It was the high priestess of free market capitalismย herself.

A decade later, her speech would be described by one British national newspaper as โ€œa true epiphany, the blinding discovery of a conviction politician, which overnight turned the environment from being a minority to a mainstream concern inย Britainโ€.

Thatcher’s presentation at the Royal Society was in fact merely a dress rehearsal as she intended to take her one-woman climate show onto the worldย stage.

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