Supply and demand gone bad
Will Hutton predicts the collapse of the house of cards sometimes known as the global financial system (16 October). I was not alone in making the same forecast after 2008 and the largely ineffective measures taken at the time to rein in the rogue bankers and their allies.
The secret provisions of the Trans-Pacific Partnership may be an attempt to protect the multinationals from the worst consequences of this imminent catastrophe. But, given Hutton’s conclusion that no possible measure is likely to prevent the crisis, would the final outcome be so bad?
Certainly there will be many who will suffer, undeservedly, when the global structures of trade and currency exchange fall apart. However, only one event can enable humanity to survive all of these imminent crises: the naked emperors who control our purse strings must be exposed for the charlatans they are. Money has always been a convenient fiction to enable trade and more recently to promote uncontrolled greed. As long as all nations restricted its creation, it was harmless.
Now, as Hutton has amply demonstrated, the global market is unresponsive to the supposed law of supply and demand, and the solution continues to be a combination of shifting the debt burden, followed by that Orwellian euphemism, quantitative easing. Instead of being simply the means to an end, money has become the end in itself, its acquisition and control falling to those with the most to gain by abusing it.
We can see the cliff ahead of us: will we apply the brakes in time?
Noel Bird
Boreen Point, Queensland, Australia
No hope on climate change
For the Guardian to come up with hope in the climate change battle (9 October: leader comment and James Randerson) inclines me to its antonym: despair. Excess population and urban massing have resulted in irreversible climate change. Clear and emphatic direction is needed to get us out of this bind.
The critical problem, irreversible environmental degradation via human agency, is the remit of a United Nations sideshow, the Conference of Parties. This agency will soon address the particular problem of carbon dioxide emissions yet once more, with all participating nations submitting their intended contributions. Some countries show good intent; others plan obfuscation.
Clear guidelines, honest accounting and a firm enforcement protocol on climate change are imperative if we are to achieve the ultimate goal: human continuity.
Robert Riddell
Helensville, New Zealand
• Your leader Reasons to be cheerful about the Paris climate summit is countered in one significant regard by the deletion from the negotiating text earlier this month of setting targets for mitigation of international aviation and shipping emissions. In the case of aviation, while significant strides have been made in per-unit efficiency, these continue to be far outweighed by traffic growth.
Even if some progress has been made on biofuels, there is no real alternative to fossil fuels for aviation for the foreseeable future, no tax on fuel, no economic inducement and no limit on growth. Given that international aviation already has a climate impact equal to Germany, it alone could make the attempts to limit global warning to 2C questionable. To complement Keep it in the ground we need Keep it out of the air – at least to some limit and subject to a carbon price.
Chris Lyle
Westmount, Quebec, Canada
Diesel unfairly condemned
While not condoning Volkswagen’s cheating, I must object to your hysterical editorial (2 October). The turbocharged diesel engine is the most efficient way of converting hydrocarbon fuels into mechanical work. In areas where electricity is generated from fossil fuels, any of the car models will have a smaller carbon footprint than an electric car.
We all remember the bad “pollutants emitted by diesel engines”, the thick black smoke belching out of large trucks, but research over the past decades has made this a thing of the past. The cheating involved only a few parts per million of oxides of nitrogen, which is unlikely to make the difference between life and death for anyone.
The relevant trade-off is not “between fuel economy and performance” but between different types of pollution. If allowed to emit more oxides of nitrogen, the engines could be tuned to give greater fuel economy and even lower emissions.
Graham Andrews
Spokane, Washington, US
We’re a contradictory species
Graham Andrews is of course right (Reply, 9 October) about the lack of human empathy in the multiple atrocities committed in history against members of other groups. But we are a contradictory species, and the reverse is also true.
Long before the story of the Good Samaritan was the story of Abraham who hurried to welcome the angels disguised as weary travellers, washing their feet and giving them bread, even before asking who they were. It is also noteworthy that God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, not (as is often claimed) because of their deviant sexuality, but because they raped the strangers who came through their gates, violating the obligation of hospitality.
Constance Lever-Tracy
Eden Hills, South Australia
Money isn’t the problem
Timothy Garton Ash deplores the fact that in the US far too much money is needed to speak in elections (9 October). But consider the number of voters each candidate must reach. In the UK, with a population of only 63 million, each candidate for the 650-member House of Commons need canvass only, on average, 97,000 people in a constituency. In the US, with a population of some 310 million, each of the 435-member House of Representatives stands on average for a population of 713,000. It’s only reasonable, then, that elections cost gazillions.
Campaign finance is not the issue. But what politician or commentator in his right mind is ready to admit the manifold dilution of power that is really needed, rather than parade the comforting – yet ineffective and probably damaging – expedient of campaign finance reform?
Michael Goldeen
Carson City, Nevada, US
German reunification
I emitted a short sharp shriek of disbelief as I read the words “since the stroke of midnight ushered in 3 October 1990 and the admission of the lands of the communist east into the Bundesrepublik” (9 October). The eastern part of Germany was not admitted into the west, suggesting a hierarchical status defining the relationship between the two lands. Both parts were at long last to reunite in the historical process famously formulated by Willy Brandt in 1989 as Es wächst zusammen, was zusammen gehört – what belongs together is now growing together. Originally his words referred to the growing together of Europe, not of the two parts of Germany. It was not until months later that the slogan caught on, becoming the motto of the SPD party conference and referring to German reunification alone.
The point is not that one power, albeit economically and politically shaky, was being absorbed by the stronger neighbour, but that two divided parts of one whole were being merged once more to face the future as one country on an equal footing.
Anna Schrape
Recklinghausen, Germany
Briefly
• In Russia’s relationship with the west, Vladimir Putin seems to have adopted the idea that whoever cares least about a relationship ends up controlling it (9 October). This gives Putin unprecedented power in foreign policy and the west gave him that power by alienating Russia with sanctions. Only reintegration will reverse this trend. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.
C Gerhartsreiter
Blythe, California, US
• I laughed out loud at the quote in your article about hipster culture (9 October): “You show that you’re ‘in’ not by buying something with a logo on it but by your ability to follow the rush for the latest eccentricity”. Presumably, hipsters eschew purchasing logo-adorned products to signal their resistance to conformity. What, other than conformity, does following “the rush for the latest eccentricity” signal?
Michael J Reynolds
Milverton, UK
• In his column on how to survive the threat of robots taking over our lives (9 October), Oliver Burkeman says that, in self-defence, we need to press on with our humanness, because “face-to-face interaction is so critical for wellbeing”. This follows on what environmentalist David Suzuki writes in his book Letters to My Grandchildren, wherein he advises them to get “unplugged, so that you can hear, see, and smell the world around you” – that we also need to connect with nature for “our physical and mental health”.
Richard Orlando
Westmount, Quebec, Canada
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