David Attenborough is probably guilty of assuming that his viewers will usually be intelligent enough to join the dots and work out for themselves the implications of what he shows them (George Monbiot: Attenborough has betrayed the living world he loves, 7 November). The people who have a much more serious responsibility for the threadbare coverage the BBC has given to climate change and other environmental crises are the editors who for many years refused to treat climatology as a serious branch of science, and whose notion of “balance” led them to insist on equal airtime for people who, for whatever reason, have denied and often sought to discredit the scientists who say human activities are warming the Earth.
Alex Kirby
BBC News environment correspondent, 1987-1996
• In David Attenborough’s Dynasty programme he pointedly emphasised the diminishing number of chimpanzees and the threat that gold mining poses. Short of walking in front of the programme with a red flag and a poster of George Monbiot, it’s hard to know how he could have been clearer.
Will Wyatt
Middle Barton, Oxfordshire
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