Blaming big corporations will not help crimate crisis
I had to respond after I read your Polluters article (18 October). One aim of the project was to move the focus of debate from individual responsibilities, so I wonder if you have neighbours, friends or family who have jobs, working for some company making something?
Well, there is no them: there is just a whole bunch of us. We work, we play, we live under the assumption that we can hop in the car and run to town when there is no hopping or running going on. We just plunk our butt into our ride and motor away, or fly off on a Guardian Holiday. Who are we kidding that these companies are responsible for us, burning the stuff we gladly buy from that other group of us?
It would be so handy if we could just blame them and have our government fix it and then we could just go on as we do. The pressures are intense to have the newest car, buy that new whatever, drive around and buy, bye, bye. We are simply economic entities and we will all participate to our absolute ability as consumers.
Mark Havel
Willamina Oregon, US
• Clarifying the identity of the 20 big global polluters and their current CEOs along with a timeline on their history of greed, irresponsibility and deception, is important. However, where were the demands to change the trajectory of their behaviour and replace them sooner rather than later?
There needs to be a clear description of a world that no longer relies on the products and services of the 20 big polluters. A plan to both decarbonise and democratise energy.
There needs to be demands and strategies that reduce the harms. There also need to be strategies that replace the big polluters’ structures and products.
Ironically there is a useful summary available at gu.com/polluters. It provides some broad demands that could be focused to be more useful at a company level and industry. metrics on climate change.
So publish (in the old) media and clarify these demands to be even more damned useful, I say.
Stewart Sweeney
Adelaide, Australia
Trump has only contempt for his numerous critics
Putting aside Donald Trump’s decision – that has led to horrific consequences – to remove US troops from the Syrian border, perhaps in an effort to deflect from investigations that could lead to his impeachment, we are yet witnessing even further proof of his inexhaustible contempt for those who criticise him (Hubris, chaos, crisis, 11 October).
Thoroughly aware as most of us are of his background as a typically ruthless moneymaker cursed with an unprecedented narcissistic bias, it should come as no surprise that his wiseacre boardroom tactics do not apply in Washington, a fact that he seems blissfully ignorant of. This is what impeachment is all about: a last-ditch effort to confront a president who is clueless regarding history, diplomacy and military preparedness, and who still thinks he can follow his own “I win/you lose” self-aggrandising businessman’s agenda, which the US constitution was designed to prohibit.
Richard Orlando
Westmount, Quebec, Canada
Speed limits will help stop massacre on our streets
In Weapons of mass destruction (11 October) Peter C Baker notes that our roads are becoming deadlier with a 41% increase in pedestrian fatalities in the US over the decade 2008-2018. Similar numbers prevail throughout the world.
The author notes that pedestrian fatalities are ignored by the media, in contrast to the furore that erupted when a couple of Boeing 737 airplanes crashed recently.
The primary cause of pedestrian fatalities is excessive speed and the only antidote is the fitting of speed limiters in cars. The enforced speed limit will not only reduce pedestrian deaths and injuries; it will reduce fuel consumption as this is a function of the square of the speed. The speed limiter may be set by a roadside activator.
No doubt, the installation of speed limiters in cars will be greeted with howls of outrage as an infringement on a person’s liberties. However, with the ever increasing numbers of cars on the roads, there is no other option, if one seriously wishes to reduce the number of pedestrian fatalities.
David R Morris
Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada
