Max Chandler-Mather: "But I've seen the power of collective hope", First speech to parliament - 2022

2 August 2022, Canberra, Australia

Thanks, Deputy Speaker. Since the invasion of this continent, generations of First Nations warriors, organisers and leaders have fought, and continue to fight, to protect their lands, seas, air, people and culture against colonisation. I would like to pay homage to them, in particular the Yuggera and Turrbal peoples, who are the traditional owners of so-called Brisbane and my electorate of Griffith, and the traditional owners of this place, the Ngunnawal people.

As with so many issues in this place, there is often a deep hypocrisy when it comes to the way some politicians talk about First Nations people. How often are we told that governments support the rights of First Nations people but then fail to introduce the 339 recommendations of the Aboriginal deaths in custody royal commission, over 30 years after they were handed down? Or allow coal and gas mines to open up on land, often against the express wishes of traditional owners? While billions of dollars of mining revenue flow offshore into the coffers of billionaires, First Nations people too often lack basic health care, housing, education and incomes. Politicians make decisions that destroy First Nations land and then write laws that allow their corporate donors to rob their wealth and put it in the hands of people like Gina Rinehart.

It is abundantly clear to me that billionaires and big corporations run parliament. Indeed, when it comes to representation, I imagine that people like Clive Palmer and Gina Rinehart must feel pretty good that sometimes it feels as though 89 per cent of this place ultimately represent their interests. The major parties have proved often willing to accept an enormous human and environmental cost in order to serve the interests of big corporations and billionaires, such is their power over this place. Three million Australians live in poverty, with millions more on the brink, while Australia's richest 200 people just ticked over half a trillion dollars worth of wealth. Our nurses, teachers and doctors are viciously overworked, just to make up for the chronic underfunding of our public hospitals and schools. Meanwhile, the next federal budget will include billions of dollars in subsidies for fossil fuel corporations that just happen to be making record profits.

In the middle of one of the worst housing affordability crises in our history, where single mums are forced to live on the street after massive rent hikes, the big four banks just announced $14 billion in after-tax profit. Close to a million people are on the waiting list for social housing, suffering severe private rental stress or homeless, but 89 per cent of this place would rather support billions of dollars in tax concessions for property investors than even contemplate capping rents or building enough public housing for those who need it.

Eighty-nine per cent of this parliament literally supports spending $224 billion giving every politician and billionaire an extra $9,000 a year in the form of the stage 3 tax cuts. But apparently bringing dental into Medicare is too expensive. Apparently scrapping crippling student debt and making uni and TAFE free is too expensive. Apparently building enough but beautifully designed public housing so everyone has a place to call home costs too much. Apparently raising JobSeeker and the pension above the poverty line so people don't have to live in abject poverty is too expensive. The top 10 per cent of Australians now hold over half the total wealth in this country, but apparently that 10 per cent need a massive tax cut. Truly, one of life's great mysteries is why people don't like politicians!

One of the worst things about Australian politics is the way it works to make some of the greatest injustices and outrages seem perfectly normal and reasonable. Like a sedative it dulls the senses, and it relies on a certain logic. What is considered possible isn't determined by what actually is possible with the resources our country has to hand, but instead the major parties, media and various public and private institutions work to constrain the scope of political debate into an ever-narrowing band—one determined not by what everyday people want, need or believe, but by the interests of the billionaires and multinational corporations that parliament ultimately serves.

This logic is perhaps best exemplified when it comes to climate change. The consequences of two degrees or more of global warming are so devastating it's actually quite hard to explain, but the recent devastating bushfires, floods, heatwaves, droughts and storms really are only a small preview—massive crop failures, sea level rises displacing hundreds of millions of people, 99 per cent of the Great Barrier Reef lost. A recent study found that in 30 years time my home town of Brisbane could be virtually unliveable in summer for those who can't afford air-conditioning. But over two degrees of warming is exactly what 89 per cent of this place supports. In fact, currently this place supports expanding coal and gas mining and using public money to do it.

Australia is the third-largest exporter of fossil fuels in the world behind, you know, two great countries it's really good to be a part of: Russia and Saudi Arabia—great company. The idea that the moderate position on climate change is 'Use public money to expand coal and gas mining and drive global warming beyond two degrees' only makes sense when you consider that the power holders in parliament are coal and gas corporations, not everyday people. It's like standing in front of a burning house and declaring that the moderate position is 'We only put the fire out in one room while we send someone out back with a can of petrol to pour fuel on the fire.'

The most insulting lie, I think, though, when it comes to climate change, is that Australia needs to expand coal and gas mining to protect workers. That would be more believable if the political establishment didn't also believe that workers should pay more tax than the multinational corporations they work for. But the reality is that over the next 10 years coal and gas corporations will export hundreds of billions, if not trillions, of dollars of our wealth—our wealth. That's more than enough to guarantee the jobs and income of not just every coal and gas worker but ensure every regional mining community becomes a thriving hub of publicly owned manufacturing, renewable energy and new industries, with good hospitals, schools, public facilities and housing.

I would argue the political establishment doesn't give a toss about workers. What they're really worried about is the profits of their donors. The political system is so completely disconnected from the lives of everyday people. In fact, spending only a week in this place has been a stark lesson in how so much of the pomp, ceremony and rules of this place work to deepen and reinforce that disconnection.

Literally this same week that the Business Council was holding a special event in Parliament House with the Prime Minister—we walked past, and it was frankly bizarre—children peacefully calling for action on climate change were dragged out by police. Technically, I should be kicked out of parliament if I don't dress like a businessman, but you're more than welcome to vote for laws that materially benefit corporations that also happen to donate millions of dollars to your political party.

Every member of parliament was forced to pledge allegiance to the British monarch last week. One would think we should be swearing allegiance to the Australian people. Then there was the installing of massive security fences around the once publicly accessible lawns above Parliament House that were specifically designed to represent the democratically accessible nature of this place. As symbols go, I think that was probably a bit on the nose.

The sense that politics and politicians in general are completely disconnected from the lives of everyday people was a sentiment shared by almost everyone I spoke to during this campaign. Over 14 months, I personally knocked on almost 15,000 doors, or thereabouts, and time and again people told me they were fed up with politics. But what also became clear was just how low people's expectations are when it comes to politics.

