Those who know me will be surprised to read my opinion that, in one respect, Margaret Thatcher was absolutely right.

It’s got nothing to do with selling off social housing and public utilities, or confusing the railways, or dismantling mutual building societies, or martial escapades in the south Atlantic. It’s because she understood what mankind is doing to cause climate change.

Her main degree was in chemistry, and her first job was as a food research chemist. It suggests she clearly had a better understanding of what happens to energy and molecules than most of the political class that she later led, particularly one of her chancellors who now fronts a climate change denial outfit. Her time in office, in the 1980s, coincided with the concerns about the destruction of the ozone layer over the Antarctic and the early realisation of what was happening to the climate.

She supported the international drive that led to the establishment of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and, closer to home, she founded the renowned research centre at the Met Office – the Hadley Centre for Climate Change.

It’s difficult to disagree with some of her public statements on the matter:

  •  “It’s possible that with all the enormous changes in population and fossil fuel use concentrated into such a short period of time, we have unwittingly begun a massive experiment with the systems of the planet itself.”
  • “No generation has a freehold on this Earth. All we have is a life tenancy with a full repairing lease.”
  • “The danger of global warming is as yet unseen, but real enough for us to make changes and sacrifices so that we do not live at the expense of future generations.”
  • “It may be cheaper or more cost- effective to take action now than to wait and find we have to pay much more later.”

We need to remember that all these words were spoken some 25 years ago and she wasn’t part of the chorus – she had the microphone, setting the pace.

It’s just a pity that most of her economic policies made matters worse, with the reduction in regulation and the lack of support for public transport. Indeed, she was lucky to have the gas from the North Sea.

It’s true that in her later and more vulnerable years, her views on climate change were diluted by the influence of the right-wing columnists and advisers who had so little impact in her prime.

When she took office, the CO2 count was 339 parts per million, whereas on the day she died it was 398. She would have understood the significance.