Our population problem
I must take issue with your editorial Population control (7 August). In it, you appear to conclude that the burgeoning world population is either too big an issue to tackle effectively, or that it’s not really a significant component of major problems such as biodiversity loss, resource depletion and global warming.
Many informed commentators point to the expanding population as a key element in the multi-faceted catastrophe that the planet is facing. True, there is no evidence of an inevitable link between lower population, economic growth and increased carbon emissions, as your article suggests. If developing countries were to follow slavishly our own pattern of consumption and the profligate use of natural resources, this might indeed be the case, but surely it’s up to us in the west to set an example by stabilising our population as well as adopting sustainable economic and consumption policies, coupled with a rapid move worldwide to truly renewable sources of energy, which would not include nuclear.
As an overall environmental strategy, we must pursue limits on all three: population growth, whether by immigration or procreation; carbon emissions; and our profligate, wasteful ethic of materialism for its own sake. Where can we find leaders brave enough to propose, then to implement, such seemingly radical policies?
Noel Bird
Boreen Point, Queensland, Australia
• For a country with such a shocking record of environmental degradation and abuse, China’s one-child policy has always been its one saving grace (31 July). Its origins lie in fears for food security that have not been solved, and only look at becoming worse globally, due to overpopulation. Perhaps reproductive freedom is a human right, but unfortunately its impacts diminish most of the other ones – security, water, food – and these are rights that are essential to survival, not simply to continue a family line.
I might think I have the right to walk around the country wherever I feel, that this planet is everybody’s to wander as they choose. But for reasons of privacy, security of property and national security, I accept that I’ll have to forgo that right. Similarly, I accept that I don’t have the right to have as many children as I want, because each new offspring affects every other human on the planet.
The sooner that people realise that it’s not a right without consequences, but a weighty responsibility, the sooner we can start managing our species’ long-term survival.
Chris Brausch
Katikati, New Zealand
Corbyn and the Labour party
Whereas it’s impossible not to agree with some of the views in Jonathan Freedland’s piece on Jeremy Corbyn’s march towards the leadership of the Labour party (31 July), Freedland falls into the same old trap of prevarication when trying to avoid clarity of argument. Instead of spelling out his views on the readily acceptable social, economic and political aims of Corbyn’s platform, which are so distasteful to the neoliberal Blairite apologists of New Labour, he dismisses, “unkindly or not”, the support for Corbyn as “a form of narcissism”.
As with the would-be detractors of Tony Benn’s lifetime efforts to divert the party towards a socialist development plan, Freedland fails to disclose what it is in Corbyn’s programme that is so unacceptable to New Labour for fear, no doubt, of the universal acceptance, especially by the politically alert younger generation, of Corbyn’s policies.
Alexander Schoen
London, UK
• Let me get this straight: the man who connived with George Bush, lied to parliament and manipulated the nation into a bloody war now feels entitled to insult Jeremy Corbyn? The British media happily join the chorus. Obviously, any ally is welcome in stamping out a dangerous firebrand who promotes – gasp – economic equity.
Jonathan Freedland tells the story without batting an eyelid. His moral indignation is reserved for “narcissistic” young voters who actually vote for what they believe in.
Orwell didn’t know the half of it.
Ana Simeon
Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
European disintegration
So Natalie Nougayrède believes that further integration is the way for Europe to get “out of the doldrums” and that we should “forge ahead towards deeper cooperation” (31 July).
She is absolutely right: if you base your society on the economic premise that growth and unimpeded globalised trade are the cornerstones, then having a competitive edge is the best way forward, with integration being central to providing this.
But integration on an economic level is a false goal that will lead to the decimation of communities, increased pollution and environmental degradation, and a handful of corporations being able to dictate terms and thereby usurp democracy.
The Europe that I would like to see is an open but regional one where people live the lives and consume the products that suit their locality. So why not have a certain amount of “de-integration”? Why not have (for example) regional currencies and policies that discourage ultra-low-cost imports and overstretched freight networks? This might result in a little less monetary wealth but it would certainly involve a lot less of the economic and financial insanity.
Alan Mitcham
Cologne, Germany
The woman in the hijab
What we wear makes a statement about who we are (What I’m really thinking, 24 July). We do not have time to process everything that makes a person an individual; that is why we rely on stereotypes to give some meaning to what we see. We react to people based on our assumptions regarding gender, race, age, profession and religion. Only when we get to know someone do we see beyond these assumptions and refine our perception of the individual.
The woman in the hijab was doing this very stereotyping when she said that she knows what others are thinking. The writer says her hijab is just one piece of the puzzle of who she is and that she is more than this. We can all say this.
As a 65-year-old man with a beard and ponytail, I have to accept that assumptions will be made based on my appearance.
As a member of society, the writer plays a multitude of roles such as woman, daughter, customer, consumer, teacher, volunteer, passenger, passerby, Muslim etc. To expect to be understood as an individual in all these situations is not only impossible but an arrogant assumption that seems prevalent in this age of narcissism.
D Bartlett
Kuching, Malaysia
• My thanks to the woman in the hijab for her expressing herself so gently and so persuasively. I do not understand why anyone should find her head covering offensive.
Veiled women remind me of the heavily clothed Catholic nuns I used to see walking around North Kensington before the second world war, refusing to look an eight-year-old child in the eye. What is offensive is the failure of one person to recognise the presence of another.
Recently, I walked into a waiting room and saw an attractively and modestly dressed young woman who was wearing a veil. I unthinkingly smiled at her as I passed and she smiled back at me. It was a pleasant, if brief, human encounter.
Leslie Buck
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Briefly
• Indian MP Tharoor requests financial compensation for centuries of British destruction and extraction (31 July). While we’re talking about it, we might add a host of other countries. Can we not at least do more to welcome those who are fleeing starvation, war and persecution?
Peter Martin
Huddersfield, UK
• Your article in Shortcuts on swan upping (31 July) states: “No one eats swans now.” Fifty years ago, as a New Hall undergraduate and the guest of a fellow of St John’s College, Cambridge, I ate swan at a May Ball. Indeed, according to Wikipedia, “Fellows of St John’s College are the only people outside the Royal Family legally allowed to eat unmarked mute swans.”
You might wonder what swan tastes like. The answer is, of course, chicken.
Ann M Altman
Hamden, Connecticut, US
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