It is this sense of low expectations which remains one of the political establishment's greatest assets. Deny people hope that things can get substantially better and you take their power, but I've seen the power of collective hope. Indeed, it really is the only reason I'm standing here. Over 14 months, over 1,000 Greens volunteers in Griffith knocked on almost 90,000 doors, hand-delivered hundreds of thousand of letters and flyers and gave up countless, evenings, mornings, rainy arvos and weekends to fight for something greater than themselves. We had tens of thousands of conversations with residents across Griffith where we actually took the time to listen and, often, learn about the issues that people faced in their daily lives. Together we built the single biggest single-seat campaign, I would argue, in the history of Australian politics and helped continue to build a movement inextricably linked to the communities from which it has emerged.

One of the questions I asked repeatedly on the Griffith campaign, borrowed from Bernie Sanders, was: are you willing to fight for someone you don't know as hard as you would fight for yourself? Time and again the answer was yes. We fought for each other not out of a sense of charity but out of a sense of solidarity, of righteous anger and, most importantly, of hope—hope not that we could defy virtually every political and media expert and win in Griffith but that we could collectively build a movement that would fundamentally transform Australian politics in favour of everyday people.

The philosophy of organisation of our movement was perhaps best represented by the response to the Brisbane floods. The floods of this year were a harsh, brutal and unjust symbol of the consequences of a political system stacked in favour of fossil fuel corporations. This apparent one-in-500-year event occurred just 10 years after another one-in-100-year flood—an alarming demonstration of the corporate and political grip on climate change. The slow response from emergency services and government was a consequence of decades of the hollowing out and underfunding of our public services and institutions. The disproportionate number of low-income and middle-income renters and homeowners badly affected by the floods were a reminder that, while this housing crisis is caused by a system treats housing as a commodity first and a home last, climate change will make it worse. But, as in Lismore, where incredible resident self-organisation drove a collective clean-up, in Griffith we proved that, where a broken system fails, ordinary people step in to fill the breach.

Over the course of those weeks, we suspended our campaign and, along with the brilliant member for South Brisbane, Amy MacMahon; Councillor Jonathan Sri; and their brilliant teams and officers, we used our organisational and logistical capacity to coordinate hundreds of volunteers in delivering free food, ice and eskies for those who had lost power. We taxied residents to crucial services. We cleaned up entire neighbourhood blocks, hauling flood damaged furniture, cleaning houses and sometimes just providing a shoulder to cry on. But it wasn't just the floods. We coordinated protests against worsening flight noise pollution, planted community gardens and used the produce to provide free food to those trapped in COVID isolation.

Ultimately, I believe, you build power by acting collectively as a community. If we want to take on the power of billionaires and big corporations then we must build a party and a movement that is capable of improving people's lives outside the cycle of electoral politics.

Of course, when it comes to this movement and, in particular, to our success in Griffith, there are some people who need thanking. To the thousands of volunteers, donors and supporters: I was constantly inspired by your drive, commitment and perseverance. Indeed, in many a dark moment on that campaign, the only thing that got me up in the morning was imagining one of you rocking up with a smile on your face to the fifth door-knock of that weekend, not demonstrating one ounce of fatigue. Frankly, I don't know how they did it. My brilliant campaign team is, I would argue, the best campaign to member country. Liam Flannerty, Mal McAuliffe, Nat Baker, Lachlan Morris, Claire Hudson, Louisa Randall, Eva Tollo, Josh Saunders-Mills, James Cummins, Kelsey Waller, Paul Rees, Zoe Lawrence, Heather Bennett, and Hannah Wright.

To Kitty Carra, the often unacknowledged director of the Queensland Greens, who has overseen the most successful period in the history of our party. She both procreated the space for and led many of transformations in the Queensland Greens that have led to so much success.

To Adam Bandt and his chief of staff Damien Lawson: thanks for believing in and supporting our little movement in Queensland years before any other southerner gave us a shot!

Thanks to my parents, Kim and Tim, for giving me many of the principles of right and wrong that I still hold today while providing the space to develop my own politics with guidance and the odd radical book recommendation.

To my partner, Joanna, without whom there's no way I could have survived this campaign: I love you and I can't imagine life without you.

Finally, to the people of Griffith, thank you for your trust not just in me but in our broader Greens' movement. To you I give you this commitment: whether you're struggling to put food on the table or pay the rent, whether you're a refugee in hotel detention in Kangaroo Point or you're facing eviction from your public housing, whether you're fighting against a profit-hungry airport corporation or a dodgy developer, whether you want to help plant a community garden or just fix up your local school, whether you have been abandoned by state authorities as another climate fuelled flood disaster hits your neighbourhood or you are just in need of a friendly chat, we will have your back

Really, at the end of the day what we are fighting for is a future where we everyone has what they need to live a good life. Perhaps the greatest injustice of all is that in such a wealthy country our system denies so many people the chance to fully enjoy their one short life on this earth. Health care; education; housing; a good, well-paying job and a beautiful home are the foundation to do what makes life truly meaningful: time with family and friends, footy in the park, painting a picture, reading a book, a day at the beach, a hike through the wilderness, a beer at the pub. I so strongly believe in a four-day work week with no loss of pay, because it would do so much to give people that most precious of resources: time.

Beyond all the specifics it can sometimes be hard to describe what exactly we mean by a good life. Funnily enough, the great feminist writer Virginia Woolf's writing in A room of one's own, for me, comes close to describing what I mean. Woolf reflects on the instinct for possession; the rage for acquisition, which keeps, 'the stockbroker and the great barrister going indoors to make money and more money and more money when it is a fact that 500 pounds a year will keep one alive in the sunshine'. With that 500 pounds, she wrote, came the freedom to think and write as she pleased.

So often in political debates we reduce people to numbers, but what value do you put on a family no longer having to worry about paying the rent and finally having the money to spend the summer at the beach? What value do you put on an afternoon playing footy in the park with your kids rather than working a sixth day of work? How much human enjoyment, creativity, new loves and friendships are denied by a political and an economic system that too often prioritises the profit of multinational corporations over the happiness of everyday people?

