Fighting global megafires
The rest of the world is experiencing the devastating effects of wildfires of the magnitude that Australians have long had to deal with. Combating bushfires, as we refer to them, for over 200 years has given us a great deal of practical experience. Your article The world’s view on the heatwave (3 August) has prompted the suggestion that non-Australasians could well benefit from the lessons learnt here.
Being prepared for the inevitable bushfire, most Australian communities understand the need to manage fuel levels in forest and grasslands as well as comply with a comprehensive framework of policy, legislation, regulations and planning. Continual public awareness and education programmes are supported by approximately 240,000 volunteer rural fire fighters, equipped with thousands of fire trucks, to respond whenever a fire occurs. This is in a country whose population is only around 24 million and has a mainly dry and highly flammable landmass. Operating a large civilian force of water-bombing aircraft is only part of the solution.
The high level of bushfire expertise gained in Australia has been backed up with 15 years of intensive research. In an era of climate change and population growth, fire authorities in countries that are relatively new to megafires could benefit from Australia’s knowledge.
Eddie van Rijnswoud
Kalamunda, Western Australia
The problem with plastic
Much as I admire Lucy Siegle’s articles, I feel she is jousting at windmills over the problem of plastics (Plastic is old, tired technology, 27 July). Many polymers lend themselves to the ready manufacture of intricate shapes, so it would be difficult to wean industry away from their use. The accumulation of waste in the environment is essentially a social problem: and some societies are better than others at avoiding fouling their nests.
Alternatively it could be seen as an opportunity to help solve the problem of climate change. If all the unrecycled material were collected and compressed, it would be an easy way to sequester carbon. Ideally the work could be paid for with a realistic carbon tax. If this carbon were put into recoverable stores, it would also be a means of avoiding another ice age, when the sequestering of carbon became too effective.
Tony Bradford
Reay, UK
There is justice in politics
Thank you for your World roundup (3 August) item New Zealand: Howard stirs election row. Our ex-prime minister, John Howard, can sometimes tell the truth. As the person who played such a large part in demonising and imprisoning refugees here, and who took Australia into the immoral and bloody US invasion of Iraq in 2003, to say “There is no justice in politics” is quite true. If there was, he would be behind bars.
Stephen Langford
Paddington, NSW, Australia
• When Australia’s former prime minister John Howard sent a condolence note to New Zealand’s former prime minister after the latter’s election defeat last year, saying “there is no justice in politics”, the sentiment was no doubt heartfelt. It’s not surprising that he would take up the same theme while opening this year’s National party conference. After all, not only did Howard’s party lose power after the 2007 Australian general election, but he also ignominiously lost his own parliamentary seat. That probably still stings for him. I, along with many other Australian voters, however, thought it to be a prime example of justice in action.
Lawrie Bradly
Surrey Hills, Victoria, Australia
Nobel scandal is appalling
In addition to the scandal surrounding the Nobel prize for literature, described at length by Andrew Brown (3 August), it deserves noting that all of the Nobel prizes are overrated, relative to the contributions to knowledge that are needed to address the serious problems of the early 21st century: climate change, human security, migration and obsolete 20th-century economic thought.
Many other more relevant prizes and recognitions, such as the Blue Planet prize, the Right Livelihood Award, the World Sustainability Award, the Volvo Environment prize, and Foreign Policy’s annual Top 100 Global Thinkers together receive a small fraction of the attention paid to the gilded Nobels. It is time to reconsider our priorities.
Michael Marien
LaFayette, New York, US
• The Nobel committee should pass on to the police for possible charges Katarina Frostenson’s alleged misuse of Nobel prize-winner’s names. In the presence of so much self-aggrandisement, the rumour that the king may disband the academy should become reality. World-class literature should not be subject to such game-playing.
Stephen Banks
Birmingham, UK
Briefly
• Gary Younge hits the right tone (The new right loves to play the victim, 27 July), but there are lots of people who can’t help being men, can’t help being white, and identify as Christian who will have no truck whatsoever with the attitudes so precisely dissected in his article.
John Pilkington
Haywards Heath, UK
Send letters to weekly.letters@theguardian.com. Please include a full postal address and a reference to the article. We may edit letters. Submission and publication of all letters is subject to our terms and conditions.
