Margaret Thatcher, prime minister of Great Britain from 1979-1990, passed away on 8 April 2013. These are her introductory words in a speech to the United Nations about the threat that global warming poses to world order, and that I talk about in more detail below
During his historic voyage through the south seas on the Beagle, Charles Darwin landed one November morning in 1835 on the shore of Western Tahiti. After breakfast he climbed a nearby hill to find advantage point to survey the surrounding Pacific. The sight seemed to him like “a framed engraving”, with blue sky, blue lagoon, and white breakers crashing against the encircling Coral Reef. As he looked out from that hillside, he began to form his theory of the evolution of coral; 154 years after Darwin’s visit to Tahiti we have added little to what he discovered then.
What if Charles Darwin had been able, not just to climb a foothill, but to soar through the heavens in one of the orbiting space shuttles? What would he have learned as he surveyed our planet from that altitude? From a moon’s eye view of that strange and beautiful anomaly in our solar system that is the earth? Of course, we have learned much detail about our environment as we have looked back at it from space, but nothing has made a more profound impact on us than these two facts.
First, as the British scientist Fred Hoyle wrote long before space travel was a reality, he said “once a photograph of the earth, taken from the outside is available … a new idea as powerful as any other in history will be let loose”. That powerful idea is the recognition of our shared inheritance on this planet. We know more clearly than ever[fo 1] before that we carry common burdens, face common problems, and must respond with common action.
And second, as 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. It is life itself—human life, the innumerable species of our planet—that we wantonly destroy. It is life itself that we must battle to preserve.
In a previous posts about Barack Obama and Martin Luther King Jr, I highlighted some timely quotes related to the eventual costs of rapid technological development. Namely, global warming. This is a global, multi-faceted issue with no clear pathway even though essentially the problem has been understood for almost 200 years. Margaret Thatcher addressed the United Nations and although the transcript of her speech is available, the video I originally came across on Youtube is no longer available. I downloaded the video so I could show it in one of my classes, but I hesitate to re-distribute it since I don’t know the rules. It wasn’t exactly high-quality either. Anyway, here’s the link to the transcript of a beautiful speech by a powerful world figure. And here’s the punchline. She gave this speech in 1989. 1989. Clearly, the world is not responding to the science.
A framework [for addressing global warming and the impacts] is not enough. It will need to be filled out with specific undertakings, or protocols in diplomatic language, on the different aspects of climate change. These protocols must be binding and there must be effective regimes to supervise and monitor their application. Otherwise those nations which accept and abide by environmental agreements, thus adding to their industrial costs, will lose out competitively to those who do not. The negotiation of some of these protocols will undoubtedly be difficult. And 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. We can’t just do nothing.
This speech by Margaret Thatcher was the precursor to the formation of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The scientists and policy makers who led the writing of that report in 2005-2006 won the Nobel Peach Prize in 2007 along with Al Gore. PM Thatcher should feel quite a bit of pride in her country’s efforts to initiate the IPCC. The group of scientists who contribute changes with every report that is written and now the IPCC is collectively finishing their 5th Assessment Report. Since I am a proud US citizen, I will say that the US should be (really, should have been) the first to respond. We have consumed the biggest piece of the cheap carbon energy cake and are angrily hoarding as much of the rest as we can. I hope leadership from our President continues and that the efforts of so many in the USA and all around the world is not squandered. As Margaret Thatcher said, “We can’t just do nothing.”