How Did I Get To Be So Green And Blue?
Analysis
HOW DID I GET TO BE SO GREEN AND BLUE?
CAVENDISH: In 1990, Margaret Thatcher’s speech to the Geneva climate conference was one of the first by a world leader on global warming. She urged other politicians not to waste time disputing the science or blaming each other, and to create a global convention to reduce greenhouse gases. Reading it today, the words jump off the page. She sounds more forthright, and less apologetic, than many of today’s politicians. Her supporters say her influence was crucial in getting the first President Bush to sign the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
Where did her apparent conviction come from? Partly from Sir Crispin Tickell, then the British Ambassador to the UN.
TICKELL: The environment was something that did interest her. And I think the fact that the more people expressed opposition to it, especially among her cabinet colleagues, the more interested she became in it. You must remember Mrs. Thatcher was not only a woman in a man’s world, but she was also a scientist in a world of classical scholars, lawyers and the rest of them. So she felt always that those were the two things that were her.
Global Warming: How It All Began
Mrs Thatcher is now often considered to have been a great UK politician: she gave her political party (the Conservative Party) victory in three General Elections, resided over the UK’s conduct of the Falklands War, replaced much of the UK’s Welfare State with monetarist economics, and privatised most of the UK’s nationalised industries. But she had yet to gain that reputation when she came to power in 1979. Then, she was the first female leader of a major western state, and she desired to be taken seriously by political leaders of other major countries. This desire seemed difficult to achieve because her only experience in government had been as Education Secretary (i.e. a Junior Minister) in the Heath administration that collapsed in 1974. She had achieved nothing notable as Education Secretary but was remembered by the UK public for having removed the distribution of milk to schoolchildren (she was popularly known as ‘Milk Snatcher
Thatcher’.)
Sir Crispin Tickell, UK Ambassador to the UN, suggested a solution to the problem. He pointed out that almost all international statesmen are scientifically illiterate, so a scientifically literate politician could win any summit debate on a matter which seemed to depend on scientific understandings. And Mrs Thatcher had a BSc degree in chemistry. (This is probably the most important fact in the entire global warming issue; i.e. Mrs Thatcher had a BSc degree in chemistry). Sir Crispin pointed out that if a ‘scientific’ issue were to gain international significance, then the UK’s Prime Minister could easily take a prominent role, and this could provide credibility for her views on other world affairs. He suggested that Mrs Thatcher should campaign about global warming at each summit meeting. She did, and the tactic worked. Mrs Thatcher rapidly gained the desired international respect and the UK became the prime promoter of the global warming issue
Crispin Tickell (Belief)
Now you come from an Anglo-Irish family. Your great, great grandfather was T H Huxley - Aldous Huxley was in your background too. Now this is a legacy of seriously thoughtful, intellectual address, isn't it?
Well T H Huxley was in many respects one of my heroes. Aldous was as well. In fact I think if anybody had any influence on me during my adolescence, it was Aldous Huxley
To better understand UNESCO, consider a quote from Sir Julian Huxley, brother of the famous Aldous Huxley. Julian Huxley was the founding director-general of UNESCO when he said the following:
"The general philosophy of UNESCO should be a scientific world humanism, global in extent... It can stress… the transfer of full sovereignty from separate nations to a world political organization… Political unification in some sort of world government will be required…to help the emergence of a single world culture."
From its inception UNESCO has been openly hostile to American values, our Constitution, and our western culture. Why in the world should we send tax dollars to an organization that actively promotes values so contrary to those of most Americans?
But there’s more. Mr. Huxley goes on to state that perhaps eugenics, the so-called science of creating better people through genetic manipulation, is not so bad after all:
"Even though it is quite true that any radical eugenic policy will be for many years…politically impossible, it will be important for UNESCO to see that the eugenic problem is examined with the greatest care, and that the public mind is informed of the issues at stake so that much that is now unthinkable may at least become thinkable."
This is the reality of UNESCO, the agency your tax dollars will once again fund. How much more hostility will the American people accept before we realize that the UN represents a very real threat to our freedom, our sovereignty, and our way of life?
