Rising tide of climate change
Oliver Milman’s piece (A climate crisis in paradise, 6 November) rightly points up the frustrations of the Pacific islanders faced with the lack of political will in the developed world, as their very existence is threatened. With the climate change summit in Paris imminent, we have to hope that the British government’s resolve is not weakening. The drift of green policy changes does not bode well.
The reduction in support for on-shore windfarms and the solar businesses, alongside the subsidies and tax breaks for fossil-fuel industries, new licences for exploration in eco-sensitive sites, the enthusiastic support for fracking and the privatisation of the Green Investment Bank: this is not the way to send the right signal for achieving the agreed climate change targets, let alone more stringent ones.
The climate change crisis requires radical change in corporate, personal and cultural behaviour, and the ability to work co-operatively at a global level. This needs strong political will, which is lacking at present.
In many ways the people, especially the young, are ahead of the politicians in understanding the threat and taking action for a sustainable world. The divestment movement, the Keep it in the Ground campaign and many community projects attest to this.
Of course, as usual, the poorest will suffer most in these matters and if we think the present migrant crisis is an existential threat to the stability of Europe, it will be as nothing as sea level rises and extreme weather drive millions from their homes. The social unrest that may well result will amplify the catastrophe.
Future generations will not forgive us if the narrow window of opportunity we have to prevent the worst is wasted.
Mike Bishop
West Overton, Wiltshire, UK
• Full marks to The Guardian Weekly for putting Oliver Milman’s article about climate change in the Pacific islands on the front page. The only disappointing thing was the headline with the reference to “paradise”. It is no help to these nations to have the stereotypical fantasies of European 19th-century Romanticism revived in presumed support of their climate advocacy efforts.
As Milman illustrates, even without the already severe impacts of climate change, many Pacific islanders lead far from idyllic lives, which are being made even less of an experience of “paradise” because of what they now have to anticipate.
Wendy Flannery
Brisbane, Queensland, Australia
• Christiana Figueres (6 November) claims that we’ve reached critical mass for support of limiting global warming. My Quaker meeting just held a day workshop on climate change, and I just finished a course at Tufts University on the subject. I’ve been invited by the Environmental Defense Fund to join a discussion in Boston on the upcoming Paris climate summit. I’m also attending a day conference on sustainable security at Harvard Law School. So it all seems to be happening.
But as your special report points out, the pledges are still inadequate. Moreover, such pledges mean little when government leaders may not be around to see them through.
An increasing number of students and other young people are demonstrating and risking arrest in support of divestment from university endowments in fossil fuels. They are trying to get our attention. It is they who will bear the burden of our own failure to act.
Linda Agerbak
Arlington, Massachusetts, US
• Alas, I fear my country is in a coma on the issue of air conditioning, and may well never wake up (6 November). Americans have a sense of entitlement about what we have become accustomed to. This undoubtedly applies to other parts of the world but I will keep my comments here at home. I live in Vermont, a state that has brutally cold segments of winter and can have temperatures into the low to mid-30s Celsius in summer. In winter I keep my house at around 15C, wear sweaters and use a lap blanket. In summer I open up the house at night to let in the cool air, and in the morning shut the windows, draw the curtains and this keeps me at a comfortable 20C during the day.
I realise, of course, that there are many people for whom my plan does not work, but I pay nothing for air conditioning. Conservation is simply not part of the national conversation here, and it needs to be.
Doreen Forney
Pownal, Vermont, US
• Once again a smog-like haze is hanging over Indonesia (6 November). This is caused by farmers using fire to clear rainforest in order to plant cash crops that mostly go to enhance our “consumer experience” (eg palm oil to make our chocolate bars “creamy”).
So what of our so-called western values? Our chocolate bars cause rainforest destruction, CO2 and smog; our demand for consumer electronics and ultra-cheap clothes leads to near-slavery conditions in producing countries; and our ravenous demand for oil has caused (and is causing) war in the Middle East. So much for western values.
Here we should also ponder the forthcoming climate talks in Paris: delegates will be discussing CO2 reduction and a whole lot of western countries will be quoting emissions statistics that conveniently fail to include the CO2 emitted by producing countries (eg Indonesia and China) in order to produce and ship all the “stuff” that we in the west so eagerly desire.
I despair.
Alan Mitcham
Cologne, Germany
Trudeau’s victory in Canada
Jonathan Freedland’s focus on the “dynastic” element of the Trudeau win in Canada (23 October) left unsaid the immense relief that many Canadians of every stripe felt with Stephen Harper’s defeat. Finally, we can begin to sense that Canada’s place in the world will begin to improve.
In fact, so early in the new era, steps are being taken to unmuzzle scientists, heal the fractured relations with the external affairs department, and most important of all, focus on bringing many more refugees into the country. The relief, and the optimism, is palpable.
Nancy Burbidge
Port Williams, Nova Scotia, Canada
• Dynasty is not the reason for Justin Trudeau’s election victory in Canada. He ran an absolutely superb campaign and a majority of the people wanted a change. Trudeau’s cabinet confirms his competence.
Jordan Bishop
Ottawa, Canada
Human rights and economics
More than a European problem, “how to balance human rights and economic interests” is a problem many nations would do well to reflect upon (30 October). Elementary human rights – the rights to life, liberty and equality – are neither distinct from nor subject to economic interests. The grotesquely widening gap that separates the 1% from the rest – in particular from the bottom 50% – is a condition that sets individual economic interests ahead of basic human rights.
It is hypocritical for democracies to lecture China on human rights as we accept homelessness and abject poverty in the face of obscene richness as a normal state of affairs. A democratically elected government that not only tolerates but exacerbates economic misery to benefit the few at the top is no less in contempt of human rights than is an autocratic government.
André Carrel
Terrace, British Columbia, Canada
Let’s reclaim conversation
Hats off to Carlos Lozarda for bringing Sherry Turkle’s book Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in the Digital Age (30 October) to our attention. The smart/mobile/cell phone (the Germans call it their “handy”) has been racing on technologically for some time now, leaving many of us humans dehumanised, stressed and more narcissistic.
On coming down to the breakfast table, I was greeted by the hunched-up figure of my wife scrolling down her phone. A “Good morning” from me would have disturbed her.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not a Luddite. But as Turkle points out, it’s time to reclaim conversation. By the way, my wife was reading the paper online. I wonder which one.
Nigel Ruddock
Langen, Germany
Briefly
• Of course Australian monarchist David Flint is narked about the scrapping of the appointment of Australian knights and dames (Let this be the end of fruity royal titles, Richard Ackland, 6 November). If you’d been sweating for decades on the expectation of eventually getting a knighthood, wouldn’t you be?
Lawrie Bradly
Surrey Hills, Victoria, Australia
• The news that the Chinese and the Americans are indulging in political gamesmanship in the South China Sea (30 October), the former with island construction, the latter with a warship sail-by, makes one hope that they will recognise their international responsibilities. Surely there is a message in the fact that the contentious Spratly reef is named “Mischief”.
Anthony Walter
Surrey, British Columbia, Canada
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