On this day, 27 September 1988, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher surprised everyone by going full-Greta, and so really kicking off the 1988 to 1992 “window” around climate change.
She gave a speech at the Royal Society in which she said
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.
Recently three changes in atmospheric chemistry have become familiar subjects of concern. The first is the increase in the greenhouse gases—carbon dioxide, methane, and chlorofluorocarbons—which has led some [end p4] to fear that we are creating a global heat trap which could lead to climatic instability. We are told that a warming effect of 1°C per decade would greatly exceed the capacity of our natural habitat to cope. Such warming could cause accelerated melting of glacial ice and a consequent increase in the sea level of several feet over the next century. This was brought home to me at the Commonwealth Conference in Vancouver last year when the President of the Maldive Islands reminded us that the highest part of the Maldives is only six feet above sea level. The population is 177,000. It is noteworthy that the five warmest years in a century of records have all been in the 1980s—though we may not have seen much evidence in Britain!
On the same day,
“Eduard Schevardnadze, then Soviet Foreign Minister, made a stronger speech to the [United Nations General Assembly] on 27 September 1988, where he proposed that UNEP should be transformed into ‘an environmental council capable of taking effective decisions to ensure ecological security’.”
Page 35 Paterson, M (1996)
On this day the PPM was 348.97 ppm.
Now it is 420ish – but see here for the latest.
Why this matters.
The window opens….
What happened next?
Various hi-jinks and games of chicken, the ramping up of denial. It all closes in June 1992 with the Rio Earth Summit…