By Douglass Fischer
The Daily Climate
Margaret Thatcher, the “Iron Lady” of British politics who died Monday at the age of 87, is being lionized as the woman who tilted British domestic and economic policy to the right.
Less noted is how seriously she viewed the threat of climate change.
In a 1990 speech at the second World Climate Conference, in Geneva, Thatcher compared the threat of global warming to the Gulf War, which was then just escalating following Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait.
Thatcher, who spent 11 years as the United Kingdom’s prime minister, spent almost a quarter of her 2,500-word speech touting the importance of climate science and the UN body tasked with assessing that science. She called the work of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change “remarkable” and “very careful.”
‘Real enough’
“The danger of global warning is as yet unseen, but real enough for us to make changes and sacrifices, so that we do not live at the expense of future generations,” she told delegates, according to a transcript of the speech archived online at the Margaret Thatcher Foundation. A short video also survives.
“Our ability to come together to stop or limit damage to the world’s environment will be perhaps the greatest test of how far we can act as a world community,” she said. “We shall need statesmanship of a rare order.”
Thatcher went on to highlight the work of several institutions that have been savaged in recent years by conservative radio, think-tanks and others denying that humans can influence the climate or that such influence can have negative consequences.
She touted the work of the UK’s Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction, the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., and the IPCC. All three continue to be plagued by the so-called “Climategate” e-mail controversy of 2009.
Science was clear
To Thatcher in 1990, at the end of her tenure at 10 Downing Street, the science was already clear.
“Our immediate task is to carry as many countries as possible with us, so that we can negotiate a successful framework convention on climate change in 1992,” she said in that 1990 speech. “To accomplish these tasks, we must not waste time and energy disputing the IPCC’s report or debating the right machinery for making progress.”
That 1992 conference, the Rio Earth Summit, set the stage for a series of annual global meetings on climate change that 20 years later has yet to produce a meaningful accord limiting emissions.
Thatcher said little more about climate change after being ousted in November 1990, shortly after her climate address. The Guardian’s environmental reporter, John Vidal, notes on a blog post that over the next 10 years global warming became highly politicized, and that Thatcher, in her 2002 memoir, rejected former Vice President Al Gore and his “doomist” predictions.
The Daily Climate is an independent news service covering climate change. Contact Douglas Fischer at dfischer [at] DailyClimate.org
Find more Daily Climate stories in the TDC Newsroom
This work by The Daily Climate is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Jacques Cousteau, the 20th century’s best-known advocate for marine environmental protection, was born on this day in 1910.
Cousteau was known for producing 115 documentary films and television programs about the ocean environment and adventures on the research ship the Calypso. He was also the co-inventor of the Aqua-Lung or “scuba” tank.
Cousteau’s international fame came with his role as narrator and star of the television series “The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau.” Among his many awards and honors were three Oscars and ten Emmy Awards for his films and television programs and the International Environmental Prize of the United Nations for 1977.
Cousteau trained as a pilot at the French naval academy but an auto accident in 1933 kept him out of the sky. Shortly afterwards, a pair of watertight goggles introduced him to the undersea world. He became obsessed with developing snorkels, body suits and other diving gear and in the early 1940s he worked with a Parisian engineer to invent a regulator for a compressed air tank to allow free movement and breathing under water. It was known as “scuba” diving (for self-contained underwater breathing apparatus).
Scuba was a great improvement over the heavy diving suits used at the time. Cousteau used scuba to help the French resistance in World War II and was awarded the Légion d'Honneur for his service. After the war, Cousteau developed scuba diving as part of a French Naval research group. He wanted, also to challenge age-old superstitions and open the underwater realm to scientific exploration.
Cousteau was initially known for his 1953 bestselling book “The Silent World.” A film by the same title won a 1957 Academy Award for best documentary. Cousteau became director of the Oceanographic Institute of Monaco and, in that position, led a successful campaign to stop nuclear waste dumping in the Mediterranean. He also set up experiments in deep undersea living on the continental shelf called Conshelf I, II and III, The experiments were documented in Cousteau’s films, as were his many oceanic adventures in a converted French minesweeper named the Calypso. Much of his environmental work was carried on by an organization he founded in 1973, the Cousteau Society.
Overall, Cousteau produced 115 films including three full-length theatrical feature films: The Silent World, World Without Sun and Voyage to the Edge of the World. He also wrote, in collaboration with various co-authors, more than 100 books including Jacques Cousteau's Amazon Journey (1984), and Jacques Cousteau / Whales (1988); in French, Les Iles du Pacifique(1990), L'Ile des esprits (1995), Le Monde des Dauphins (1995) and the posthumously published L'homme, le pieuvre et l'orchidée (The Man, the Octopus and the Orchid).
World Day Against Child Labour 
Environmental Action Archive
The hats that created bird sanctuaries 
Pollution regs saved lives
¶ A giant tree's death
¶ Dymaxion car 