Let’s fight visual pollution
Florence Williams describes how air and noise pollution contribute to illnesses and stress in urban areas (17 March), but does not mention the equally depressing effects of visual pollution, which includes such common sights in city neighbourhoods as litter, garbage spillover, and, worst of all, property defacement and decay. It is so bad that one borough in Montreal issues fines to those whose homes and businesses have been vandalised and defaced, saving the authorities the task of doing the cleaning themselves and apprehending the real perpetrators.
If city officials really want to encourage civic pride they must educate the countless number of young who prowl city streets at night despoiling their nests. Governing bodies must provide examples to their constituents by beautifying the urban landscape – by planting and giving away trees, by creating more green spaces, as Williams suggests, and by encouraging tax-supported repairs, renovations and business start-ups. But they must also go after and fine not the victims of urban decay but society’s nihilists, who for their own selfish reasons seem bent on destroying other people’s best efforts to maintain their living spaces.
Richard Orlando
Westmount, Quebec, Canada
Vendetta against wolves
As a depressant, Patrick Barkham’s article on Finnish wolves (24 March) can be classed with the Donald Trump and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan stories. A nation of over 5 million well-armed, hunt-loving Finns bicker over the existence of barely 200-plus of these surviving apex predators, a number that by its genetic self should ensure an eventual end to the competition.
The wolves do admittedly pose a theoretical threat to humans, a remote threat to the dogs used by humans to run down the largest and fittest of the wild taxa that humans enjoy shooting for recreation, and an occasional threat to household pets in the absence of normal prey.
Early in the 20th century, US efforts to exterminate wolves, together with their role in controlling grazing animals, may have been an ecological debacle, but, with the sort of enlightened leadership mentioned earlier, the Anthropocene should be something else again.
John Hayward
Weegena, Tasmania, Australia
Courts and climate change
Doing my final trawl through the 17 March issue, I discovered the inspirational gem, How courts are taking up climate change battle.
Just as in our personal lives so in political life, we need to balance short- and long-term considerations, the latter often being neglected. In personal life, addictions are often the face of neglect of the long-term, as drugs can solve short-term problems at the expense of our long-term health. Nobody is to blame in this, because we are talking about ingrained habits.
However, now is the time to hold our institutions accountable before we cross climate change thresholds. Readers can hold news media accountable and they, in turn, can hold governments accountable. Commitments have been made that are then overlooked in the press of short-term concerns.
Issues of violence and war are perennial, but climate change is unique. Humanity has but one shot at mitigation. News articles and government or business policies should be run through a climate-impact filter. That this is being done, post hoc, through the courts, is surely bringing greater awareness.
Edward Butterworth
Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
The world in perspective
Joanna Walters’s article Boston puts the world in a new perspective (24 March) illustrates the importance of cartographers in moulding our view of the world. Another example is in geographical names. America was the name given by the 16th-century German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller to the east coast of Brazil. This name has since been applied to two large continents and is used as a synonym for the US (as in “Let’s make America great again”).
Perhaps it’s time to rename the continents of North and South America. Not to be outdone, English cartographers have designated West Asia and East Asia as Middle East and Far East, respectively. These names from an imperial era are repeated in many newspapers, including the Guardian.
Peter Bailey
Blackwood, South Australia
Extraordinary juxtaposition
I thank the Weekly for news that is otherwise hard to find, including, sometimes, extraordinary juxtapositions. On 24 March we learned about Google’s Lunar XPrize, a contest for a private moon landing that will pay the winner $20m, and likely cost each participant many times that amount. All in all, quite a sum.
On the next page we learned the famine in Yemen is “at the point of no return”, affecting an estimated 17 million, and that only $24m has been raised despite a UN call for $2.1bn. Extraordinary juxtaposition.
Bob Walsh
Wilton, Connecticut, US
Briefly
• How amazing to read on the front page of the Weekly (17 March) that Putin shadow falls on Norway and inside the same issue, the Weekly review on Putinology. Has GW been contaminated by this media disease?
Jean-Marie Gillis
Wezembeek, Belgium
• World’s oldest fossils discovered in Canada (17 March). Have I been recognised?
Anthony Walter
Surrey, British Columbia, Canada
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