Margaret Thatcher's scientific background led her to demand briefings on the ozone hole and on climate change, bringing early government attention to both issues. A national newspaper increased environmental coverage as Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, and WWF grew and drew young members. A reporter joined Greenpeace ships to block the Sellafield pipeline, expose sewage dumping and illegal chemical waste discharges, and covered international fisheries and ocean protection conferences. A Greenpeace expedition spent three months in Antarctica and helped secure international agreement to designate Antarctica as a world park. Satellite dispatches from Antarctica expanded public awareness.
"We, in the climate business, all owe a great deal to Mrs Margaret Thatcher. Her politics were anathema to me and to many Guardian readers. But she prided herself on being a scientist before she was a politician. It was Thatcher's inquiring mind that first demanded a scientific briefing about the dangers of the hole in the ozone layer, and subsequently on another even greater potential catastrophe, climate change."
"As a general reporter on the paper, first assigned to cover nuclear power when the science editor was ill, I was allowed to sign on as a crew member of various Greenpeace ships. I went on voyages to block the Sellafield pipeline draining plutonium into the Irish Sea, I took trips round the coast highlighting sewage dumping and all manner of unlicensed chemical waste pipelines."
Read at www.theguardian.com
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