The discovery of the ozone hole provided the world dramatic narrative of industrial pollutants exposing people to increased risk of skin cancers, premature skin ageing and eye cataracts. Finding substitutes for CFCs as aerosol propellants and refrigerants was straightforward and relatively inexpensive. As a result, politicians could and did act quickly and decisively. In the words of the political scientist Scott Barrett, from whose book this account is largely drawn, ‘the achievements of the Montreal controls are truly outstanding’.[18] By providing governments with a template as to how they could tackle global warming, the Montreal Protocol misled most of them – the US being the most important exception – into believing that global warming might be amenable to similarly straightforward treatment. Prime among them was the world leader who first raised the alarm.
‘Mrs Thatcher, looking back over your life,’ the BBC’s Michael Buerk asked, ‘are you really a friend of the earth?’ The Greening of Mrs Thatcher, broadcast on 2nd March 1989, drew from Thatcher some of the most surprising things she ever said.
There was more than a hint of green in her final years at Number 10. Unlike Nixon’s green phase, hers was a product of conviction, not political calculation. She was changing the political weather, Nixon was reacting to it. On the environment, Thatcher had profound differences with her ideological soul mate Ronald Reagan. She supported action against acid rain, Reagan blocked it; she believed in the dangers of resource depletion, he thought they were baloney. Even when they agreed on the ozone layer, it was for different reasons, hers being environmental, his the health and economic wellbeing of Americans.
Environmental policies used to be mostly about cleaner rivers and smog-free cities, Thatcher answered Buerk. The problems had been localised, there hadn’t been the realisation of a global dimension, ‘there was no greenhouse effect up there somewhere. There was no ozone layer’. She said how she’d overruled scientific advice and saved the British Antarctic Survey. ‘I have always been interested in Antarctica. There is some marvellous wildlife there, there is probably a good deal of mineral deposits.’ It was a fantastic, icy place that wasn’t a wasteland, and recounted a meeting with members of the survey. ‘They came into the next room and gave me a marvellous account of everything they are doing just a few weeks ago.’
She was worried about the greenhouse effect: ‘We still do not fully understand the greenhouse gases or how they are going to operate, but we do know that we have to do something.’ At that stage, emissions cuts were not on that ‘to do’ list. Her priority was trees. ‘We are giving very considerable help on research into forestry and into the planting of tropical forests and into the preservation of tropical forests.’
According to her policy aide, George Guise, Thatcher’s thinking had been particularly influenced by her conversations with the billionaire financier, Sir James Goldsmith, who owned an eighteen-thousand-acre estate on the Pacific coast of Mexico and whose brother, Edward, had helped put together the 1972 Blueprint for Survival.[19] Thatcher told Buerk that planting trees would help solve Bangladesh’s perennial flooding.
When President Ershad was here recently, I said: ‘Look this is quite absurd. You are getting floods year after year. Really, we want the silt out of your rivers, put back on to the hills into the country behind you, into Nepal and India, and planted with trees again.’
The real difficulty with the developing world, she said, was that they wanted higher standards of living and to get out of poverty. ‘That is why we have the concept under Mrs Brundtland of sustainable development with which we firmly agree.’ She also favoured nuclear energy. ‘I would prefer more nuclear power because it is not fundamentally interfering with the world’s eco-systems.’
‘Finally Mrs Thatcher,’ Buerk asked, ‘if and when you finish being Prime Minister, would you want to be remembered as somebody who had helped to save the world in this environmental sense?’ ‘Enormously so, enormously so,’ she replied. ‘My whole sort of political philosophy is that what you have inherited from your forefathers, it is your duty to add to it … The problems science has created, science can in fact solve and we are setting about it.’
At the end of 1988, the Maltese government sponsored a resolution of the General Assembly of the United Nations on the conservation of the climate as mankind’s common heritage. The resolution said rising greenhouse gases could produce global warming which ‘could be disastrous for mankind’ and encouraged the convening of global, regional and national conferences to raise awareness of global warming.[20] From 1989 there was a marked intensification in the rhythm of international conferences on global warming.
The most important were the ministerial meeting that produced the Hague Declaration in March, the Noordwijk ministerial conference in November, the Bergen Conference on sustainable development in May 1990, and the Second World Climate Conference in Geneva in November. Shortly before the Geneva conference, European Community (EC) environment ministers meeting in Luxembourg agreed an EC-wide goal of stabilising carbon dioxide emissions at current levels by 2000 (a target that would only be met because German emissions fell with the incorporation of East Germany and Britain’s dash-for-gas).[21] The resolution also requested the IPCC to produce its report ‘as soon as possible’ and in time for the Geneva conference less than two years away.
At the UN, Crispin Tickell regularly held informal gatherings of the ambassadors of the five permanent Security Council members in his New York apartment and briefed the secretary-general afterwards. At one of his meetings, Tickell floated the idea of an environmental conference to mark the twentieth anniversary of the Stockholm conference. The idea was taken up.[22] Initially it was to be at Stockholm again. The Brazilian government wanted the conference in Rio de Janeiro. The Swedish government quickly agreed, so Rio it was.
