Margaret Thatcher, 6 December 1990 at the 2nd World Climate Change:
“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.
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. No-one should under-estimate the imagination that will be required, nor the scientific effort, nor the unprecedented co-operation we shall have to show. We shall need statesmanship of a rare order. It’s because we know that, that we are here today.“
Nineteen years later…
Newsnight’s Quote of the Day:
Gordon Brown, 17 December 2009:
“I know that for many people the Copenhagen conference seems like a grand talking shop with abstract arguments about issues of little relevance to their daily lives. But decisions we take in the next few days have the potential to be the most momentous for the world in more than half a century.”
19 yearas later, little seems to have moved.
mmm…
It’s a shame she promoted so much selfishness, greed and over-consumption. Hardly suprising that all people care about these days is their car or their 40-inch plasma screen as that is the measure of man in our brave new world. Climate change? We’ve got NO chance.
[…] in anthropogenic global warming and mankind’s blame in climate change, I am grateful to Ellee Seymour for pointing out that former Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher attempted to get world […]
If they would only club together to stop rainforest being chopped down it will be a start. But it seems that ‘climate change’ is simply an excuse to tax people more.
I agree with my friend Jean-Luc Picard.
Let`s just hope that we won`t have to listen same speeches in 2028.
It’s hard not to be cynical about this considering how difficult it is to put these ideas into practice. The mechanics of the carbon credit market need to be rethought.
The operative term in Thatcher’s speech seems to be “the scientific effort” – I would question how much science is going on at Copenhagen.