What has given me so much hope is that the vast majority of everyday people across Australia share this vision that we should tax billionaires and big corporations to fund things like dental into Medicare and free child care, and build one million public and affordable homes. It is a view that I believe is shared by the vast majority of people across this country. What's more, it is a truly universal vision.

That a small town in regional Queensland, Biloela, demonstrated a greater level of kindness and solidarity towards refugees than this place has done in decades is a reminder that while the decisions this place makes often impose unimaginable cruelty on people fleeing persecution, war and famine—often created by the foreign policy decisions of our government—those decisions don't reflect the will of the people. After all, what sort of good life is it when our country demonises and mandatorily imprisons our brothers and sisters for the crime of seeking that same good life?

This is why I have so much hope that ultimately we can win, because no matter what the political establishment throws at us, no matter how many times they tell us not to hope for anything better, no matter how me times they try to divide us up, no matter how many millions of corporate dollars they spend trying to stop us, we'll keep fighting, because we recognise that we all have more in common with a refugee in detention than a billionaire like Clive Palmer. We don't fight for self-interest; we fight for each other. And we won't stop until everyone—everyone—has what they need to live a good life, to be alive in the sunshine.

For those watching at home who despair at the state of our world but feel powerless to change it, I understand. After all, how often are we browbeaten and lectured about expecting anything but the bare minimum from politics? Often by self-proclaimed experts. But here's the thing, I've lost count of the number of times political and media experts said we had absolutely no chance of winning Griffith. And the thing is that they were wrong and people like you were right: the cleaners, paramedics, nurses, students, tradies, retirees, refugees. Ordinary, everyday people who fought every day for a better future on the Griffith campaign were right, and the representatives of the political establishment were wrong. Believe me that knowledge terrifies them. So next time an expert or politician tells you that it's unrealistic to expect that in a wealthy country like Australia no-one should go hungry or without a home, know that we were right and they were wrong. Know that when they tell you that tax cuts for billionaires, more coal and gas, and mandatory detention of refugees is the best you can hope for, they were wrong. If the Greens' wins in Brisbane, Ryan and Griffith prove one thing, it is that the only barrier—the only barrier—to change is our capacity to organise campaigns like this around the country. Our collective power terrifies the major parties and corporate donors but it should give you hope, because the Griffith campaign wasn't the end of something but the start. And if our political establishment thinks that this is our movement at our biggest, that somehow this is the best that we can do, then, oh boy, do they have another think coming! We really are just getting started.

So if, like me, you think that we should use $224 billion providing free breakfast in every school so no kid goes hungry rather than dishing out $9,000 to a federal politician; if you think everyone deserves a good home; if you think we shouldn't divide people up by the colour of their skin, gender, sexuality or the way they talk, but rather find common cause with everyone in this country who has been screwed over by the political system; and if you think that tackling climate change is more important than the share price of BHP, then join our movement, because I have seen the power of collective hope and I know what it can achieve. Thank you.

Jose 'Pepe' Mujica: 'We have destroyed the real jungles and sown anonymous cement jungles', address to United Nations - 2013

24 September 2013, United Nations, New York City, USA

There is no vision or audio available for this speech.

I come from the South. At the conjunction of the Atlantic and the River Plate, my country is a gentle, temperate plain where livestock graze. Its history is one of ports, leather, salted beef, wool and meat. There were dark decades of lances and horses until finally, with the outset of the twentieth century, we were at the forefront of social, education and governmental affairs. I would say that social democracy was invented in Uruguay.

For nearly 50 years, the world saw us as a kind of Switzerland, but in reality in economic matters we were the bastard children of the British Empire. When the empire ended, we experienced the bitter and terrible terms of trade and we yearned for the past for almost 50 years, remembering Maracaná. Today, we have re-emerged in a globalized world, having learned from our pain.

My personal story is that of a boy — because I once was a boy — who like others wanted to change his times and his world and dreamed of a free and classless society. My mistakes were in part the results of my era. Obviously I take responsibility for them, but sometimes I cry: “If only I had the strength that I had when we enjoyed such utopia!”

However, I do not look towards the past because what we have today was created from the fertile ashes of yesterday. On the contrary, I am not on this planet to settle scores or to reminisce. I am greatly anguished by the future that I will not see, and to which I have committed myself. Yes, it is possible to have a world with more humanity, but perhaps today the main task is to save life.

I am from the South and I have come from the South to this Assembly. I share with the thousands of poor compatriots in cities, in the jungles, in the plains, in the pampas and the canyons of Latin America the common fatherland that we are creating. I bear upon my shoulders the indigenous cultures, the remains of colonialism in the Malvinas, and the futile and regrettable blockades of Cuba under the Caribbean sun. I also bear the consequences of the electronic surveillance, which does nothing but create the distrust that poisons us needlessly. I also come with a huge social debt and with the need to defend the Amazon, the seas, and our great rivers of America. I also have the duty to fight for all on behalf of my fatherland and so that Colombia can finally regain peace. I have the duty to fight for tolerance for those who are different and with whom we have differences and disagreements. We do not need tolerance for those with whom we agree. Tolerance is the foundation of peaceful coexistence, understanding that we are all different in this world.

It is true that today, in order to spend and to bury our garbage in what science calls the carbon footprint, if in this world we aspired to consume like the average American, we would need three planets in order to be able to live. In other words, our civilization has mounted a deceitful challenge, and as we go on it is not possible for everyone to achieve that goal. Indeed, our culture is increasingly driven by accumulation and market forces. We are promised a life of spending and squandering; in fact, it is a countdown against nature and against future humankind. It is a civilization against simplicity, against sobriety, against all natural cycles; worse yet, it is a civilization against freedom, which requires time to experience human relationships and the most important things: love, friendship, adventure, solidarity and famil. It is a civilization against free time that does not pay, that cannot be bought and that allows us to contemplate the beauty of nature.

