Margaret Thatcher: an unlikely green hero? | John Vidal

The former prime minister helped put climate change, acid rain and pollution onto the mainstream political map

Artist Lambert paints Britain's former Prime Minister Thatcher at his studio in Brighton

An artist paints a portrait of Margaret Thatcher. Her 11 years in power coincided with a decade of profound national and global environmental change. Photograph: Luke Macgregor/REUTERS

Margaret Thatcher will be remembered for her short lived “green period” in the late 1980s when she helped put climate change (or global warming as it was then known), acid rain and pollution on to the mainstream political map. Tutored by Sir Crispin Tickell, British ambassador to the UN in New York, she made several dramatic environment speeches..

Jonathon Porritt, head of Friends of the Earth in the late 1980s,

via Margaret Thatcher: an unlikely green hero? | John Vidal | Environment | guardian.co.uk.

3 thoughts on “Margaret Thatcher: an unlikely green hero? | John Vidal”

  1. 25 years ago since the first emissions trading – Glastonbury U.K.

    On 6 December 1987, 25 years ago, Maureen’s Pet shop of Glastonbury in (Somerset) bought carbon offset corresponding her pet shop’s total emissions, as calculated by the Carbon Markets Association. The compensation was done with tree planting and was the world’s first. Since then, only the CDM market has offset emissions of over a billion metric tonnes of CO2.

    B. MT in office then, a coincident? Not likely

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