I have shown that, for at least three years, Baroness Thatcher had a consistently pro-active, public approach to climate change. This needs more elaboration by reportage of her behaviour in Parliament, and through the legislation she supported, but it could be possible to argue that her position got stronger as she went along. Despite uncertainties in our knowledge, she stated that: it was better to be precautionary; it was wise to listen to scientists; governments had to act and make policy; economic action should not destroy the environment and the future prosperity of our grandchildren; economic growth could help fund the changes; we all had to act together, and; prosperous countries had to help less prosperous countries avoid the mistakes ‘we’ had made.
However by her 2002 book Statescraft she had retreated from all these positions. The problem is to explain the path she followed.
This post will start to study the transition by briefly mentioning a few speeches from the period after her Prime Ministership, and then look at her 1993 autobiography The Downing Street Years. Another post will consider Statescraft, as this post is long enough, already.
The general argument is that she was becoming concerned that environmentalism and climate action was socialist in orientation, and that rather than propose a neoliberal and non-socialist solution, she began to retreat away from plans for action, into a hope that largely unregulated markets would solve the problem. There was to be no inhibition to economic growth or corporate liberty. This was not the only response she could have taken.
In the long run, it appears that neoliberalism cannot deal with environmental catastrophe, without losing its prioritising of corporate liberty and support for established corporations. The theory is so restrictive that it does not have enough ‘solution generating’ capacity for the neoliberal world to survive.
Some Post PM Speeches
A speech the ex-prime minister gave to the South African Institute of International Affairs, is short, but clearly presents one problem for the later Thatcher’s relationship to environmental policy, namely the issue of economic growth. She begins by acknowledging the importance of international action and the reality of climate change. She is not yet dismissive of this. But there is another more important reality to be acknowledged.
There is much to be done to tackle the causes of climatic change and to curb pollution. And it requires action at the international level. At least as important, though, is for individual countries and communities to take pride in and conserve their own particular environmental legacies and treasures.
Perhaps the most important truth we should bear in mind, however, is that conservation of whatever kind is costly: and so wealth must be created to pay for it. It is, therefore, a romantic myth—and indeed a dangerous falsehood—to claim that economic progress must result in environmental destruction.
22 May 1991
It is perhaps surprising, then, not to hear claims that representative governments must regulate to ensure that ‘economic progress’ and wealth creation is not destructive to the environment we need to survive, or is compatible with such environmental survival. Such a point seems to have been more amenable to her in the past. But if her neoliberalism is biased towards maintaining corporate liberty to do whatever they like at any cost to others then perhaps it is not.
A post-autobiography speech in San Paulo, Brazil, makes a similar argument, even diminishing Brazils efforts to conserve what have been called the ‘lungs of the world’:
It is our task to help people out of poverty to a more rewarding and fuller life. And impressed as I am by the efforts that Brazil is making to conserve its ecological heritage and indeed the world’s environment through effective management of the rain forest, I am not one of those who thinks that we have to give up on growth and dash the hopes of those who depend on it for a better future.
16 Mar 1994
The speech goes on to attack wealth redistribution which
involves high taxation and sometimes confiscation, both of which penalise the very effort and talent that we need to build up more business, thereby providing more jobs and creating more wealth.
16 Mar 1994
In a speech to people at Leningrad State University, while stating the importance of international action, comes down to blaming socialism for the problems.
all the nations of the world have a duty to to tackle the threats to our environment. There is much to be done to deal with the causes of climatic change and to curb pollution. And it requires action at an international level. But we also must observe that it is the socialist countries which geared their industries to meeting production targets rather than to satisfying customers, unfree systems which neither respected human rights nor nature itself, which are the principle culprits. And it will be the advanced technology and the new wealth generated by free enterprise which will provide the means of restoring the world’s environment.
29 May 1991
A talk to Japanese youth, shortly after the speech in South Africa, makes similar points.
It is only in recent years that we have begun to understand how seriously we have together upset the balance of nature. Acid rain, the threat to the ozone layer, global warming—these are problems which have to be overcome by international cooperation. And never has the international community worked together more closely than in meeting the threat to our global environment.
But the point I would most like to make to you today is that sound science, not sentimentality, must be the basis of our approach. And the system best able to develop that science, most willing to apply it and best able to generate the wealth required to pay for it is free enterprise. Green socialism is no more an answer to the world’s environmental needs than was the smoke-stack socialism of Eastern Europe which poisoned our rivers, disfigured our buildings and rotted our forests.