We have destroyed the real jungles and sown anonymous cement jungles. We have tackled a sedentary lifestyle with walking, insomnia with pills, solitude with electronics. Can we be happy when we are so far from the human essence? We have to ask ourselves this question. Stupefied, we have rejected our own biological imperative, which defends life for life’s sake as a superior cause, and we have replaced it by functional consumerism and accumulation.

Politics, the eternal mother of all human endeavors, has remained shackled to the economy and to the marketplace. Going from one adventure to another, politics achieves little more than perpetuating itself, and as such it delegates its power and spends its time bewildered, fighting for the Government. Out of control, human history marches forward, buying and selling everything and innovating in order to negotiate what is, in a way, non-negotiable. Marketing exists for everything: cemeteries and funeral services, maternity wards, fathers, mothers, grandparents, uncles, secretaries, cars and vacations.

Everything is business. Marketing campaigns deliberately target children and psychologically influence older children to reserve safe territory for the future. Abundant evidence exists of such abominable uses of technology that sometimes induce mass frustration. The average city dweller wanders between financial institutions and tedious office routines, sometimes
moderated by air conditioning. He often dreams about vacations and freedom. He dreams about having the ability to pay his bills until one day his heart stops and he is gone. Other such soldiers will fall prey to the jaws of the marketplace, sharing in material accumulation.

The crisis really rests in the powerlessness of politics, which is incapable of understanding that humankind cannot and will not escape nationalism, which is practically etched into our DNA. Today, it is time to fight to prepare a world without borders. The globalized economy has no other driving force except that of the private interests of the very few, and each nation State seeks only to maintain its own stability. Today, the great task for our peoples and our humble way of seeing things becomes the be-all and end-all. As if that were not enough, truly productive capitalism is a prisoner of the banks, which are at the summit of global power. More clearly, the world is clamoring for global regulations that respect scientific achievements, which abound, but it is not science that governs the world.

Today, we need a lengthy agenda of definitions. We must define working hours throughout the world. We need to have convergence among currencies. We need to finance the global struggle for water and against desertification. We have to figure out how to recycle more and how to counter global warming. What are the limits of each human task? We must achieve a broad planetary consensus to unleash solidarity among the most oppressed and to punish and tax waste and speculation by mobilizing the large economies not to produce disposable goods, but rather useful goods without planned obsolescence or excess, which would help the world’s poorest peoples. Useful goods could stand against world poverty. Turning to a useful neo-Keynesianism on a global scale in order to abolish the world’s most flagrant embarrassments would be a thousand times more profitable than making war.

Perhaps our world needs fewer global organizations, organized forums and conferences, which serve only to aid hotel chains and airlines; perhaps no one really benefits from their decisions anyway. We must return to what is old and eternal in human life, along with science that strives to serve humankind, and not only the rich. With scientists, the counsellors of humankind, we can create agreements for the entire world. Neither the large nation States nor transnational companies, not to mention the financial system, ought to govern the world of humanity. Yes, lofty politics combined with scientific wisdom — it must come from science, which is not attracted by material gain but looks towards the future and tells us about things we may not foresee. How many years ago did they tell us in Kyoto about certain facts linked to climate change?

We have finally learned that intelligence must be at the helm, guiding the ship to port. Actions of this nature and others that we cannot name, yet which we believe to be crucial, require life and not acquired wealth. Obviously, we are not so naïve; these and other things like that will not come to pass Many pointless sacrifices still lie ahead of us. We still must deal with the consequences and not tackle the causes. Today, the world is incapable of establishing global regulations for the planet, due to the failure of lofty global politics, which meddles with everything.

For a time, we were protected by more or less regional agreements, established to create a deceitful so- called free trade that in the end constructed protectionist, supranational barriers in some regions of the globe. In turn, important branches of industry and services dedicated to saving and improving the environment will arise. We will be comforted by that for a while. We will be distracted.

But of course, the accumulation will continue unabated, to the delight of the financial system. Wars and fanaticism will continue until nature calls us to account and makes our civilization non-viable. Perhaps our vision is too crude, not compassionate enough, and we view man as a unique creature, the only one on Earth capable of acting against his own species.

I reiterate that what some call our planet’s ecological crisis is the result of the overwhelming triumph of human ambition. This is our triumph and our defeat, given our political impotence to fit into the new era that we have helped to build without realizing it.

Why do I say this? The numbers tell the story. The truth is that the global population quadrupled and gross domestic product grew by a factor of at least 20 over the past century. World trade has doubled approximately every six years since 1990. We could continue to list numbers that clearly establish the march of globalization. What is happening to us? We are entering a new era, and rapidly, but with our political bodies, cultural accessories, parties and young people all reduced to old age before the horrific and accelerating changes that we cannot even grasp. We cannot manage globalization because we do not think globally. We do not know if this is a cultural limitation or we are reaching biological limits. The portents of revolution are present in our age as in no other in the history of humankind, yet our age does not have a conscious direction or even a basic instinctive direction, and still less organized political direction, because we do not have even the beginnings of a philosophy with which to face the speed of oncoming changes.

The greed that has been such a negative force and such a driver of history has also pushed forward the material, scientific and technical progress that has made our era and our time what it is and has enabled a phenomenal leap forward on many different fronts. At the same time, this very tool — the greed that pushed us to domesticate science and transform technology — is paradoxically pushing us over the edge into a shadowy abyss, towards an unknown fate, an era without history, and we are left without eyes to see or the collective intelligence to continue to colonize and transform ourselves.

If there is one thing that defines this tiny little human creature, it is that it is an anthropocentric conqueror. It seems that things come alive and submit to men. Glimpses of these things abound everywhere, glimmers that should allow us to discern these things, or at least make out the direction in which things are headed, but it is clearly impossible to make collective, global decisions about the big picture. Individual greed easily triumphs over our species’ greed. Let us be clear. What is the big picture of which we speak? It is the system of global life on Earth, including human life, with all the fragile balances that make it impossible for us to continue as we are.

On the other hand — and this is less contentious and more obvious — in the West in particular, because we are indeed from the West, though we are also from the South, the republics arose to make the claim that men are equal, that no one is better than anyone else, and that Governments should represent the common good, justice and equity. Often, these republics become warped and fall into the habit of ignoring ordinary people, the man on the street, the common people. Republics were not created to outgrow their constituents, but instead are historical phenomena designed to function for their own people. They must therefore answer to majority and must fight for its interests.

