Australia’s PM problem
It is worth adding to your report (Morrison takes the helm in Canberra, 31 August) that the new prime minister, Scott Morrison, was the man who brought a lump of coal to parliamentary question time, in order to demonstrate its safety to a startled audience – many of whom already knew that coal is quite safe until it is burnt. His new chief of staff is an ex-employee of the Minerals Council of Australia, and adviser to Rio Tinto. The newly appointed environment minister represents a Western Australia mining constituency, while the energy minister has publicly denigrated “the new climate religion”, and made it clear that reducing emissions must not be allowed to stand in the way of cheap electricity. The chief scientific adviser appears to be Tony Abbott, who has convincingly refuted arguments about climate change by describing them as “absolute crap”.
It makes one nostalgic for the good old days, when Margaret Thatcher told the UN: “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 rate – all this is new in the experience of the earth. It is mankind and his activities which are changing the environment of our planet in damaging and dangerous ways.”
Philippa Morris
Gravesend, NSW, Australia
• Ben Doherty’s article (Morrison takes the helm in Canberra) should have quoted the bookies’ odds on how long he will (not) last. I sit here in disgust at the ongoing self-serving, power-driven debacle for the prime ministership of Australia and the populist extreme right path some of our politicians would prefer the country to follow.
Consequently, I’d like to vote for AI (artificial intelligence) as prime minister. It has to be better than the current crew of egomaniacs attempting to annihilate each other for the position.
Pamela Neeson
Fremantle, Western Australia
Immigrants are not tourists
I cannot imagine what induced you to publish a letter equating “the way in which mass tourism is destroying our social fabric” and the effect of “mass migration” (31 August). The author states that “this helps us to understand the feelings of those we label the far-right” while “their cities and their countries are being taken over – not by tourists, but, worse, by immigrants”.
This absurdly superficial approach to a highly complex problem – comparing pleasure-seeking tourists with time and money on their hands to the plight of victims fleeing from family, home and country in a desperate attempt to escape from war, torture, persecution, famine and hopelessness – implies a cynicism that defies belief.
It is the attempt, often successful, to make such attitudes socially respectable that is so dangerous.
Anna Schrape
Recklinghausen, Germany
The power of gao trees
Ruth Maclean’s article (Power of gao, 31 August), on the rediscovery of the environmental benefits of gao, is exciting. Gao trees’ ability to control soil erosion, create a cooler microclimate, retain water, fix nitrogen to fertilise soil, and provide animal fodder and medicine would be a great blessing to farmers in the semi-arid regions of the world. Another great advantage of gao plantations is the possibility they offer of growing crops under the trees. Every gao tree is indeed worth 10 cows. Perhaps the major benefit of growing gao trees may be to combat global warming.
The poor people of Niger who rediscovered the benefits of growing gao trees deserve our appreciation.
Bill Mathew
Melbourne, Australia
The future of reading
Regarding your piece (Skim reading is the new normal, 31 August): what will happen to my favourite books when I die? In the hopes of saving some of them from destruction, I am writing notes on their flyleaves. I have started with ones that are out of the mainstream, or slightly quirky, such as Clochemerle, or The Good Soldier Švejk. From there I am going on to some very British authors who might be almost unknown here in Texas: for example, Max Beerbohm, Saki, Stella Gibbons and JL Carr.
Some of my books must be “difficult” as defined by Maryanne Wolf, and some of them easy. It might all be a wasted effort but I like to think that some of today’s young people might enjoy these books as I have.
George Ellis
New Braunfels, Texas, US
Briefly
• While sympathising with the correspondent unhappy with “stone stacking” as being a “violation of wild spaces” (24 August), one should not forget the Inuksuk. It is hard to get more remote than Canada’s arctic islands, where local Inuit have been erecting piles of rocks to form Inuksuit as point markers for generations. One is even incorporated into their flag.
Anthony Walter
Surrey, British Columbia, Canada
• I always thought that the sanctity of life and tolerance were the main tenets of Buddhism. Not where the Rohingya people are concerned, it seems (31 August). What a disillusionment.
Elizabeth Keating
Orcemont, France
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