Desperation is our doing
Was it coincidence or splendidly judicious editing that set Desperation at Europe’s gates (24 April) back to back with E-waste reached record levels in 2014? The gross disparity between western e-waste (25kg per capita annually) and African (1.7kg) is just one of the many heads of the Hydra driving the vast and tragic displacement of human beings.
Our profligacy not only pillages, with concomitant pollution, the resources of less privileged countries, but outsources manufacture to places where substandard if not slave wages are paid to non-unionised labour. How much of last year’s 41.8m tonnes of e-waste is being lucratively traded by criminal gangs and dumped back on the doorsteps of the poor? While westerners install private pools and multiple en suite toilets, the World Health Organisation estimates that 1 billion people don’t have access to clean drinking water, and a third of humankind lacks basic sanitation, causing 3.5 million deaths annually. The average Bangladeshi has an ecological footprint of 0.5 hectares; the average Australian requires nine hectares. This isn’t simply unjust, it’s both obscene and ecocidal.
There are no piecemeal answers. The only solution I can see is a radical overhaul of an economic system accountable to neither morality nor social and ecological justice, and whose highest earners truck in weapons, illegal drugs, pornography and people trafficking.
Can anything change until we begin to accept our complicity in the desperation at our gates?
Annie March
West Hobart, Tasmania, Australia
It may already be too late
Larry Elliott’s sobering review (24 April) outlines what needs to be done to keep global CO2 emissions below the feared scenario: runaway climate change and civilisation-destroying levels. By 2035, near doubling natural gas’s share in power generation, carbon capture on existing coal plants, expanding renewables fourfold, doubling nuclear power etc – in short, everything conceivable. He details a number of other essential measures: eliminating subsidies to the oil industry, placing a price on carbon, subsiding the developing world’s transition to a carbon-free economy.
Time is short. With the accelerating release of methane from melting Arctic permafrost and ocean sediments, it may already be too late. What then is preventing humanity from embarking on the required transformations, which would generate a massive stimulus in the global economy? While rejecting capitalism, Naomi Klein’s villain, Elliott fails to provide an adequate explanation. That we all consume hydrocarbon fuels poses the question of who stands to lose by its elimination. Only the fossil-fuel industry suffers in the move to alternate energy sources. We will only Keep It In The Ground if we break the domination this industry exerts over our governments.
Brian Ostrow
Guelph, Ontario, Canada
• Congratulations on publishing the splendid article by Larry Elliott on the global economy and fossil fuels. The argument he makes about energy prospects in the “developing world” and the need for “the rest of the world” to help them in developing renewable energy is important.
Perhaps a solution will also emerge when the distinction between profit and growth is clarified. Much of the waste of both energy and materials in rich countries results from the unceasing drive to produce and sell varieties of the same goods that differ from one another only in superficial ways. Durability conflicts with sales, and patent laws protect profit at the cost of developments that could be of real benefit to the consumer.
On top of it all is the huge advertising effort, which consumes energy and materials without really helping people to make informed choices. Here again Elliott opens the way to further discussion when he writes: “It is extremely simplistic to be pro-growth or anti-growth. What matters is what sort of growth.”
RF Price
Eaglemont, Victoria, Australia
• It’s a shame that in quoting Professor Dieter Helm in his article on surviving without fossil fuels that Larry Elliott didn’t find a more sensible statement from a man who must know better. To suggest that those questioning growth want to abandon technology, as Helm says, is untrue and unhelpful. It confuses growth with progress. No country can sustain a culture of endless growth in the throughput of materials, the associated waste stream, and the consumption of energy to drive the whole process. That is the type of mindless growth we should question. By all means let’s continue to improve technology, educate more people better, and increase the value of the goods and services we produce – and count that as growth.
Well done GW for finally tackling the issue of fossil fuel and growth. There is an extensive literature out there on this, so hopefully there’ll be more GW articles. Here in Australia there is no recognition on the part of the Murdoch press, the Liberal government or the Labour opposition that the goal of endless growth is even an issue, let alone a selfish and dangerous folly.