As for the traces of feudalism that persist in our societies, or the domineering classicism, or the consumer culture that surrounds us all, in the course of their existence republics often adopt a way of daily life that excludes and holds at arm’s length the common man. In fact, that common man should be the central cause of the republic’s political struggle. Republican Governments should increasingly look like their respective peoples in the way they live and the way they deal with life.

The fact is that we tend to cultivate feudal anachronisms, spoiled affectations and hierarchical distinctions that undermine the best feature of republics — the fact that no one is better than anyone else. The interaction of those factors and others keeps us living in prehistory, and today it is impossible to renounce war when politics fails. Thus, economies are strangled and resources wasted. Every minute in the life of our planet, we spend $2 million on military budgets around the world — $2 million a minute. Medical research on all manner of diseases, which has made huge advances and is a blessing that promises longer life, receives barely a fifth of what is budgeted for the military. That process, from which we cannot escape, perpetuates hatred, fanaticism and distrust, fuels new wars and wastes fortunes.

I know that it is very easy politically to criticize ourselves at the national level, and I think it naive in this world to propose that resources that could be saved and spent on other, useful things. Again, that would be possible if we were capable of making global agreements and working on global prevention and world policies aimed at ensuring peace and offering the weakest among us guarantees that do not exist.

Enormous resources would have to be cut to address the most shameful things on Earth, but one question suffices. Where can humankind as it is today go without those guarantees? Thus, each wields arms commensurate with his size.

And that is where we are today, because we can barely reason as individuals, let alone as a species.Global institutions, especially today, languish in the shadow of the dissenting great nations. Clearly, such nations wish to hold on to power. They block action by the United Nations, which was created in the hope and with a dream of peace for humankind. But what is even worse is that they have cut it off from global democracy. We are not all equal. We cannot be equal in a world where some are strong and others weak.As a result, our world democracy is wounded, and we face the historical impossibility of reaching a global peace agreement. We patch up diseases when an outbreak occurs as one or other of the great Powers wishes, while we look on from afar.

It would be difficult to invent a force that is worse than the chauvinistic nationalism of the great Powers. Nationalism, a force that liberates the weak through the process of decolonization, has become a tool of oppression in the hands of the strong. The past two centuries are full of examples. The United Nations is languishing and becoming increasingly bureaucratic from lack of power and autonomy, above all of recognition of democracy for the weak of the world, who are the majority.

By way of a very small example, our little country is in absolute terms the largest Latin American
contributor of soldiers to peace building missions, and we go wherever we are asked to go. But we are small and weak, and in the places where resources are distributed and decisions made, we cannot go even to serve coffee. In our heart of hearts we long to help humankind emerge from prehistory — and people who live with war are still living in prehistory, despite the many artifacts they can build — but as long as we do not emerge from prehistory and retire war as a resort when politics fails, that is the long march and challenge we have ahead of us. We say that in full awareness; we are familiar with the loneliness of war.
Such dreams, however, require us to fight for an agenda of world agreements that can begin to steer our history and overcome life’s threats, step by step. Our species should have a Government for all
humankind that supersedes individualism and creates political leaders who follow the path of science and not merely the immediate interests of those governing and suffocating us. At the same time, we must understand that the world’s poor are not from Africa or Latin America; they are all part of humankind, and that means that we must help them to develop so they can lead decent lives. The necessary resources exist. They can be found in the waste of our predatory civilization.

A few days ago a tribute was delivered in a fire station in California. An electric bulb had been turned on for 100 years. It had been on for 100 years! How many millions of dollars have they taken from our pockets deliberately creating junk so that people will buy and buy and buy? But globalization means a brutal cultural change for our planet and for our life. That is what history demands from us. The entire material basis has changed and it has changed man. In our culture, we act as if nothing had happened.Instead of us controlling globalization, it controls us.

Almost 20 years ago, we discussed the humble Tobin tax, which could not be applied at a global level. All of the banks with financial power rose up against it. Their private property and who knows how many other things would be harmed. However, that is the paradox. With talent and collective work, with science, step by step humankind can make deserts green; humankind can bring agriculture to the seas; humankind can develop agriculture that lives with salt water.

If the power of humankind is focused on what is essential, it is infinite. Here we see the greatest sources of energy. What do we know about photosynthesis? Almost nothing. There is a great deal of energy in the world, if we work together to use it properly. It is possible to eliminate poverty from the planet. It is possible to create stability. It will be possible for future generations, if they begin to reason as a species and not just as individuals, to bring life to the galaxies and pursue this dream of conquest that we, human beings, have in our genes.

But if those dreams are to come true, we will have to control ourselves or we will die. We will die because we are not capable of being at the level of the civilization that we have been developing with our efforts. That is our dilemma. We should not spend our time merely correcting the consequences. Let us consider the deep- rooted causes, the civilization of waste, the present civilization that is stealing time from human life and wasting it on pointless matters.

Let us remember that human life is a miracle. Consider that human life is a miracle, that we are alive as a result of a miracle, and that nothing is more important than life. Our biological duty is, above all, to respect life, promote it, take care of it, reproduce it and understand that the species is our being.

Margaret Thatcher: 'Each country has to contribute, and those countries who are industrialised must contribute more to help those who are not', UN Speech on Environment and Cliamte Change - 1989

8 November 1989 , United Nations, New York City, USA

Mr President, it gives me great pleasure to return to the Podium of this assembly. When I last spoke here four years ago, on the 40th anniversary of the United Nations, the message that I and others like me gave was one of encouragement to the organisation to play the great role allotted to it.

Of all the challenges faced by the world community in those four years, one has grown clearer than any other in both urgency and importance—I refer to the threat to our global environment. I shall take the opportunity of addressing the general assembly to speak on that subject alone.
INTRODUCTION

During his historic voyage through the south seas on the Beagle, Charles Darwin landed one November morning in 1835 on the shore of Western Tahiti.

