The results of this survey are sad but unsurprising (Few willing to change lifestyle to save the planet, climate survey finds, 7 November). At the weekend, I took my 12-year-old son by bus across west London to his football match. While the world discusses how to address climate change, everyone in west London is out driving a 4x4.
The vast majority of children going to play football and rugby on the pitches where we spent the morning were driven there. The roads were gridlocked, the car parks were full, and tempers were fraying. Yet the parents will make the same choices next weekend – and no doubt what I saw is reflected up and down the country. In London in particular there really is no excuse: the city has a comprehensive public transport system, with free buses for children. When will people wake up to the fact that they themselves are the traffic, the congestion and the pollution?
Adam Manolson
London
• I don’t think human nature changes very much. Nearly 50 years ago when I was living in West Germany, as it was then, during the oil crisis, their government introduced a Sonntagsfahrverbot which banned most car travel on Sundays to save fuel. It was not unusual to see people strolling down the middle of empty autobahns. A bumper sticker appeared which translated as “Everyone wants to return to Eden but few want to go on foot”. Plus ça change, eh?
Linda Marriott
North Hykeham, Lincolnshire
• It’s more than anecdotally evident that too many people in Britain, aided and abetted by our libertarian and inept government, can’t be bothered, despite regular advice, to wear a mask in public places to protect themselves and others. How then will British society ever take the climate crisis seriously and do what’s required of the populace to help reduce the planet warming to a rate of 1.5C or lower by 2050?
In this context, it’s illuminating and worrying to note from the international survey that the “gulf between citizens’ view of their own efforts (44%) and that of their government (16%) was highest in the UK”.
Robin Bevis
Okehampton, Devon
• I’m not surprised at the survey results. They reflect the success that fossil fuel interests have had deflecting our attention from real solutions that would reduce emissions and transition us to a clean-energy future, such as policies that would end subsidies for fossil fuels, tax carbon pollution or establish a border carbon tariff. Through well-funded advertising, op-eds, and social media, they have led the public to believe that the problem is us.
They have turned our attention away from the disease, death, and planetary disruption their products are causing, to lay the blame on our own individual carbon footprints, our selfish, wasteful lifestyles. This survey indicates that fossil fuel interests have succeeded; respondents appear to be feeling confused, a bit guilty, and unsure of climate solutions.
Bob Taylor
Montecito, California, USA
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