Progress on climate change?
Barry Gardiner thinks that the successful ratification of the Paris climate accords marks real progress toward a changed energy environment (14 October). But other events raise doubts.
In Britain the Conservative government has approved one new gas fracking project and is supportive of a second (Fracking given go-ahead, 14 October). In Canada, the Liberal government has approved a massive liquefied natural gas pipeline project, slated to become the biggest carbon polluter in the country, putting its reduction promises at risk (World roundup, 7 October).
These and other decisions suggest that governments still are not making the connection between promises to reduce greenhouse gases and the need to reduce carbon combustion. They still think they can square the circle between energy production growth and carbon pollution reduction. They can’t, and until they understand that, Paris will go the way of Kyoto, which Canada, to its shame, signed, did nothing to fulfil, then formally abandoned.
Keith Stotyn
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
The desire for protest
Mass protests by citizens outraged over Aleppo would be tilting at windmills (Natalie Nougayrède, 14 October). Protests by our governments – and the media – are hypocritical. We long ago accepted the US declaration of a war on terror as an appropriate response to a criminal act when we should have criticised the idea of declaring war on a strategy.
We tolerate Saudi Arabia’s bombing of Yemen, and when dropping bombs on a funeral results in hundreds of death and injured civilians, headlines are short-lived. When the US drops bombs – B-52 carpet bombing in Vietnam and Laos, smart bombs over Afghanistan, Iraq, bombs by drones wherever the US deems it appropriate in its war on terror – there are no calls to boycott the US or any of the companies profiting from its war on terror. We accept that our side kills only terrorists. When civilians are killed, it is a regrettable accident.
Our policy is consistent on the subject of Russia’s annexation of the Crimea and the occupation of Ukraine. We have long ago accepted Israel’s occupation of Palestine and its settlement policy, as we have accepted China’s annexation of Tibet. These countries are our political and economic allies. With Russia, however, we can afford to be self-righteous.
As a young man in 1956 I joined a protest in front of the Soviet embassy in Berne, Switzerland. As I see the world today, I’ll stay home to watch Coronation Street.
André Carrel
Terrace, British Columbia, Canada
• Thanks to Natalie Nougayrède for posing the question I have often asked myself. Concerned citizens in western countries will rightly turn out in their thousands to protest against human rights abuses perpetrated by their own governments, But these same people seem to care less about similar abuses by other governments, which must surely tell those governments that no one in the west cares one jot about dropping bunker-busting bombs and carpet bombing civilians. And no public figures in the west take any lead in encouraging such protests – are they worried about offending these other governments?
Nigel Hungerford
Hawthorn, Victoria, Australia
The allure of bottled water
I spent the summer of 2004 at the French-Italian station Concordia, high on the East Antarctic Plateau, surrounded by the purest snow on Earth (How the world went mad for bottled water, 21 October). But every day the kitchen crew put on to the dining-room tables 1.5-litre plastic bottles of water imported from Italy. Every year tons of this water are imported at great expense.
Why did the personnel prefer bottled water? They thought that Antarctic snow was too clean; it’s distilled water, so it doesn’t contain essential minerals, so they thought it was unhealthy. Of course they get plenty of those minerals from the gourmet food on offer, but if they’re worried, why not take a vitamin pill?
Stephen G Warren
Seattle, Washington, US
• Your report on bottled water propelled such a thirst. I just had to reach for the tap to enjoy multiple glasses of some of the best-tasting water anywhere – perhaps with the exception of Tasmania’s flowing streams.
Carmelo Bazzano
Melbourne, Australia
• Fascinating article by Sophie Elmhirst about bottled water. It only touched on the actual plastic bottles that end up in many non-recycling places. My favourite comment is Evian backwards: naive!
Kay Nicholson
Sheffield, UK
Dylan’s Nobel prize
Thanks for including Natalie Kon-yu’s sober assessment of the problems with the award of the Nobel prize in literature to yet another white man (21 October). The gender bias is staggering, and it is in general hard not to conclude that the Nobel prize has become a form of European reactionary retrenchment.
The treatment of brilliant writers from Africa or the diaspora is especially shocking: no Chinua Achebe, Aimé Césaire or Léopold Sédar Senghor before they died, while Ngugi wa Thiong’o gets passed over year after year. The three most recent African laureates? Nadine Gordimer, J M Coetzee and Doris Lessing – who are all white.
Toby Green
Cambridge, UK
• Natalie Kon-yu’s piece on Bob Dylan’s Nobel prize – that it was just another example of Nobel’s gender bias – was outrageous. You can question the award on grounds of the suitability or the quality of Bob Dylan’s work, but to complain so bitterly about the award simply on the basis that Dylan is a “white male writer”, as Kon-yu does, reduces the individual himself to nothing more than a skin colour and a gender – that is outright racism and sexism. To define Dylan’s win only by his race and gender is bad enough; it is outrageous when taking into account Dylan’s prominent role in the civil rights movement of the 1960s.
David Kettle
Northcote, Victoria, Australia
Defending the Dalai Lama
Alexandra Tavernier’s remarks regarding the Dalai Lama and Tibet (Reply, 21 October) merely parrot the official Chinese line. She implies that during the period of Tibet’s de facto independence (1912-1951), the country somehow regressed. But conditions in 1951 were no more or less medieval than they had been under the Chinese 40 years before. More outrageously, she suggests that after 1951 the Chinese embarked on a “clean-up” of Tibet. Hardly. In 1986 I spent two months there and can attest that ordinary Tibetans had no access to modern plumbing. So what had the Chinese authorities been up to for 35 years? Occupying the country, plain and simple, while thousands of Tibetans fled or died. As for the Dalai Lama’s own flight, Tavernier gets it wrong again. He did in fact “stay to give moral support” until 1959, when he was forced to evacuate or be captured or killed.
Steven Heighton
Kingston, Ontario, Canada
Briefly
• Like most world problems, the parking problem depends a lot on your circumstances (14 October). If you live in a small medieval town in France, there is never enough parking. Medieval town planners simply did not think of motor cars.
I was talking to a Frenchman who had just returned from California, and was unhappy. He said: “In California they judge the quality of their restaurants by the number of car parking spaces provided. I ask, is that any way to judge a restaurant?” I nodded and changed the subject.
Val Wake
Lodève, France
• It is intriguing that President Nicolás Maduro’s 15% approval rating is “showing the political dimension of Venezuela’s economic crisis” (14 October). President François Hollande is currently at 13%, which puts France in what sort of crisis?
E Slack
L’Isle Jourdain, France
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