After breakfast he climbed a nearby hill to find advantage point to survey the surrounding Pacific. The sight seemed to him like “a framed engraving” , with blue sky, blue lagoon, and white breakers crashing against the encircling Coral Reef.

As he looked out from that hillside, he began to form his theory of the evolution of coral; 154 years after Darwin 's visit to Tahiti we have added little to what he discovered then.

What if Charles Darwin had been able, not just to climb a foothill, but to soar through the heavens in one of the orbiting space shuttles?

What would he have learned as he surveyed our planet from that altitude? From a moon's eye view of that strange and beautiful anomaly in our solar system that is the earth?

Of course, we have learned much detail about our environment as we have looked back at it from space, but nothing has made a more profound impact on us than these two facts.

First, as the British scientist Fred Hoyle wrote long before space travel was a reality, he said “once a photograph of the earth, taken from the outside is available … a new idea as powerful as any other in history will be let loose” .

That powerful idea is the recognition of our shared inheritance on this planet. We know more clearly than ever [end p1] before that we carry common burdens, face common problems, and must respond with common action.

And second, as we travel through space, as we pass one dead planet after another, we look back on our earth, a speck of life in an infinite void. It is life itself, incomparably precious, that distinguishes us from the other planets.

It is life itself—human life, the innumerable species of our planet—that we wantonly destroy. It is life itself that we must battle to preserve.

For over forty years, that has been the main task of this United Nations.

To bring peace where there was war.

Comfort where there was misery.

Life where there was death.

The struggle has not always been successful. There have been years of failure.

But recent events have brought the promise of a new dawn, of new hope. Relations between the Western nations and the Soviet Union and her allies, long frozen in suspicion and hostility, have begun to thaw.

In Europe, this year, freedom has been on the march.

In Southern Africa—Namibia and Angola—the United Nations has succeeded in holding out better prospects for an end to war and for the beginning of prosperity.

And in South East Asia, too, we can dare to hope for the restoration of peace after decades of fighting.

While the conventional, political dangers—the threat of global annihilation, the fact of regional war—appear to be receding, we have all recently become aware of another insidious danger.

It is as menacing in its way as those more accustomed perils with which international diplomacy has concerned itself for centuries.

It is the prospect of irretrievable damage to the atmosphere, to the oceans, to earth itself.

Of course major changes in the earth's climate and the [end p2] environment have taken place in earlier centuries when the world's population was a fraction of its present size.

The causes are to be found in nature itself—changes in the earth's orbit: changes in the amount of radiation given off by the sun: the consequential effects on the plankton in the ocean: and in volcanic processes.

All these we can observe and some we may be able to predict. But we do not have the power to prevent or control them.

What we are now doing to the world, by degrading the land surfaces, by polluting the waters and by adding greenhouse gases to the air at an unprecedented rate—all this is new in the experience of the earth. It is mankind and his activities which are changing the environment of our planet in damaging and dangerous ways.

We can find examples in the past. Indeed we may well conclude that it was the silting up of the River Euphrates which drove man out of the Garden of Eden.

We also have the example of the tragedy of Easter Island, where people arrived by boat to find a primeval forest. In time the population increased to over 9,000 souls and the demand placed upon the environment resulted in its eventual destruction as people cut down the trees. This in turn led to warfare over the scarce remaining resources and the population crashed to a few hundred people without even enough wood to make boats to escape.

The difference now is in the scale of the damage we are doing.
VAST INCREASE IN CARBON DIOXIDE

We are seeing a vast increase in the amount of carbon dioxide reaching the atmosphere. The annual increase is three billion tonnes: and half the carbon emitted since the Industrial Revolution still remains in the atmosphere.

At the same time as this is happening, we are seeing the destruction on a vast scale of tropical forests which are uniquely able to remove carbon dioxide from the air.

Every year an area of forest equal to the whole surface of the United Kingdom is destroyed. At present rates of clearance we shall, by the year 2000, have removed 65 per cent of forests in the humid tropical zones. [end p3]

The consequences of this become clearer when one remembers that tropical forests fix more than ten times as much carbon as do forests in the temperate zones.

We now know, too, that great damage is being done to the Ozone Layer by the production of halons and chlorofluorocarbons. But at least we have recognised that reducing and eventually stopping the emission of CFCs is one positive thing we can do about the menacing accumulation of greenhouse gases.

It is of course true that none of us would be here but for the greenhouse effect. It gives us the moist atmosphere which sustains life on earth. We need the greenhouse effect—but only in the right proportions.

More than anything, our environment is threatened by the sheer numbers of people and the plants and animals which go with them. When I was born the world's population was some 2 billion people. My Michael Thatchergrandson will grow up in a world of more than 6 billion people.

Put in its bluntest form: the main threat to our environment is more and more people, and their activities: • The land they cultivate ever more intensively; • The forests they cut down and burn; • The mountain sides they lay bare; • The fossil fuels they burn; • The rivers and the seas they pollute.

The result is that change in future is likely to be more fundamental and more widespread than anything we have known hitherto. Change to the sea around us, change to the atmosphere above, leading in turn to change in the world's climate, which could alter the way we live in the most fundamental way of all.

That prospect is a new factor in human affairs. It is comparable in its implications to the discovery of how to split the atom. Indeed, its results could be even more far-reaching.
THE LATEST SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE

We are constantly learning more about these changes affecting our environment, and scientists from the Polar Institute in Cambridge and The British Antarctic Survey have been at the leading edge of research in both the Arctic and the Antarctic, warning us of the greater dangers that lie ahead. [end p4]

Let me quote from a letter I received only two weeks ago, from a British scientist on board a ship in the Antarctic Ocean: he wrote, “In the Polar Regions today, we are seeing what may be early signs of man-induced climatic change. Data coming in from Halley Bay and from instruments aboard the ship on which I am sailing show that we are entering a Spring Ozone depletion which is as deep as, if not deeper, than the depletion in the worst year to date. It completely reverses the recovery observed in 1988. The lowest recording aboard this ship is only 150 Dobson units for Ozone total content during September, compared with 300 for the same season in a normal year.” That of course is a very severe depletion.

