ABSTRACT
This speech from the arch-Conservative UK Prime Minister and ‘Iron Lady’ of the Cold War gives some indication of how, in the late 1980s, environmental questions were being framed not only in national but also in global security terms. In the previous year this had been demonstrated at the World Conference on the Changing Atmosphere: Implications for Global Security, held in Toronto, which pledged significant action from the international community on climate change, along with a commitment to strengthen the already established policy measures on ozone depletion and acid rain. That ‘thinking global’ had gone mainstream was then highlighted when Time magazine in January 1989 declared the endangered Earth to be their ‘planet of the year’, in place of the usual selection of an individual person. At that point in time, global solidarity was possible with the passing of the ColdWar and widely seen as necessary in the face of new, global-scale threats. In the years since 1989 these global threats have become even clearer but, unfortunately, the same level of global solidarity has not always been apparent.