The legacy of Julian Huxley - 'Evolutionary Studies' edited by M. Keynes and G. Ainsworth
'Evolutionary Studies' edited by M. Keynes and G. Ainsworth, Macmillan, pp 256, Pounds sterling 35
JULIAN HUXLEY was born in 1887 and he died in 1975. From the end of the First World War through to the early 1960s, he enjoyed a formidable reputation as an evolutionary biologist, a science writer and broadcaster, and as something of a political activist. His creed was humanism, while his medium was the Eugenics Society and, for a time, UNESCO.
With incredible energy, he helped to found the World Wildlife Fund, IUCN, the Ecological Society and the Society for the Study of Animal Behaviour. He received numerous awards and other honours for his services to science and to society. For example, he gained prizes for popularising science, for writing English verse, and for contributions to planned parenthood, conservation and evolutionary biology
Possibly it was Julian Huxley who best summed up the confidence with which so many British academics who lived during the first half of this century viewed the future, when he wrote (1941, p. 22):
Once the full implications of evolutionary biology are grasped, eugenics will inevitably become part of religion of the future, or whatever complex of sentiments may in future take the place of organized religion. It is not merely a sane outlet for human altruism, but is of all outlets for altruism that which is most comprehensive and of longest range.
How can Man improve Man?
This is a classic article from New Scientist's archive, republished as part of our 50th anniversary celebrations
SOME critics of the eugenic movement assert that deliberate, large-scale improvement of the human race is impossible until we have a much more detailed scientific knowledge of human genetics. Others claim that eugenic improvement could be brought about only by rigorous authoritarian methods.
Both views, in the opinion of Sir Julian Huxley, are untrue. In the Galton Lecture to the Eugenics Society last week he said that by relying on our knowledge of the course of pre-human evolution and present day species formation, and on the results of pre-scientific animal and plant breeding, "we can be sure that the general level of human performance and genetic capacity could be markedly raised". He believes that this could be done "simply by encouraging the differential reproduction of human beings exhibiting generally desirable characteristics such as health, physical beauty, manual dexterity, longevity, athletic ability, intelligence, general mental ability, mathematical, aesthetic and other special aptitudes, and capacity for leadership and for cooperative effort."
He said that experience shows that radical social changes can occur by consent, and can be affected by a combination of persuasion and good leadership, especially when the level of general education is high. Accordingly, better education, especially with respect to biology, reproductive physiology, genetics and evolution, would in his opinion be needed before embarking on a eugenic programme. He thought that another prerequisite would be the control of the present excessive rate of population increase.
“Negative eugenics" aims to reduce the frequency and prevent the spread of genetic diseases that result from undesirable genes or gene combinations, including such conditions as haemophilia, schizophrenia, susceptibility to diabetes, various types of mental defect including very low IQ, certain temperamental deficiencies and, of course, the great majority of radiation-induced mutational defects. The need for negative eugenics has become urgent in recent years, mainly owing to advances in medicine, public health and social welfare which permit the survival and reproduction of many types who would have died young in earlier periods
Sir Julian seemed sure that early Man's social organisation in the form of small competing groups would have encouraged genetic improvement of characters like intelligence, manual dexterity and ability to communicate and cooperate. Today, however, with the increase in size and reduction in numbers of competing social groups, intra-group selection has become much less effective. Intra-group cooperation has permitted the survival of genetically defective types and the spread of undesirable mutations. He considered there was "every prospect of general genetic retrogression unless we amend our social organisation" . He thought that taxation and family allowance systems should be modified to discourage excessive reproduction.
"Positive eugenics", in his view, was more inspiring but also more difficult. However, the necessary techniques were already available or could be readily perfected. They included safe and simple methods for controlling conception, artificial insemination from donor males, and the preservation of mammalian sperm for indefinite periods by deep freezing. Furthermore it could be only a matter of time, he thought, before we arrived at a method of assuring a long-term supply of female gametes by freezing female germ cells. The first step towards large-scale positive eugenics would be the decision by a few enlightened couples to have recourse to what had been called "eutelegenesis" - artificial insemination by means of sperm from some admired donor who will "father" their children. "It is frequently objected," Sir Julian said, "that such practices will never be generally adopted as they run counter to deep-seated human 'instincts'. I do not believe this.
Certainly, there will at first be widespread and often violent opposition, just as there has been to birth control and to legal reforms concerning homosexuality. But the opposition will spring from tradition and prejudice, not from instinct."
This article was originally published in New Scientist on 15 June 1962
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