The conference momentum soon put Thatcher onto the defensive. Asked in the House of Commons why she wasn’t going to the twenty-four-nation conference at The Hague, Thatcher gave no quarter: ‘The conference is to set up yet another organisation, which is not necessary, and it proposes that compensation should be paid – without saying how – and that sanctions should be applied if rules are not complied with – again without saying how.’[23] To the horror of civil servants, Britain did not even send an observer. According to a senior Dutch official, the new world ecological institutions could grow in the same way as the European Commission, Parliament and Court had grown out of an embryonic European coal and steel community.[24] No wonder Mrs Thatcher stayed away.
Seven months later at the Noordwijk conference in November, with more than three times the number of countries, the negotiations went in a different direction – emissions cuts. Britain brokered an agreement between the ambitions of the Europeans for firm commitments to stabilise emissions and the refusal of the US, joined by the Soviet Union and Japan, to do so. The declaration fudged the issue by recognising the need to stabilise greenhouse gas emissions ‘as soon as possible,’ while recording the view of many industrialised nations that this should be achieved at the latest by 2000.[25] No one could have foreseen that the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the implosion of its economy would enable the Russian Federation to record a forty-one per cent fall in carbon dioxide emissions between 1990 and 2000, a reminder of the inscrutability of even the near future.[26]
The Dutch government said it would implement previously announced plans for unilateral cuts in greenhouse emissions of eight per cent by 1994, a proposal which had led to the fall of the Dutch government the previous May. In fact, Dutch carbon dioxide emissions rose by 4.6 per cent over the period.[27] While the Dutch set a pattern other countries would follow, there was a one-off event. The delegation from Saudi Arabia told the conference that the world’s largest oil producer considered global warming ‘a life or death issue for considerable areas of the earth’. There was ‘no argument’ that carbon dioxide was the main culprit or question about the need to mo
ve to non-greenhouse gas energy generation.[28]
The same month, Thatcher addressed the UN General Assembly. The threat to the global environment was an insidious danger threatening irretrievable damage to the atmosphere, to the oceans and to the earth itself, Thatcher declared, comparing it to the risk of global annihilation from warfare.
The speech is significant in two respects. Although the subject of global warming occupies much of the text, its core message of undiluted Malthusianism could have been the same without it.
More than anything, our environment is threatened by the sheer numbers of people and the plants and the animals which go with them … Put in its bluntest form: the main threat to our environment is more and more people.[29]
The tragedy of Easter Island was a warning of what might befall the rest of the world. Cutting down a primeval forest had led to warfare over the scarce remaining resources, the population fell and there wasn’t enough wood to make boats to sail to another island. ‘We must have continued economic growth in order to generate the wealth required to pay for the protection of the environment,’ she told the General Assembly. ‘But it must be growth which does not plunder the planet today and leave our children to deal with the consequences tomorrow.’[30] In the past, growth happened. Now it had to be the right sort.
The other notable feature of the Mrs Thatcher’s speech was its impact on American politics. It generated far more media coverage in the US than the Noordwijk meeting and more in the US than in the UK. The National Governors Association Task Force on Global Warming was holding its first meeting at the United Nations. Its chair, Republican Jim Thompson of Illinois, called her address ‘elegant, straightforward and full of common sense and leadership’. New York’s Mario Cuomo used Thatcher’s speech to criticise President Bush’s refusal to set a timetable for emissions cuts at the Noordwijk conference earlier in the week (a position shared by the British government at that point), ‘I would have preferred the President to manifest the leadership of the nation on that occasion.’[31] A copy of the speech was circulated to senior staff in the White House by Robert Grady, an associate director at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). ‘The President could easily have given this speech and taken credit for an aggressive posture with very little change in current policy required,’ Grady commented.[32] The three names at the top of the circulation list, John Sununu, the president’s chief of staff, Dick Darman, head of the OMB and chief science adviser Allan Bromley were doing all they could to ensure the president did not make such a speech and that US policy did not change.
In May 1990, Gro Harlem Brundtland hosted the Bergen conference on sustainable development. ‘I am nervous that time is running out,’ Brundtland warned.[33] But she was more rattled by journalists’ questions on whether she supported a resumption of commercial whaling, Norway being accused of hypocrisy for hosting an environmental conference while hunting whales.[34] The Canadian government’s attempt to line up with the US in opposing emissions targets was stymied by a leak to the Friends of the Earth of a State Department cable which said that Canada would be joining Britain and the US in opposing any move on emissions cuts that went beyond the position agreed at Noordwijk.[35] The outcry led environment minister Lucien Bouchard to pledge that Canada’s emissions would be no higher in 2000 than in 1990.[36] Like the Dutch pledge six months earlier, it was an empty promise. Canada’s carbon dioxide emissions increased by twenty-three per cent between 1990 and 2000, faster than the seventeen per cent for the US.[37]
British opposition to emissions caps also began to crack. A junior environment minister (Chris Patten, the environment secretary, decided to stay at home) signalled that Britain would have a target for stabilising or even reducing emissions. It marked a watershed in Britain’s approach to global warming, according to the Financial Times.[38]
Abandonment by two of its most reliable allies did not change America’s position. Timothy Atkeson, assistant administrator of the EPA, said the expected costs were ‘as big as you can get.’ ‘We’re talking about costs in excess of the gross national product of the United States,’ he told reporters.[39] Although participants declared their willingness to ‘assume a major responsibility to limit or reduce greenhouse gases’, the outcome of the Bergen conference marked no movement from the position agreed at Noordwijk.[40] Political progress seemed stalled as the prospect of a transatlantic rift opened up.