Peter Martin
Port Willunga, South Australia
• I am a fan of Larry Elliott on economics, but less so when he moves into social sciences. Regarding Cuba, he asserts that every possible scrap of land is exploited for food production. This may be so within the town environments, though likely for ideological reasons, but I would say that fully 50% of the agricultural land is not used in the countryside.
I have always wondered if that was because of poor soil quality or inefficiency. It is perhaps the one area where opening up to trade with the US would help.
Stephen Banks
Birmingham, UK
Beware of techno-fixes
I read your article about carbon capture and storage (17 April) and one thing mentioned by Naomi Klein in her book This Changes Everything came to mind: Wolf talks about the fact that CO2 is a desired “propellant” that can be pumped into old oil wells in order to extract even more oil. Indeed, there could be a ready market for that captured carbon.
And it would also be interesting to know the true “energy costs” of CCS? Could it not be the case that, by the time you have captured, transported and stored that carbon, the net energy gain from the power produced is either dramatically reduced or even negative?
I am highly sceptical about techno-fixes such as CCS and feel that, if we are not careful, we could end up with a situation where CCS does more harm than good by sapping power from energy production. The carbon extracted might even be used to turn old oilfields into bubbling fountains of black gold, the burning of which releases even more carbon into the atmosphere.
My solution? We should all use dramatically less electricity. Or are our gadgets, our gizmos and our air-conditioned comfort more important than the planet?
Alan Mitcham
Cologne, Germany
It is wrong to snub Putin
I admit I am a Putinversteher (Putin understander, as Timothy Garton Ash says), born and partially raised in the former GDR by parents also born and raised in that state with grandparents who were displaced by the second world war.
For me it is a shame that the western leaders are not represented in Moscow at the celebration for the Soviet victory, 9 May (West snubs Russia’s victory rally, 24 April). Or at least, like Angela Merkel, make a compromise and somehow appreciate the Russian/Soviet contribution at that big tragedy unfolding 70 years ago. Not the dubbed D-Day was the turning point of the war; the breakthrough of the red army at Heeresgruppe Mitte was. Since 20 to 25 million Soviet citizens died during the four years of war, it is a disgrace to all of them not to attend any commemoration whatsoever.
Steffen Müller
Schönberg, Germany
True democracy is very rare
I sometimes become a little exasperated by some of the west’s views on democracy, like those of Simon Tisdall in his article West must pressure Thailand (10 April). There is more to democracy than elections, and the present Thai government has done more and brought more peace to Thailand than either of the previous two governments. There will be elections eventually but not before the two opposing sides can accept the result and not riot against the winning side, causing more disruption and unhappiness.
It should be said that in regard to the current election in the UK, so few people actually vote that whoever the winner is can hardly be said to represent the majority of the population. In the US, Congress does not represent the people, but represents interests. Business and other lobby groups who have provided the cash for the candidates to fight their obscenely expensive elections want something in return. So neither meets the description of a true democracy.
It should be remembered that the most successful country in Asia – Singapore – can hardly said to be truly democratic, and yet is much favoured by the west.
Geof Allenby
Bangkok, Thailand
Briefly
• Help! The dread hand and feet (Philip Hoare, 24 April) don’t belong to Blake’s Tyger. They should be restored to his supposed Maker.
George Schlesinger
Durham, UK
• Making light of “bomb-diving gulls”? Philip Hoare has obviously never been to Sidmouth in Devon. Seagulls there – and no doubt in a lot of other seaside locations – regularly divest people of their fish suppers, sandwiches, pasties and even ice-creams.
CH Johnson
Colyton, UK
• I read in Oliver Burkeman’s piece about reading time (24 April) the following: The web is full of “listicles”. What? Can this just be a mistake or if not, what on earth is it? Also, when I was a practising architect in Canada, in my 30s and 40s and also a keen marathon runner and triathlete, I still had quite enough time for my reading. One can only wonder what Burkeman does in his evenings.
Michael Barton
Gamle Fredrikstad, Norway
Email letters for publication to weekly.letters@theguardian.com including a full postal address and a reference to the article. Submissions may be edited for publication
