It has long been a slight coup of environmentalists that one of the West’s most formidable and iconic Conservatives, Margaret Thatcher, was deeply concerned about striking the balance between economic growth and climate change. 

As a recent example, take Club of Rome member Ian Dunlop’s comments in the Sydney Morning Herald. 

Dunlop claims Australia needs more stateswomen following in Thatcher’s footsteps, it is “time for stateswomen to step forward on climate change”. Bizarrely, he is specific about the role of women, arguing “It is too much to expect the male-dominated…incumbency to rise to the occasion, but women might.”
 
As evidence, in an address to the United Nations General Assembly in 1989, Thatcher announced "[free markets] would defeat their objective if, by their output, they did more damage to the quality of life through pollution than the wellbeing they achieved by the production of goods and services".
 
Such an assertion would not be out of place in many of the anti-economic growth texts today. It is a common argument that the only natural consequence of unfettered economic growth is environmental catastrophe (as if pro-growth advocates cannot deal with negative externalities such as pollution through Pigovian taxes). In the 1970s, the Club of Rome’s Limits to Growth was highly influential in encouraging this thinking.

But was Thatcher truly calling for greater constraints on economic growth?
 
In a Royal Society speech in 1990, Thatcher was careful to emphasise the role of growth, acknowledging “without growth you cannot generate the wealth required to pay for the protection of the environment”. In her 2003 book Statecraft: Strategies for a changing world she claims that while climate change may pose a challenge to human ingenuity, it does not mean the end of free-enterprise capitalism.
 
If Dunlop is advocating for Thatcher-like statesmanship, he may be disappointed to note Thatcher was just as growth oriented as the male counterparts he condemns.
 
On an even more cynical note, it has long been speculated that the reason for her stance had less to do with the environment, and more to do with breaking the nationalised, unionised coal-mining sector. In a 2011 interview with Lord Nigel Lawson who was Energy Secretary from 1981 to 1983 and then Chancellor until 1989, Lawson claims "She did have reason for highlighting the possibility of global warming” because of the threat the coal miners’ union posed to the UK’s energy security.
 
Lord Lawson argues Thatcher tried reducing Britain’s reliance on coal, while also justifying the politically unpopular nuclear energy.
 
Whether Thatcher’s concerns for climate change were genuine or political (or both), one thing is clear. It is difficult to divorce climate change policy from political and economic imperatives, no matter the statesperson’s gender.