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MARGARET Thatcher last week warned the public not to jump to conclusions
about the causes of environmental damage as soon as new data come to light.
Speaking in London at the presentation of the Better Environment Awards
for Industry, Britain’s Prime Minister also cautioned against taking premature
action to tackle environmental problems, for fear of creating new and unforeseen
problems.

Thatcher seized the opportunity to scorn green activists as ‘airy-fairy’,
and to reaffirm the government’s philosophy that pollution abatement must
go hand-in-hand with economic growth.

Thatcher referred to recent research by the Scott Polar Research Institute
in Cambridge which demonstrated that the Arctic icecap has retreated considerably,
both in thickness and area. ‘We all thought immediately of the greenhhouse
effect,’ she said. But the researchers concluded that ‘a different pattern
of winds across the Atlantic’ probably caused the phenomenon.

She cited flue-gas desulphurisation (FGD) – a means to filter harmful
oxides of sulphur from the smokestacks of power stations – as an example
of solving one problem but creating another. She pointed out that huge ‘lorry
loads’ of limestone have to be driven to power stations for use in FGD,
and that ‘we don’t yet know what to do with the gypsum created by the process’.

Thatcher said that developing countries must play their part in tackling
the greenhouse effect. ‘It’s no good just us doing it. Burning coal also
takes place in the developing world, particularly China and India.’ But,
she added, ‘the industralised countries must take the lead’.

Mocking the naivety of green ‘fundamentalists’, she said: ‘I find some
people think of the environment in an airy-fairy way, as if we could go
back to some kind of village life.