Forty five years ago, on this day, November 18th 1979,
leaked Cabinet papers record the Government’s efforts to ‘reduce oversensitivity to environmental consideration'(The Sunday Times, 18 November 1979).
This was the effort of John Hoskyns….
Norton-Taylor, R. 1979. Topping up the Think Tank. The Guardian, Nov 24, p.19.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 337ppm. As of 2024 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that Thatcher had come to power in May 1979. And there were a bunch of even more extreme right-wingers trying to pull her in that direction, not just Keith Joseph. And there was this guy who had come up with a big fat book, like Dominic Cummings of his time, only successful. And one of his enemies had leaked something to the Sunday Times.
What we learn is that there are always intra government, intra department battles going on about the direction and speed of travel and so forth. And one of the time-honoured ways of fighting those battles, is leaking embarrassing information about your enemies to the press. They will happily splash that because it sells newspapers and makes them look like they’re investigators. (See also EP Thompson and the culture of leaks and non-attributed briefings.)
What happened next, the guy, John Hoskyns, wasn’t in post for terribly much longer, and it really looked like Thatcher wouldn’t be. But then the Argentinian junta delivered her an election on a plate. She took it and she never looked back. And the emissions kept climbing.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
Also on this day:
November 18, 1953 – Macmillan tells the truth about committees
November 18, 1998 – coal guy becomes Australian environment ambassador