{"id":6581,"date":"2026-08-14T13:32:46","date_gmt":"2026-08-14T11:32:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/?p=6581"},"modified":"2026-08-14T13:32:46","modified_gmt":"2026-08-14T11:32:46","slug":"thatcher-climate-crisis-nothing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/2026-08-14\/thatcher-climate-crisis-nothing\/","title":{"rendered":"Thatcher warned in 1989 of a climate crisis. She did nothing. Her successors will be the same"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Governments knew what was coming. They failed to act because the political costs of taking on the corporate sector were too immense. Those corporations are now more powerful than ever<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

More than 150 years ago, scientists discovered what they termed a \u201cgreenhouse effect\u201d, demonstrating for the first time that water vapour and carbon dioxide trapped heat. Theoretical concerns were soon raised that we might, through the practice of burning fossil fuels and releasing carbon, have inadvertently been altering our climate since the start of the industrial revolution.<\/p>\n

In 1938 a British scientist published the first observational study<\/a> suggesting that human carbon emissions were, indeed, heating the planet.<\/p>\n

By the late 1950s, the science about global warming was so well established that legendary Hollywood film maker Frank Capra was hired to make a documentary, The Unchained Goddess<\/a>, intended to educate the public about what then seemed a relatively far-off threat.<\/p>\n

The film explained that the release by factories and vehicles of some six billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year \u2013 a paltry sum by today\u2019s standards \u2013 was \u201cunwittingly changing the world\u2019s climate\u201d.<\/p>\n