Monbiot’s world view
George Monbiot’s column on the rate at which species are going extinct is alarming (23 September). But it is not alarming enough. Evidently, appeals to our altruism towards other species and to our aesthetic sensibilities have not been effective in stopping the accelerating destruction.
But, surely, the crucial argument for cherishing our ecosystem is that this vastly complex network of interdependencies, the life-support system of all species including our own, is unravelling.
Julie Telford
St Louis, Haut Rhin, France
• Heartfelt thanks for publishing updates on the environment and suggestions on how to stem the tide of over-consumption.
Convincing evidence is given in your Ethical Living column on how to contribute to the sustainability of our planet. What I’m Really Thinking, also in the same issue, offers advice and encouragement from a non-driving couple with children.
And George Monbiot’s plea for endangered species reminds us once again of the tragedy of “uncontrolled consumerism,” or human gluttony, encouraged by preferences for “exotic” food like sushi, to say nothing of fast food, and the detritus its manufacture leaves behind.
Richard Orlando
Westmount, Quebec, Canada
• George Monbiot says extinction is the consequence of our uncontrolled consumerism, and writes eloquently about the depredations to the non-human living planet.
But who is “we”? The enormous advertising juggernaut presupposes that uncontrolled consumerism is not fixed in “our” genes. “We” is surely not the significant proportion of the world’s population that lives in extreme poverty.
Monbiot writes of “cultural norms” that control us, promote blindness and inability to act. Some are more to blame than others. The advertisers, the ineffectual and highly compromised regulatory bodies, the affluent profiteers, higher education that is often so myopic about the real world.
I agree that there are many thoughtless and ignorant people. I think of this every time I see SUVs, strong people pushing buttons to open doors, the use of leaf blowers, flying across the world to see exotic, disappearing ecosystems, and so on.
Judith Deutsch
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
• Thank Gaia for George Monbiot! He is one of the very few people that tell it as it is. I just wish he could publish that same piece in Britain’s other mass-readership papers.
Thank you George for everything you are doing and saying.
Ann Milston
Moray, UK
Days of imperial dominance
Simon Tisdall’s leading article on the imminent conflict of the superpowers (30 September) leads me to reflect on the shrinking use-by date of imperialism.
I was born in the dying days of the British empire, when large sections of the atlas were coloured pink. I have seen that empire extinguished, along with that of the USSR, and it seems, on current trends, the more informal but universally acknowledged US empire is weakening. It now seems likely that the dormant Chinese empire is resurgent after many years in the background.
So who do we believe as our Nostradamus of imperial dominance? George Orwell, who predicated three supreme powers competing on the surface by shifting alliances, but in essence cooperating by the use of fear and thought control to share in world domination? Or should we place our trust in the Rand Corporation, America’s university of imperialism, with its eponymous connection with Ayn Rand’s naive philosophy of the beneficent capitalist?
The conclusion of their recent study, which indicates a no-win situation between the two great powers (with a pre-emptive advantage to the US if it comes to actual hostilities), is truly frightening.
If the view of unthinking think-tanks like Rand prevails, we could be about to be embroiled in an even greater crisis than we faced in the 1960s.
Noel Bird
Boreen Point, Queensland, Australia
More than books and testing
Jonathan Freedland makes a good case against grammar schools (16 September) but is assuming that every child can benefit from an academic education. There are clearly some who are intelligent, determined and talented, but are not academically inclined. They thrive on making, fixing, and discovering. It is unwise to assume that all children are cast in a single mould, and wiser to recognise that, regardless of family or post code, children may have widely differing educational needs.
There is surely a case for offering children the possibility of an academic education or a more practically oriented one, according to their abilities and aspirations. It is not a question of creaming off the clever kids and leaving the rest as “rejects”, as Freedland writes. Our society depends on fostering the diversity of abilities and talents inherent in any population.
Paul Devitt
Sevenoaks, Kent, UK
Nature, in all its glory
So New Zealand plans to exterminate all introduced predators (29 July). One introduced predator, however, seems to have been ignored: the domestic cat.
Cats are enemy No 1 for all small creatures. The influence of cats on the native small bird population can be illustrated by the fantail. Fantails are friendly creatures. When we first came to our house, they were always there. Now, no fantail song can be heard in our garden, where domesticated and feral cats roam.
New Zealand, at both the national and local government levels, has a way to go before saying that all introduced predators have been exterminated.
Ken Mosley
Upper Hutt, New Zealand
• “Babies may one day be born from embryos made with skin cells rather than eggs” (23 September). Why? In heaven’s name, why? Because we can? Human reproduction limited to merging task-specific gametes is labelled “dogma” as science yet again heads into territory where no sane person would choose to tread.
Nature, in her infinite wisdom, has sorted out optimal systems and conditions for life on earth. Our species, self-labelled “sapient”, has decided it knows better, and hasn’t that turned out well? We breed in plague proportions, corrupt the resources we need to survive, exploit the natural world to suit ourselves at great cost to everything else.
I can’t imagine why somebody thinks using cells that grow skin will be better than gametes for fetal development. Apart from anything else, conception won’t be as much fun.
Andrea Shoebridge
South Perth, Western Australia
• Bill McKibben (Opinion in brief, 16 September) rightly stresses the under-reported/under-appreciated impact of oceans in global warming.
However, in looking at the part that sustainable energy could play, he identifies only solar panels and wind turbines. Surprisingly, he omits tidal power – derived from the oceans – where the UK has enormous potential (the second highest tides in the world) and which, subject only to planetary catastrophe, can be forecast with precision for 1,000 years plus.
Jim Rodda
Britain’s soft centre
Andrew Rawnsley (‘Liberal centrism is not dead’, 23 September) is too kind when he describes the British governments from John Major to Tony Blair as liberal and centrist. These governments pursued tax cuts, privatisation, unregulated markets and the continued transfer of wealth to the rich. These are neither liberal nor centrist policies.
One of the worst consequences of Britain’s exit from the European Union is that it will leave the British people at the mercy of the government, with no right of appeal, unless it is to God, or to Jeremy Corbyn.
Wilf Welburn
Lower Hutt, New Zealand
Briefly
• I was sorry to read that brown shoes would be an “unspeakable offence” if worn by a job applicant at an investment bank (9 September). Here in Canada, I was proud of our new prime minister when he wore brown shoes last November to his swearing in ceremony at parliament. More recently I was impressed by pianist Jan Lisiecki’s polka dotted socks at a recital here in Quebec. Could we Canadians possibly be leading the world in our sartorial approach to men’s footwear?
Brydon Gombay
Riviere-du-Loup, Quebec, Canada
• Air Force One, the aircraft, is not mimicking Air Force 1, the shoe (9 September), but the other way round. Equally, the aircraft paint scheme is not a counterpart of the Nike flash – it was introduced on a Boeing 707 that went into service in 1972.
Keith Stotyn
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
• With the go-ahead for the UK’s Hinkley Point nuclear reactor (23 September), past experience should tell us several things. It will cost at least twice as much as the budgeted £18bn ($23.5bn). It will be finished at least five years behind schedule. The builders will require large amounts of UK taxpayers’ money to bail them out. If the costs were put into conservation, would more energy be saved and more jobs created than the reactor will ever generate?
Chris Kennedy
Stella, Ontario, Canada
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