5 Sep 1991
It appears that she is starting to consider that maintaining the neoliberal economic system is more important that maintaining the ecological system, and that the system as a whole will ideally solve its own problems through wealth generation. Science should not clash with neoliberal priorities. This ‘invisible hand’ of God fantasy, is something we have learnt is idealism at best, delusion at worst. Baroness Thatcher appears to be polarising the environmental debate, for her own rhetorical and thinking purposes, so that a complex discussion is reduced to a dispute between: a) total ‘green’ control, and stifling of prosperity (‘smokestack socialism’), and b) leaving the environment to unregulated markets. This is not a logical, practical, or inevitable division. It is certainly not the only position which could be taken. While it apparently makes clarity, it seems to be an unrealistic, or unreal, clarity that obscures reality.
The Autobiography: The Downing Street Years (1993)
Her Autobiography must have been being written in the late years of the her rule and more or less immediately immediately after her loss of the leadership of the Conservatives on the 28th November 1990. It usually takes quite a while to prepare a book this thick, with possible legal consequences, for publication. Consequently, the contents may be earlier than some of the speeches quoted above, and could be more moderate. The Conservatives continued in government under John Major, until Labor gained government in 1997 under Tony Blair. So it was addressed to a still Tory UK.
The relevant section of the book is entitled ‘Science and the Environment.’ It is only a few pages long.
It begins:
“In 1988 and 1989 there was a great burst of public interest in the environment. Unfortunately, under the green environmental umbrella sheltered a number of only slightly connected issues”
p.638.
She separates these issues into four:
1) “concern for the local environment… essentially and necessarily a matter for the local community”
2) “overdevelopment of the countryside” [but this is simple] “If people were to be able to afford houses there must be sufficient amounts of building land available…”
p.638
There is a slight contradiction here, as point 2 does not imply a particular respect for local environments, or for allowing the community to make descisions which conflict with the interests of developers, but it is a difficult position. If you support, what others call over-development, then you cannot support local control. The Baroness sides with developers, does not push the issue, and possibly is unaware of the problem.
3) “standard of Britains’s drinking water, rivers and sea.” [This is actively being remedied as can be seen by the] “return of healthy and abundant fish to the Thames, Tyne, Wear and Tees” and
4) [Atmospheric pollution]
p.638-9
She feels it necessary to separate issue 4 from the others as follows:
“I always drew a clear distinction bewteen these ‘environmental’ concerns and the quite separate question of atmospheric pollution. For me the proper starting point in formulating policy… was science. There had always to be a sound scientific base on which to build – and of course a clear estimation of the cost in terms of public expenditure and economic growth foregone.”
p.639
In this book the Baroness appears to consider the possibility of foregoing economic growth to solve a problem, or cost to the taxpayer – not perhaps as desirable, but as possible. It seems the cost should be known in advance for planning purposes, and to help judge actions, and not because some any cost will be considered too great for action. She is indicating politics is about practicable balance.
She then talks about science in general. There are two problems with science funding in the UK:
1) [Too much funding is directed at defence] and
p.639
2) “too much emphasis was being give to the development of produces for the market rather than to pure science… As someone with a scientific background, I knew that the greatest economic benefits of scientific research had always resulted from advances in fundamental knowledge”
In this passage she appears to be identifying with ‘pure’ scientists, and her past career/education. The example she gives is also illuminating, and indicates her sense of participation in the scientific process.
“It was, for example, the British Antarctic Survey which discovered a large hole in the ozone layer… I took the closest personal interest as the scientific evidence was amassed and analysed.”
p.640
This progresses to the problem of climate change, and the whole passage should be quoted at length.
“‘Global Warming’ was another atmospheric threat which required the application of hard-headed scientific principles. The relationship between the industrial emission of carbon dioxide… and climate change was a good deal less certain than the relationship between CFCs and ozone depletion. Nuclear power production did not produce carbon dioxide – nor did it produce the gases which led to acid rain.. However, this did not attract the environmental lobby towards it: instead they used the concern about global warming to attack capitalism, growth and industry.”
p.640
We here see the beginning of a problem… The science was not absolutely certain as to the intensity of the effect, something she admitted earlier, but then she also admitted the effects could be worse than predicted. However, the environmental lobby was apparently attacking the basis of neoliberalism.
