Please give us more hope
Amidst the hate-filled xenophobic debate about refugees and migrants the positive front-page article (The Europeans offering aid, 7 August) was very welcome. Negative news of war, death and destruction sells newspapers because it’s sexy, but it gives us a warped view of the world.
We all know that hate exists in abundance, but I don’t think we need to be constantly reminded of it. Love also exists in abundance as your article shows and if we are ever to advance in our quest to change this world we need to build on those points of light which exist worldwide. I suspect that I’m fairly typical of your average Guardian Weekly reader, being on the left of the political spectrum, knowing how I’d like the world to be but not really knowing how to get there from here.
A long time ago I used to know until I became disillusioned by the failure of the left to produce a more egalitarian world without the constraints on personal freedom that inevitably come with an authoritarian state. I still believe that another world is possible but in order to get there we have to know about the positive things that are going on, and there really are a lot of them! So please give us more positive news so that we may live in hope rather than despair.
David Murray
Montbrun Bocage, France
• From the British government we hear that the migrant crisis is due to poor French security, and from the French that it is due to lax treatment of migrants in Britain.
We do not hear from either side why it is better for migrants to be in the Jungle in Calais rather than to be in Britain. Nor do we hear much about why the migrants themselves go to such lengths to get from one EU country to another.
Adrian Betham
London, UK
• The glaring omission of any British offer of help in the migrant crisis is both shameful and inhumane and is due mostly to the stance of an elitist prime minister who persistently ignores the needs of the most needy in society, both at home and abroad.
Let him not forget that the plight of thousands of those seeking a better life in the UK is due, largely, to our involvement in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, which has resulted in untold misery, persecution and terror. These people deserve better treatment before it’s too late.
Elizabeth Stebbings
London, UK
• So often the story on the front page of the weekly Guardian is one of doom and desolation. So I was very grateful for the recent story The Europeans offering aid (7 August), which gives some good news on a particularly bad news subject, the plight of refugees into Europe.
Heather Roberts
Wellington, New Zealand
Worries about population
Your 7 August leader (Population control – it may not save the environment) suggests that trying to address the projected increase in population from 7 billion now to 11 billion by the end of this century could accelerate environmental damage. I beg to differ.
I worry that we are already at the start of a mass extinction event caused by existing population numbers, before factoring in a 50% increase. I worry that with climate change and rapidly depleting underground water aquifers, on which much of the population depends, it will become increasingly difficult to feed current numbers, let alone 11 billion. I worry at the casual assumption of the writer that it is all right if population increase happens to the poor since they have little economic activity and lower CO2 emissions as it disregards the fact that great advances have been made in reducing poverty, something we should all welcome.
The leader rightly comments that fertility is greatest in Africa but the fact is that this is not because mothers there want it – there is a massive need for contraception. Reducing fertility rates through the provision of education and contraception for those who want it (not population control) is good for the planet’s biodiversity on which we all depend, good for families with fewer mouths to feed and, yes, good for the west, which will have fewer problems – from inward migration to international instability. What is there to dislike about it?
Simon Erskine
London, UK
• Your editorial on population policy was misguided and disappointingly sceptical. Does economic growth speed up with slowing population, or would this have occurred anyway? Doesn’t lower population mean lower total GDP anyway? Does economic growth have to cause carbon emissions to rise?
Many developing nations can use new technology such as renewable energy as they grow. The “environment” is not just carbon emissions. Overpopulation causes overfishing, habitat destruction, species extinction, pollution of rivers, destruction of arable land, overcrowding of cities, etc. The list of ills caused by having too many of our species is very long.
In many developing nations, there are too many people living in the wrong places – earthquake zones, low-lying land, drought-prone areas etc. Overpopulation adds to this problem.
Good population policy is simple and inexpensive. It involves education and a supply of contraceptives. Only the Republican right in the US, the Catholic Church and Muslim fundamentalists stand in the way.
Gordon Payne
Fremantle, Western Australia
• We should not be put off by the dilemma you cite in tackling the twin threats of climate change and population growth.
Yes, it takes widening prosperity to lower birthrates, but that has also led to rising consumption, carbon emissions and global warming. On the face of it, mass poverty may serve to slow down climate change.
That’s not quite what your editorial, let alone the UN, suggests, and the root of the problem in your argument may lie in its premises.
The evidence you cite is from the past, which is precisely what must be changed to turn things round. If it is not abject poverty but our own prosperity that drives carbon extraction and emissions, it is the nature of that prosperity that needs addressing, especially if that’s the model to which the excluded aspire.
Unlike the hungry poor, a prosperous population has some chance of understanding its global predicament, and the means to put things right. That requires political will, more government not less. How else to curb corporate interests when Big Coal, Big Oil and Big Gas are set to extract five times more fossil fuel than we can safely burn? Closer to home for most of us, who else can afford hardwoods and beef from the land where forests are felled?
In the long run, if we’re wise and lucky enough to have one, it’s clear that the more people we have on the planet, and the more of us buy into growth by profit and pillage, the more likely it becomes that we succumb to our own stupidity. For those of us who have seen world population double or treble in our lifetimes, it may be time to balance presumptions of voluntary birth control with provision for voluntary death control – the right to bow out gracefully when life becomes a burden to ourselves and others.
Greg Wilkinson
Swansea, UK
Eco-tourism is the answer
I agree with Simon Jenkins (To save lions like Cecil, 7 August) that wildlife charities seem chiefly concerned with “fundraising”.
After the news of Cecil’s death, I investigated donation options to conservation groups; however when I examined various websites, none contained information on what my donation would actually fund. Yet, it is increasingly evident that for all their fundraising efforts very little has changed in the trophy hunting industry: wildlife continue to be valued more when dead than when alive.
Why don’t animal conservation organisations invest in local communities as well as animals? They could openly compete with hunting ventures by taking punters “on safari” and providing financial opportunities to locals. Hunting ventures employ local trackers and offer a ‘wildlife experience’, however eco-tourism punters only shoot with a camera.
So, not only does eco-tourism support animals, it also creates livelihoods for locals, and this has been somewhat neglected by traditional animal conservation efforts, who appear to only protect wildlife, neglecting the human populations who live among them.
Eco-tourism is expensive to start, but once operating it returns far more revenue than hunting ventures. What do animal conservation organisations really invest in? Do donations and sponsorships to animals really improve the lot of the wildlife they are apparently protecting and is this sustainable?
Susan Jacups
Cairns, Queensland, Australia
Briefly
Good luck to John Harris (14 August) with his dream of a golden old age. He is too young to make the judgments he does for the rest of us. I’m in my late sixties and already aware that my body is beginning to fail. Harris pays lip service to the trials and traumas of old age, then falls back on the old chestnut of old people worrying about being a “burden”. Young Mr Harris is welcome to make up his own mind, but why does he think he has the right to tell those older and undoubtedly wiser how we should end our lives?
Peter Roberts
Huddersfield, UK
• Is there cynicism in the Eyewitness picture (7 August) of families spending the night in the aquarium? A couple of the kids are interested in the fish – all the adults are glued to their smart phones!
Ned Edmonds
Piffard, New York, US
• President Obama has caught up with Pope Francis (Obama makes bold move on climate, 7 August). Between them there could be some hope for the Earth.
Pat Baskett
Auckland, New Zealand
Email letters for publication to weekly.letters@theguardian.com including a full postal address and a reference to the article. Submissions may be edited for publication
