We must realise the seriousness of the threat
The period since the Guardian Weekly relaunched has been perhaps one of the most momentous in the contemporary history of the planet. It began with the clearest warning yet of the imminent tipping point in global temperatures, and ended with a stark assessment of the vulnerability of the web of life, given the loss of 60% of animals due to human activity. It was high time that the link between climate change and resource depletion was highlighted.
One might have thought that this would have dominated discourse and galvanised governments into activity. Not a bit of it.
Our collective capacity to act on a global scale seems to vary in inverse proportion to the seriousness of the planetary situation. The issue simply has not moved into the political and social arena from the scientific world. No amount of declarations from scientists will have the necessary effect until that happens.
Neil Blackshaw
Barbizon, France
• How is it that I came away from this week’s “big story” wondering why exactly I need to take biodiversity loss so seriously (9 November)? I certainly believe that it is a serious matter, and nodded along hopefully when reading that it is “[about] more than…losing the wonders of nature”, since it is “…jeopardising the future of people”. But I’m afraid that I come away hard-pressed to explain precisely why action is needed. One of the scientists quoted suggests that, unlike climate change, it is tough to directly sense the impact of biodiversity loss. All the more reason to show how it unfolds more clearly.
Dylan Turner
San Rafael, California, US
• Like many Guardian Weekly readers, I’m sure, I care deeply about Brexit, Trump, racism and other prejudices, and I worry about the rise of the far right, war, famine, and anti-bacterial resistance. But none of these are more threatening than the loss of biodiversity across the planet. Climate change and environmental damage due to human activity are aspects of the problem. Human overpopulation and consumption are at the root. Thank you for your special report (9 November). It is vital that this single most important issue on Earth is given greater prominence.
David Cotter
Woodbridge, UK
We can use rationality to make big decisions
Why do we find it so hard to make a big decision? (Oliver Burkeman, 2 November). Burkeman forgets that we have the ability to be a bit more rational than his donkey.
Fredkin’s paradox is valid if we perceive both alternatives as equally attractive. The problem with big decisions, however, is that we often cannot say if the alternatives are equally attractive, and a wrong decision can prove disastrous. Burkeman talks about overthinking, agonising and stewing when deciding. Rather, try lining up relevant criteria and coolly assess the alternatives. If you, with hindsight, still made the wrong choice, at least you did it in a rational way.
Martin Skogsbeck
Mougins, France
Huxley foreshadowed the death of reproductive sex
“I expect that, some time in the next 20 or 40 years ... sex [for reproduction] will largely disappear”, writes bioethicist Henry Greely in your story about turning normal human cells into gametes (26 October). I wonder if he has read Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.
Greg DePaco
New Westminster, British Columbia, Canada
Putting Peanuts on the analyst’s couch is odd
Putting the characters in Charles Schultz’s cartoon series Peanuts on the analyst’s couch (2 November) to explain the darker side of the age of angst is puzzling. Any suggestion that Gilbert and Sullivan’s Lord High Executioner of Titipu from The Mikado, or Sir Despard Murgatroyd from Ruddigore who roasted witches, were model neurotics from 1880s England takes all the fun out of their comedic preposterousness.
Richard Orlando
Westmount, Quebec, Canada
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