1989撒切尔夫人在联大上的讲话Word文件下载.docx

1、Document kind:SpeechVenue:United Nations Building, New YorkSource:Thatcher ArchiveJournalist:-Editorial comments:Text as printed and released by the No.10 Press Office.Importance ranking:MajorWord count:4051Themes:Foreign policy （International organisations）, Environment, Foreign policy （general dis

2、cussions）, Energy, Science and technology, Transport, Agriculture, Foreign policy （development, aid, etc）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 oth

3、ers 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 importanceI refer to the threat to our global environment. I shall take

4、 the opportunity of addressing the general assembly to speak on that subject alone.INTRODUCTIONDuring 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

5、 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 Darwins vis

6、it 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 moons eye view of tha

7、t 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 bef

8、ore 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 everfo 1before that

9、 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 t

10、he other planets.It is life itselfhuman life, the innumerable species of our planetthat 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.Li

11、fe 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

12、to thaw.In Europe, this year, freedom has been on the march.In Southern AfricaNamibia and Angolathe 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 d

13、ecades of fighting.While the conventional, political dangersthe threat of global annihilation, the fact of regional warappear 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

14、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 earths climate and thefo 2environment have taken place in earlier centuries when the worlds population was a fraction of its present size.The

15、 causes are to be found in nature itselfchanges in the earths 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 rateall this is new in the experience of the earth. I