She does not give any examples of these attacks on “capitalism, growth and industry”. The Soviet Union had collapsed so they were not promoting any effective position at all. China would not release its first “National Climate Change Assessment Report” until 2007, and while this needs more research from me, was not interested in the early 1990s – certainly it seems unlikely China would have been interested in attacks on growth and industry. As far as I can tell the attacks are also not coming from Labor in Australia, Bill Clinton and the Democrats in the US, or Labour under Neil Kinnock or John Smith. The so-called ‘Climate Justice Movement’ is usually said not to arise until 1999 or later. Nuclear energy has been a subject of dispute since the 1950s: it is not loved by everyone other than environmentalists. So these attacks, other than anti-nuclear movement (which was usually not an attack on capitalism, but on the use of radio-activity), were not mainstream and they were unlikely to affect policy.
Later in the book she writes about nuclear power and the need for it, and the cost to the taxpayer and electricity customer, with little sign of hesitation.
I felt it was essential to keep up the development of nuclear power. The real cost of nuclear energy compared with other energy sources is often overrated. Coal-fired power stations pour out carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and no one has yet put a credible figure on what it will ultimately cost to deal with the resulting problem of global warming.
p.684
Here she can admit a cost for not dealing with climate change. She remarks that using nuclear energy would lead to higher charges for customers, but “This was tolerable if not popular.” The costs of decommissioning nuclear power meant they had to be “removed from the privatization” of electricity, and the costs of the decommissioning born by the taxpayers (p.685).
This shows that Mrs. Thatcher’s neoliberalism can run to interference in the economy and added prices to consumers, if it seems necessary for the nation or, if one is less kind, it is necessary to support an established industry, or the selling off of public goods to the private sector. The point is, that whatever the interpretation, Thatcher did sometimes believe the government (and consumers) can absorb costs if necessary for a project’s success.
Despite these reservations about the possible actions of unnamed environmentalists, she worked on her Royal Society speech for two weekends, and expected significant coverage as it was important. So we can assume that speech reflected her considered views and was meant to be widely heard and discussed.
In her autobiography, she quotes one abridged passage from that speech:
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…..
In studying the system of the earth and its atmosphere we have no laboratory in which to carry out controlled experiments. We have to rely on observations of natural systems. We need to identify particular areas of research which will help to establish cause and effect. We need to consider in more detail the likely effects of change within precise timescales. And to consider the wider implications for policy—for energy production, for fuel efficiency, for reforestation…. We must ensure that what we do is founded on good science to establish cause and effect.
p. 640-41.
She removes references to greenhouse gases “creating a global heat trap which could lead to climatic instability,” possible sea rises, high temperatures in the 1980s (now exceeded), the report of the British Anartic Survey, action taken against Acid rains, and “half the carbon emitted since the Industrial Revolution remains in the atmosphere”. But the general message remains.
In the prepared speech, there is a line about the brightness of the TV lights stopping her from seeing her audience. But as she said in her book:
“it is an extraordinary commentary on the lack of media interest in the subject that, contrary to my expectations, the television did not even bother to send film crews to cover the occasion”
p.640
Given that the BBC was a supposedly leftwing black beast; if they did not come, it hardly leads us to think that Climate change was a source of much interest to the left, or the subject of much leftist agitation at the time. This suggests that Thatcher was, to some extent, reacting to a phantom – but this requires more research. What groups had annoyed her or who had warned her of the problem?
Going back to her earlier discussion on science and environmentalism, she concludes that her policy on the global environment:
“went to the heart of what differentiated my approach from the of the socialists… economic progress, scientific advance… themselves offered the means to overcome threats to individual and collective well being. For the socialist each new discovery revealed a ‘problem’ for which the repression of human activity by the state was the only ‘solution’.. The scared landscape dying forests, poisoned rivers and sick children of the former communist states bear tragic testimony to which system worked better, both for people and the environment”
p.641
So without her presenting any evidence of the reality, or social power, of the dire connection of socialism and environmentalism, she was possibly becoming aware that climate change policy could be used to attack neoliberalism and her record. One possible explanation is that she was becoming aware that her record was not showing the success she had imagined, and its attraction was wearing thin, but that is purely speculative.
However, this imagined (?) anti-neoliberal movement presumably could provide neoliberals with an incentive to show how a reliance on capitalist ingenuity and adaptability, could deal with the problem. There was no need for complete retreat. Economies have rules, and realities that businesses have to deal with so we would expect capitalist to adapt to new rules, which might prevent ecological destruction and maintain economic growth. Thatcher’s Neoliberalism still has a way forward to climate action. Why, indeed, should she let these unnamed ‘socialists’ take the high ground, especially if she supported the better system?
She has not yet retreated from recognition of the problem, or the need for a solution, but a pathway of retreat is possibly being indicated, and it comes directly from her assertion of neoliberalism.
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