On progressive economics
Larry Elliott’s comment piece, The next financial crash starts right here (28 August) is in many ways insightful. He explains the fallacy which underlies quantitative easing, in addition to the inevitable consequence, growing inequity both within and between nations.
However, Elliott’s proposed solution falls into the same trap as the problem he diagnoses: the assumption of an infinite global market, together with the need for never-ending growth in extraction, manufacture and consumption. In addition, he rather fondly hopes for a new, improved brand of capitalism to emerge, wherein a magical entity will wave a wand called international policy cooperation, thus enabling a cost-free, equitable and steady increase in overall economic growth and productivity.
I wonder if Elliott and I are living on the same planet? Sadly his view seems to reflect that of many “progressive economists”: more of the same, please, but this time let’s all be nicer about it.
Noel Bird
Boreen Point, Queensland, Australia
Corbyn’s Labour appeal
Gordon Brown asserts that Jeremy Corbyn would make the UK Labour party one of protest rather than of government (21 August). Certainly Corbyn seems more alive and vital than his fellow candidates, and has attracted many followers, but why?
Two main strands give succour to Corbyn. Firstly there’s disillusion with politicians’ acquiescence to large corporations and their all too often damaging environmental developments. Then there is disillusion with the large corporations themselves.
Is it any wonder Labour supporters seek a more liberated political spirit who will protest on their behalf? Particularly, as one might suspect, a person who is savvy enough to adjust and temper his more alienating positions as time goes on.
In the same edition, Martin Kettle draws an analogy between present day Labour and the Liberal party in the 1930s, citing the common condition of a movement shackled by historic decline. He believes a Corbyn-led party would be a minority party, further contributing to the death or near death of Labour. But what if Corbyn can resonate with voters who are sick of present-day political and corporate cynicism?
It’s a long shot that Corbyn could emerge as a powerful leader appealing to a wide enough audience to hold government, but it just may happen.
David Catchlove
Newport, New South Wales, Australia
The language of migration
I agree absolutely with the sentiments expressed by David Murray (Please give us more hope, Reply, 21 August) in his incisive critique of the media’s “hate-filled xenophobic debate about refugees and migrants”.
The use of language to degrade has a long and sordid history in terms of the centuries-long British Imperial project. However, as the evidence of recent months proves, Britain is not unique in this type of racist rhetoric. The Irish media reflects its right-wing British peers by dehumanising men, women and children with the callous use of terms like “economic migrants” to describe people who are desperately fleeing persecution in their chaotic and war torn homelands.
Imagine the media storm if a commentator used this template in a revisionist commentary on the million and a half Irish men, women and children who fled starvation in the Great Famine of the 19th century. Or to bring a contemporary face to Irish economic migration, the estimated 50,000 illegal Irish in the United States, none of whom fled the murder, torture or rape that would surely have been the fate of those vulnerable people who risk their lives to cross the Mediterranean.
Dr Kevin McCarthy
Kinsale, Ireland
• David Murray’s moving letter on proactive optimism reminds me of John Fowles, who I think held the most powerful pen in England, in his early Notebooks: “the world needs a system between communism and capitalism.”
Edward Black
Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Food and famine
Jonathan Kent flags two issues in his emotive piece, We could end famine if we cut food waste (21 August), but goes on to address only one of them. There was nothing new in what he tells us about the statistics of food waste in Britain, nor in the pop psychology that we’ve all heard by now – that we are more likely to make bad decisions about buying food when we are hungry. So how exactly will cutting food waste in the west relieve famine-struck people? It won’t, and perhaps an article examining why would have filled the space better.
Gabby Whitworth
South Hobart, Tasmania, Australia
Save the phytoplankton
Thank you for your succinctly scarifying editorial on anthropogenic threats to marine wellbeing (We should care more and invest more, 14 August). One of the issues raised, ocean acidification driven by rising levels of atmospheric carbon, threatens not just visible species like shellfish and coral, but microscopic phytoplankton or diatoms, single-celled algae so small a million dwell in a litre of seawater.
There are more than 10,000 species, each as exquisitely and diversely patterned as snowflakes. They generate half Earth’s oxygen - every second breath we draw is their gift - catalyse cloud formation hence weather, are a major carbon sink, and the lynchpin of the marine foodchain. Phytoplankton cannot form skeletons in acidifying oceans; we are sabotaging a vast, powerful, invisible ecosystem on whose health our own depends. A biospheric matrix is dying. The angels weep.
Annie March
West Hobart, Tasmania, Australia
Lowering population growth
I was dismayed by the editorial (7 August) rejecting population control because it argues that carbon emissions rise faster as population growth slows. Correlation is not causation. Socio-economic growth brings about lower population growth and increased consumption, thus greater carbon emissions if consumption increases faster than the reduction in population. Lower population growth is a consequence, not a cause, of socio-economic growth. It remains true that, the more people there are, the more carbon emissions there will be at a given level of consumption per capita. Reduced fertility will not save the environment, but it is one essential strategy among many.
The world needs not only a lower population growth, but a significant reduction in the human population. This will not be achieved easily, but it is crucial to do so. We are not only exhausting the world’s reserves of fossil fuels, but also of fresh water (depleted aquifers and glaciers) and other crucial resources. Without a managed reduction in world population, there will be more negative impacts on quality of life and on biodiversity; eventually, desertification, disturbed monsoons, malnutrition and infectious diseases will bring about disruptive die-offs.
Jérôme Rousseau
Saint-Lazare, Quebec, Canada
Briefly
• Re John Harris on assisted dying and one’s golden years (14 August), no 45-year-old can ever understand what it feels like to be 70 because... damn. What was that point I was going to make? Oh well, I’ll make a note next time. Oops, I dropped the pen. Oops, I dropped it again.
Got the pen, now what is going on with my knee, last week it was my hip acting up. What was that point? Oh, now I remember, it is the steady diminishing of your faculties and deterioration of body parts, reduced financial resources and the vast sense of losing control of one’s life that makes the prospect of death seem less … damn, what was that point?
Billie London
St Augustine, Florida, US
• Am I mistaken, or are the baby undulate rays (Eyewitnessed, 21 August) smiling at each other? Food for thought. But hopefully not food on the table.
R M Fransson
Wheat Ridge, Colorado, US
• Enigmatists will have noted the subtle cryptic message in the Comment & Debate section about the recent atomic deal with Iran (21 August). Republican presidential candidates are represented as adamant that they will cancel this arrangement on “day one”. However, “they don’t tell anyone … what actual consequences that will have …- it’s unclear”. “Unclear”? Simple anagram, six letters, starting with N.
Anthony Walter
Surrey, British Columbia, Canada
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