He also reports on a significant thinning of the sea ice, and he writes that, in the Antarctic, “Our data confirm that the first-year ice, which forms the bulk of sea ice cover, is remarkably thin and so is probably unable to sustain significant atmospheric warming without melting. Sea ice, separates the ocean from the atmosphere over an area of more than 30 million square kilometres. It reflects most of the solar radiation falling on it, helping to cool the earth's surface. If this area were reduced, the warming of earth would be accelerated due to the extra absorption of radiation by the ocean.”

“The lesson of these Polar processes,” he goes on, “is that an environmental or climatic change produced by man may take on a self-sustaining or ‘runaway’ quality … and may be irreversible.” That is from the scientists who are doing work on the ship that is presently considering these matters.

These are sobering indications of what may happen and they led my correspondent to put forward the interesting idea of a World Polar Watch, amongst other initiatives, which will observe the world's climate system and allow us to understand how it works.

We also have new scientific evidence from an entirely different area, the Tropical Forests. Through their capacity to evaporate vast volumes of water vapour, and of gases and particles which assist the formation of clouds, the forests serve to keep their regions cool and moist by weaving a sunshade of white reflecting clouds and by bringing the rain that sustains them.

A recent study by our British Meteorological Office on the Amazon rainforest shows that large-scale deforestation may reduce rainfall and thus affect the climate directly. Past experience shows us that without trees there is no rain, and without rain there are no trees. [end p5]
THE SCOPE FOR INTERNATIONAL ACTION

Mr President, the evidence is there. The damage is being done. What do we, the International Community, do about it?

In some areas, the action required is primarily for individual nations or groups of nations to take.

I am thinking for example of action to deal with pollution of rivers—and many of us now see the fish back in rivers from which they had disappeared.

I am thinking of action to improve agricultural methods—good husbandry which ploughs back nourishment into the soil rather than the cut-and-burn which has damaged and degraded so much land in some parts of the world.

And I am thinking of the use of nuclear power which—despite the attitude of so-called greens—is the most environmentally safe form of energy.

But the problem of global climate change is one that affects us all and action will only be effective if it is taken at the international level.

It is no good squabbling over who is responsible or who should pay. Whole areas of our planet could be subject to drought and starvation if the pattern of rains and monsoons were to change as a result of the destruction of forests and the accumulation of greenhouse gases.

We have to look forward not backward and we shall only succeed in dealing with the problems through a vast international, co-operative effort.

Before we act, we need the best possible scientific assessment: otherwise we risk making matters worse. We must use science to cast a light ahead, so that we can move step by step in the right direction.

The United Kingdom has agreed to take on the task of co-ordinating such an assessment within the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change, an assessment which will be available to everyone by the time of the Second World Climate Conference next year.

But that will take us only so far. The report will not be able to tell us where the hurricanes will be striking; who will be flooded; or how often and how severe the droughts will be. Yet we will need to know these things if we are to adapt to future climate change, and that [end p6] means we must expand our capacity to model and predict climate change. We can test our skills and methods by seeing whether they would have successfully predicted past climate change for which historical records exist.

Britain has some of the leading experts in this field and I am pleased to be able to tell you that the United Kingdom will be establishing a new centre for the prediction of climate change, which will lead the effort to improve our prophetic capacity.

It will also provide the advanced computing facilities that scientists need. And it will be open to experts from all over the world, especially from the developing countries, who can come to the United Kingdom and contribute to this vital work.

But as well as the science, we need to get the economics right. That means first we must have continued economic growth in order to generate the wealth required to pay for the protection of the environment. But it must be growth which does not plunder the planet today and leave our children to deal with the consequences tomorrow.

And second, we must resist the simplistic tendency to blame modern multinational industry for the damage which is being done to the environment. Far from being the villains, it is on them that we rely to do the research and find the solutions.

It is industry which will develop safe alternative chemicals for refrigerators and air-conditioning. It is industry which will devise bio-degradable plastics. It is industry which will find the means to treat pollutants and make nuclear waste safe—and many companies as you know already have massive research programmes.

The multinationals have to take the long view. There will be no profit or satisfaction for anyone if pollution continues to destroy our planet.

As people's consciousness of environmental needs rises, they are turning increasingly to ozone-friendly and other environmentally safe products. The market itself acts as a corrective the new products sell and those which caused environmental damage are disappearing from the shelves.

And by making these new products widely available, industry will make it possible for developing countries to [end p7] avoid many of the mistakes which we older industrialised countries have made.

We should always remember that free markets are a means to an end. They would defeat their object if by their output they did more damage to the quality of life through pollution than the well-being they achieve by the production of goods and services.

On the basis then of sound science and sound economics, we need to build a strong framework for international action.

It is not new institutions that we need. Rather we need to strengthen and improve those which already exist: in particular the World Meteorological Organisation and the United Nations Environment Programme.

The United Kingdom has recently more than doubled its contribution to UNEP and we urge others, who have not done so and who can afford it, to do the same.

And the central organs of the United Nations, like this General Assembly, must also be seized of a problem which reaches into virtually all aspects of their work and will do so still more in the future.
CONVENTION ON GLOBAL CLIMATE

The most pressing task which faces us at the international level is to negotiate a framework convention on climate change—a sort of good conduct guide for all nations.

Fortunately we have a model in the action already taken to protect the ozone layer. The Vienna Convention in 1985 and the Montreal Protocol in 1987 established landmarks in international law. They aim to prevent rather than just cure a global environmental problem.

I believe we should aim to have a convention on global climate change ready by the time the World Conference on Environment and Development meets in 1992. That will be among the most important conferences the United Nations has ever held. I hope that we shall all accept a responsibility to meet this timetable.

The 1992 Conference is indeed already being discussed among many countries in many places. And I draw particular attention to the very valuable discussion which members of the Commonwealth had under the Mahathir bin MohamadPrime Minister of Malaysia's chairmanship at our recent Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Kuala Lumpur. [end p8]

But a framework is not enough. It will need to be filled out with specific undertakings, or protocols in diplomatic language, on the different aspects of climate change.

These protocols must be binding and there must be effective regimes to supervise and monitor their application. Otherwise those nations which accept and abide by environmental agreements, thus adding to their industrial costs, will lose out competitively to those who do not.

