After excoriating Neoliberalism in the last post. It is only fair to mention the comments of one of the founders of neoliberalism, British PM Margaret Thatcher, to show that in the 1980s things were not this far gone.
After this post, which basically just reports on one of Mrs Thatcher’s speeches, I give another post with a series of excerpts from speeches, which show her recurrent themes. She seems more radical and aware than any mainstream politician in Australia today. In the third post I move into consideration of her early post PM period and her growing turn away from environmentalism. The fourth post describes her largely incoherent but strongly neoliberal position in her final book Statescraft (2002), which basically turns away from the problem altogether. If get around to it, a fifth post will describe what she actually did in office.
To make this introductory post simple I am just quoting from one speech to the UN given on the 8th November 1989, almost exactly a year from her forced resignation. It does not completely cover her ideas, but its clear and to the point. It may need to be emphasised that she made this speech thirty years ago…..
From the end of the speech, because it is surprising:
Reason is humanity’s special gift. It allows us to understand the structure of the nucleus. It enables us to explore the heavens. It helps us to conquer disease. Now we must use our reason to find a way in which we can live with nature, and not dominate nature.
Italics added.
A neoliberal who could admit the aim of policy and reason is not to dominate or destroy nature? This is extraordinary in itself
In this speech, Thatcher claims to have been influenced, in her views, by the photos of Earth taken from space, from which came a powerful realisation.
That powerful idea is the recognition of our shared inheritance on this planet. We know more clearly than everbefore that we carry common burdens, face common problems, and must respond with common action….
[A]s we travel through space, as we pass one dead planet after another, we look back on our earth, a speck of life in an infinite void. It is life itself, incomparably precious, that distinguishes us from the other planets.
Life is precarious. This might be the only place in the universe, at this moment, with intelligent life. Certainly it is the only place we know of. That implies we have a duty to preserve it, and to recognise the fragility of the possibility of life. All present and near future human activity depends upon us preserving this planet, more or less as it is, as best we can. Mrs Thatcher presents no fantasy the elites could leave, or that the world is secondary to economics.
She gets rid of the ‘climate is always changing’ motif quite early on:
Of course major changes in the earth’s climate and the environment have taken place in earlier centuries when the world’s population was a fraction of its present size.
The causes are to be found in nature itself—changes in the earth’s orbit: changes in the amount of radiation given off by the sun: the consequential effects on the plankton in the ocean: and in volcanic processes.
All these we can observe and some we may be able to predict. But we do not have the power to prevent or control them.
However,
What we are now doing to the world, by degrading the land surfaces, by polluting the waters and by adding greenhouse gases to the air at an unprecedented rate—all this is new in the experience of the earth. It is mankind and his activities which are changing the environment of our planet in damaging and dangerous ways.
In this statement she essentially recognises that ongoing ecological destruction is a major problem; our problems are not limited to climate. She mentions previous civilisations that have changed their environments and brought about their downfall, but our current action is undoing the planet not just one civilisation.
We are seeing a vast increase in the amount of carbon dioxide reaching the atmosphere. The annual increase is three billion tonnes: and half the carbon emitted since the Industrial Revolution still remains in the atmosphere.
At the same time as this is happening, we are seeing the destruction on a vast scale of tropical forests which are uniquely able to remove carbon dioxide from the air.
This clearance is massive; apparently an area the size of the UK was being lost every year. This clearly lowered the possibility of what we would nowadays call ‘carbon drawdown’; it forms a positive reinforcer of the problem. She recognises the problem is systemic, ‘things’ interact with each other.
She takes the science seriously and obviously talks to scientists:
Let me quote from a letter I received only two weeks ago, from a British scientist on board a ship in the Antarctic Ocean: he… also reports on a significant thinning of the sea ice, and he writes that, in the Antarctic, “Our data confirm that the first-year ice, which forms the bulk of sea ice cover, is remarkably thin and so is probably unable to sustain significant atmospheric warming without melting. Sea ice, separates the ocean from the atmosphere over an area of more than 30 million square kilometres. It reflects most of the solar radiation falling on it, helping to cool the earth’s surface. If this area were reduced, the warming of earth would be accelerated due to the extra absorption of radiation by the ocean.”
“The lesson of these Polar processes,” he goes on, “is that an environmental or climatic change produced by man may take on a self-sustaining or ‘runaway’ quality … and may be irreversible.”