[1] Margaret Thatcher, ‘Speech to Conservative Party Conference’, 14th October 1988 http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/107352
[2] Laura Raun and Bruce, ‘Green Revolution in International Relations: The growing awareness of a threat to the planet’ in the Financial Times, 13th March 1989.
[3] Bert Bolin, A History of the Science and Politics of Climate Change: The Role of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2007), p. 55.
[4] Declaration of The Hague http://www.nls.ac.in/CEERA/ceerafeb04/html/documents/lib_int_c1s2_hag_230300.htm
[5] The Queen’s Commonwealth Day message, The Times, 13th March 1989.
[6] Al Gore, Earth in the Balance (1993), p. 8.
[7] Michael Dukakis, ‘A New Era of Greatness for America’: Address Accepting the Presidential Nomination at the Democratic National Convention in Atlanta, 21st July 1988 http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=25961
[8] George H.W. Bush, Address Accepting the Presidential Nomination at the Republican National Convention in New Orleans, 18th August 1988.
[9] Larry B. Stammer, ‘Forty-Nation Environmental Panel Act Quickly on Global Warming, Baker Asks’ in the Los Angeles Times, 31st January 1989.
[10] Bolin, A History of the Science and Politics of Climate Change: The Role of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2007), p. 54.
[11] Philip Shabecoff, ‘Joint Effort Urged to Guard Climate’ in the New York Times, 31st January 1989.
[12] Press Conference of François Mitterrand, President of the French Republic, On the Conclusion of the Fifteenth Summit of Industrialised Countries, 16th July 1989 http://www.g7.utoronto.ca/summit/1989paris/press_english.html
[13] G7 Summit, Paris, 1989, para 40, http://www.g8.utoronto.ca/summit/1989paris/communique/environment.html
[14] G7 Summit, Paris, 1989, para 1.
[15] Gore, Earth in the Balance (1993), p. 172.
[16] Judy Leep email to author on behalf of George Shultz, 26th October 2010.
[17] Scott Barrett, Environment and Statecraft: The Strategy of Environmental Treaty-Making (2003), p. 230.
[18] ibid., p. 239.
[19] George Guise email to author, 23rd September 2010.
[20] UN General Assembly, ‘Protection of global climate for present and future generations of mankind’ A/RES/43/53, 6th December 1988.
[21] Data supplied to the UNFCCC shows EU-15 CO2 emissions fell by 3,508Gg 1990-2000, with German emissions falling by 149,816 Gg and UK emissions by 38,095Gg over the period. Without this, EU-15 emissions would have risen 5.5 per cent over the decade. Figures extracted from Time series – Annex I, Total CO2 Emissions without Land Use, Land-Use Change and Forestry http://unfccc.int/ghg_data/ghg_data_unfccc/time_series_annex_i/items/3814.php
[22] Crispin Tickell email to author, 30th November 2010.
[23] House of Commons debates, 23rd February 1989, Hansard, Col. 1143.
[24] Raun and Bruce, ‘Green Revolution in International Relations: The growing awareness of a threat to the planet’ in the Financial Times, 13th March 1989.
[25] UNFCCC, The Noordwijk Ministerial Declaration on Climate Change, November 1989 http://unfccc.int/resource/ccsites/senegal/fact/fs218.htm
[26] UNFCCC figures extracted from Time series – Annex
I, Total CO2 Emissions without Land Use, Land-Use Change and Forestry http://unfccc.int/ghg_data/ghg_data_unfccc/time_series_annex_i/items/3814.php
[27] Paul Montgomery, ‘US and Japan refuse curbs on carbon dioxide’ in the New York Times, 7th November 1989; UNFCCC figures extracted from Time series – Annex I, Total CO2 Emissions without Land Use, Land-Use Change and Forestry http://unfccc.int/ghg_data/ghg_data_unfccc/time_series_annex_i/items/3814.php
[28] Daniel Bodansky, ‘Prologue to the Climate Change Convention’ in Irving M. Mintzer & J. Amber Leonard (ed.), Negotiating Climate Change: The Inside Story of the Rio Convention (1994), p. 72.
[29] Margaret Thatcher, Speech to United Nations General Assembly (Global Environment), 8th November 1989 http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/107817
[30] Speech to United Nations General Assembly (Global Environment), 8th November 1989 http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/107817
The Age of Global Warming: A History Page 20