The negotiation of some of these protocols will undoubtedly be difficult. And no issue will be more contentious than the need to control emissions of carbon dioxide, the major contributor—apart from water vapour—to the greenhouse effect.

We can't just do nothing. But the measures we take must be based on sound scientific analysis of the effect of the different gases and the ways in which these can be reduced. In the past there has been a tendency to solve one problem at the expense of making others worse.

The United Kingdom therefore proposes that we prolong the role of the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change after it submits its report next year, so that it can provide an authoritative scientific base for the negotiation of this and other protocols.

We can then agree to targets to reduce the greenhouse gases, and how much individual countries should contribute to their achievement. We think it important that this should be done in a way which enables all our economies to continue to grow and develop.

The challenge for our negotiators on matters like this is as great as for any disarmament treaty. The Inter-governmental Panel's work must remain on target, and we must not allow ourselves to be diverted into fruitless and divisive argument. Time is too short for that.

Before leaving the area where international action is needed, I would make a plea for a further global convention, one to conserve the infinite variety of species—of plant and animal life—which inhabit our planet.

The tropical forests contain a half of the species in the world, so their disappearance is doubly damaging, and it is astonishing but true that our civilisation, whose imagination has reached the boundaries of the universe, does not know, to within a factor of ten, how many species the earth [end p9] supports.

What we do know is that we are losing them at a reckless rate—between three and fifty each day on some estimates—species which could perhaps be helping us to advance the frontiers of medical science. We should act together to conserve this precious heritage.
BRITAIN'S CONTRIBUTION

Every nation will need to make its contribution to the world effort, so I want to tell you how Britain intends to contribute, either by improving our own national performance in protecting the environment, or through the help that we give to others, and I shall tell you under four headings.

First, we shall be introducing over the coming months a comprehensive system of pollution control to deal with all kinds of industrial pollution whether to air, water or land.

We are encouraging British industry to develop new technologies to clean up the environment and minimise the amount of waste it produces—and we aim to recycle 50 per cent of our household waste by the end of the century.

Secondly, we will be drawing up over the coming year our own environmental agenda for the decade ahead. That will cover energy, transport, agriculture, industry—everything which affects the environment.

With regard to energy, we already have a £2 billion programme of improvements to reduce acid rain emissions from our power stations. We shall be looking more closely at the role of non-fossil fuel sources, including nuclear, in generating energy. And our latest legislation requires companies which supply electricity positively to promote energy efficiency.

On transport, we shall look for ways to strengthen controls over vehicle emissions and to develop the lean-burn engine, which offers a far better long-term solution than the three-way catalyst, in terms of carbon dioxide and the greenhouse effect.

We have already reduced the tax on lead-free petrol to encourage its use. That is an example of using market-based incentives to promote good environmental practice and we shall see whether there are other areas where this same principle can be applied.

With regard to agriculture, we recognise that farmers not [end p10] only produce food—which they do with great efficiency—they need to conserve the beauty of the priceless heritage of our countryside. So we are therefore encouraging them to reduce the intensity of their methods and to conserve wild-life habitats.

We are planting new woods and forests—indeed there has been a 50 per cent increase in tree planting in Britain in the last ten years.

We also aim to reduce chemical inputs to the soil and we are bringing forward measures to deal with the complex problem of nitrates in water. All that is part of our own ten-year programme coming up to the end of the century.

Third, we are increasing our investment in research into global environmental problems. I have already mentioned the climate change centre that we are establishing.

In addition we are supporting our own scientists', and in particular the British Antarctic Survey's crucial contribution to the World Ocean Circulation Experiment, as well as the voyages of our aptly-named research ship, the ‘Charles Darwin’.

We have also provided more money for the Climate and Environment Satellite Monitoring Programmes of the European Space Agency.

Fourth, we help poorer countries to cope with their environmental problems through our Aid Programme.

We shall give special help to manage and preserve the tropical forests. We are already assisting in twenty countries and have recently signed agreements with India and Brazil.

And as a new pledge, I can announce today that we aim to commit a further £100 million bilaterally to tropical forestry activities over the next three years, mostly within the framework of the Tropical Forestry Action Plan. That is what we are doing in Britain under those four headings. All of those things.
CONCLUSION

Mr President, the environmental challenge which confronts the whole world demands an equivalent response from the whole world. Every country will be affected and no one can opt out. [end p11]

We should work through this great organisation and its agencies to secure world-wide agreements on ways to cope with the effects of climate change, the thinning of the Ozone Layer, and the loss of precious species.

We need a realistic programme of action and an equally realistic timetable.

Each country has to contribute, and those countries who are industrialised must contribute more to help those who are not.

The work ahead will be long and exacting. We should embark on it hopeful of success, not fearful of failure.

I began with Charles Darwin and his work on the theory of evolution and the origin of species. Darwin 's voyages were among the high-points of scientific discovery. They were undertaken at a time when men and women felt growing confidence that we could not only understand the natural world but we could master it, too.

Today, we have learned rather more humility and respect for the balance of nature. But another of the beliefs of Darwin 's era should help to see us through—the belief in reason and the scientific method.

Reason is humanity's special gift. It allows us to understand the structure of the nucleus. It enables us to explore the heavens. It helps us to conquer disease. Now we must use our reason to find a way in which we can live with nature, and not dominate nature.

At the end of a book which has helped many young people to shape their own sense of stewardship for our planet, its American author quotes one of our greatest English poems, Milton 's “Paradise Lost” .

When Adam in that poem asks about the movements of the heavens, Raphael the Archangel refuses to answer. “Let it speak” , he says,

”The Maker's high magnificence, who built
So spacious, and his line stretcht out so far,
That Man may know he dwells not in his own; An edifice too large for him to fill,
Lodg'd in a small partition, and the rest
Ordain'd for uses to his Lord best known.”

We need our reason to teach us today that we are not, that [end p12] we must not try to be, the lords of all we survey.

We are not the lords, we are the Lord's creatures, the trustees of this planet, charged today with preserving life itself—preserving life with all its mystery and all its wonder.

May we all be equal to that task.

Thank you Mr President.