She knows the situation is not linear. That talk asking how could a small increase in temperature, or CO2 concentrations, possibly have a large effect is rubbish talk.
She also knows that no one on the planet is safe from global warming
the problem of global climate change is one that affects us all and action will only be effective if it is taken at the international level.
As we might expect economic growth is important to her, but this growth has to be bounded and sensible. Not just random proliferation.
we must have continued economic growth in order to generate the wealth required to pay for the protection of the environment. But it must be growth which does not plunder the planet today and leave our children to deal with the consequences tomorrow.
Italics added
In case this is not clear, she continues
We should always remember that free markets are a means to an end. They would defeat their object if by their output they did more damage to the quality of life through pollution than the well-being they achieve by the production of goods and services.
This is not modern neoliberalism, as should be clear. It is also not her later version of neoliberalism
So what action does she recommend. Again it is not trivial
I believe we should aim to have a convention on global climate change ready by the time the World Conference on Environment and Development meets in 1992.
There are obvious difficulties:
no issue will be more contentious than the need to control emissions of carbon dioxide, the major contributor—apart from water vapour—to the greenhouse effect….
the measures we take must be based on sound scientific analysis of the effect of the different gases and the ways in which these can be reduced. In the past there has been a tendency to solve one problem at the expense of making others worse…
we prolong the role of the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change after it submits its report next year, so that it can provide an authoritative scientific base for the negotiation of this and other protocols….
We can then agree to targets to reduce the greenhouse gases, and how much individual countries should contribute to their achievement. We think it important that this should be done in a way which enables all our economies to continue to grow and develop…..
we must not allow ourselves to be diverted into fruitless and divisive argument. Time is too short for that.
The point is clear. In Thatcher’s mind we must act urgently (early 1990s at the latest). If acting means that we ignore fruitless and politically divisive argument then that is what we must do
But it is not just international talk that she wants. The UK has to set an example on its own, not wait for others to do things first. The UK, being successful, has a responsibility. These are the outlines of some of her projected policies.
First, we shall be introducing over the coming months a comprehensive system of pollution control to deal with all kinds of industrial pollution whether to air, water or land…
We are encouraging British industry to develop new technologies to clean up the environment and minimise the amount of waste it produces—and we aim to recycle 50 per cent of our household waste by the end of the century [1999-2000].
Secondly, we will be drawing up over the coming year our own environmental agenda for the decade ahead. That will cover energy, transport, agriculture, industry—everything which affects the environment….
we already have a £2 billion programme of improvements to reduce acid rain emissions from our power stations. We shall be looking more closely at the role of non-fossil fuel sources, including nuclear, in generating energy. And our latest legislation requires companies which supply electricity positively to promote energy efficiency.
we shall look for ways to strengthen controls over vehicle emissions and to develop the lean-burn engine, which offers a far better long-term solution than the three-way catalyst, in terms of carbon dioxide and the greenhouse effect….
With regard to agriculture, we recognise that farmers not only produce food—which they do with great efficiency—they need to conserve the beauty of the priceless heritage of our countryside. So we are therefore encouraging them to reduce the intensity of their methods and to conserve wild-life habitats…
We are planting new woods and forests—indeed there has been a 50 per cent increase in tree planting in Britain in the last ten years…
Third, we are increasing our investment in research into global environmental problems….
Fourth, we help poorer countries to cope with their environmental problems through our Aid Programme…
We shall give special help to manage and preserve the tropical forests.
I can announce today that we aim to commit a further £100 million bilaterally to tropical forestry activities over the next three years, mostly within the framework of the Tropical Forestry Action Plan.
While energy is missing from this speech, she has discussed it in earlier speeches. Perhaps she thought there would be resistance at the UN to talk of cutting down fossil fuel use. Elsewhere she shows her keenness for nuclear energy as it does not emit CO2. However she did not succeed in getting a set of nuclear reactors going in the UK, possibly because they were so expensive to build, the cost of their electricity was much greater than that of fossil fuels, and the cost of proper decommissioning was so great no private company would take it on. She also did not have a feasible or working renewables industry to discuss, or draw to people’s attention. What she might have said if she had, is possible to imagine.
No contemporary neoliberal has this vision, program for action, or grasp of the problems. So neoliberalism has become a lot worse as it has gained in power and as it celebrates its triumphalism.
The point is that for Mrs. Thatcher, at this stage in her life, it is possible to support both capitalism and climate action, whatever modern neoliberals suppose.
Tags: climate change, free markets, neoliberalism
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