When the Iron Lady Went Green

Throughout her career, Margaret Thatcher made a name for herself as one of the most outspoken leaders of all time; after all, one cannot expect to upend the status quo of British politics without taking a few controversial positions. Many of her previously-hot takes today feel room temperature at best – the idea that businesses, not governments, create jobs; that there is no liberty without economic liberty; that industry is best left in the hands of private ownership.

There is another issue, however, where Lady Thatcher’s legacy is often forgotten, yet no less important: the need to protect our environment. Speaking to the Royal Society in 1988, Margaret Thatcher became the first major world politician to suggest that human economic activity may be contributing to rising global temperatures: 

“For generations, we have assumed that the efforts of mankind would leave the fundamental equilibrium of the world’s systems and atmosphere stable. But it is possible that with all these enormous changes (population, agricultural, use of fossil fuels) concentrated into such a short period of time, we have unwittingly begun a massive experiment with the system of this planet itself.”

Today, such rhetoric is common parlance in politics and media, but at the time, climate change was not even considered as an issue. Pollution and environmental degradation had just entered the political psyche a decade earlier, but was viewed mainly as a matter of public health, not an existential threat to human society. Those in the mainstream hardly paid attention; television networks did not even cover the speech, and the leader of the Liberal Democrats, Paddy Ashdown, mocked it at the party conference. But nonetheless, Thatcher delivered a message that seems ahead of her time today: 

“The threat to our world comes not only from tyrants and their tanks. It can be more insidious though less visible. The danger of global warming 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.”

In another speech in 1990, she even went to so far as to compare climate change to the Gulf War – something that would be viewed as a strong climate stance even today.

Thatcher even had some choice words for the climate sceptics to-be: “Of course, much more research is needed. We don’t yet know all the answers. Some major uncertainties and doubts remain… But the need for more research should not be an excuse for delaying much needed action now. There is already a clear case for precautionary action at an international level.”

As a chemist educated at our very own Somerville College, Thatcher understood that science is never “settled,” as many climate advocates claim today, but also knew that the impossibility of finding absolute, unquestionable fact is not an excuse for refusing to take action. Policymakers must work with the best information they have, even if it is incomplete.

Thatcher’s embrace of environmental issues was undoubtedly related in part to her political conflicts with the coal industry, which declined in dramatic fashion under her premiership. Coal is one of the most polluting sources of fossil fuels, and the burning of coal was responsible for some of the jarring British environmental problems of the mid-century, such as the Great London Smog in 1952, which was responsible for 10,000 to 12,000 deaths, according to modern estimates.  The transition away from coal was not just an economic reality due to the increasing competitiveness of other fuel sources and the sclerosis of the British coal industry, but was also of great environmental importance.

Granted, Lady Thatcher’s environmental turn did not last forever. In her book, Statecraft, she lamented the fact that environmental issues had become a mainstay of left politics and cast doubt on reports from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports – which she had previously called ‘remarkable’ and ‘very careful’ – about the need to reduce CO2 emissions, which she referred to as alarmist. Thatcher believed in bettering human prosperity above all, and as the environmental movement took a leftward turn, she began to worry that the issue was being cynically used as a wedge to promote a socialist agenda.

Moreover, her government’s policies did not always match her rhetoric. She was a major proponent of the car economy and shied away from committing to major reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, reflecting the early stages of the environmental movement at the time and the inevitable imperative to balance competing interests.

Nonetheless, the Iron Lady’s early environmental advocacy helped to legitimise green concerns at a very early stage, and Britain has continued to carry on her legacy of leadership on this issue to this day. According to a report by The Economist, the rapid decline of the coal industry – which began in earnest under Thatcher’s premiership – has allowed Britain to cut carbon emissions much faster than nearly any other country, cutting an average of nearly 4 percent per year. The gap in energy production left by the decline of coal has been efficiently filled by gas and renewable energy sources. Indeed, according to the same report, the last time Britain’s carbon emissions were this low was likely in the Victorian era.

Although in recent years it has become increasingly associated with the left, conservation is a truly conservative impulse. It is, after all, about protecting the environmental heritage that has been handed down to us by previous generations and ensuring that it is in a fit state to pass onto the next. The health of the very planet upon which we live is far too important of an issue to be left up to those who would use the failed socialist policies of the past.

Instead, it is incumbent upon us to put forward our own conservative proposals, rooted in good sense, courage, and innovation. There is no reason we cannot do so. Today’s conservatives would do well to take up the torch of environmental stewardship and usher in a new era of conservation. Our planet and our future depend upon it.

Henrik Tiemroth (Publications Editor) is a first-year MPhil student reading Politics at Hertford College.