Recycling is the option of last resort
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Version 0 of 1. It’s a delusion that by putting mountains of packaging in the recycling bin our profligate lifestyle is somehow neutralised It’s about time people began to call out carbon offsetting for what it is (“If only saving the planet were as easy as planting a tree before speeding off in our SUVs”, Comment). But if we’re going to take issue with flight redemption initiatives, then we need to also call out the carbon offsetting delusion that is recycling, which promotes the notion that simply by putting mountains of packaging in the recycling bin and then paying someone else to deal with it, the slop of our profligate lifestyle is somehow neutralised. Our recourse to the bottomless pit that is the recycling bin has encouraged us to be less responsible shoppers and disposers of waste than ever, and facilitated the unchecked explosion of the use of plastic packaging. It would be bad news even if the waste were actually being recycled, but we now know that much of it isn’t; it is simply being transported to lands far, far away or ending up in our oceans. The time has come to rethink our approach to recycling: it has to be a last-ditch option, not a get-out card. There is only one way out of the climate crisis and that’s for us all to try to use less carbon in the first place, and to put pressure on companies to do the same.Jane TidburyBrittany, France How to halt drug violence Your article on the killing of a young boy notes that “illegal drugs markets are... a ‘golden thread’ running through many accounts of violence in London and elsewhere” (“The long path to Jaden Moodie’s murder”, Viewpoint). Correct. You fail to add that the reason for this immense violence is prohibition. Prohibition gives criminal gangs control of the estimated $425bn that the drugs trade generates worldwide every year. Drug money, not drugs per se, is the issue. No one, from the cartels in Mexico to county lines gangs in Britain, is involved in violent crime over drugs, but over the vast money to be made through the trade. The only way to control the money is through legalisation. Until drugs are legalised and regulated, with strict quality and sales controls, similar to those applied for alcohol, such criminality will continue.Tony JacksonCamusterrach, Applecross Scottish Highlands Couldn’t make it up Those interviewed in the article about women reading more fiction than men (“Why women love literature”, The New Review, 8 December) claimed that women are more empathetic, more social, more curious and that they have a bit more imagination than men. It seems that reading fiction has not prevented these women, in particular, from making such sweeping statements.Craig HuttonSmethwick, West Midlands The road to cleaner air Air pollution kills more people in the UK than prostate and breast cancers combined, and, as you point out, it harms children’s cognitive development (“Experts raise new fears over UK’s killer air pollution”, News). We need urgent action. Long commutes to work are a major cause of air pollution, as well as global warming, and expensive and miserable for most people involved. Instead of building new, faster roads (which encourages people to apply for jobs even further from where they live), the government needs to ensure jobs are near to homes. New housing estates need to provide commercial buildings, too. Public sector recruitment must prioritise local candidates. And empty shops in town centres must be turned into homes.Richard MountfordTonbridge, Kent No gender agenda Emma Graham-Harrison’s article gives the impression that Finns and/or the Finnish government deliberately created the pronoun “hän” as part of a “quirky international campaign” to promote gender equality (“Feminism comes of age in Finland as female coalition takes the reins”, Dispatch). In fact, the absence of grammatical gender is a feature of all Finno-Ugric languages and has been for thousands of years. Finns use the pronoun “hän” not to further a socio-political agenda but simply because that is how their language operates.David Hackston, translatorHelsinki, Finland Taste and La traviata How can Fiona Maddocks promote such a mealy-mouthed and fanciful explanation for why Violetta, the heroine of La traviata, is known as “the lady of the camellias” (“It’s got everything’: why we’re still in love with this Traviata after 25 years”, Focus). The true explanation, as provided in the Alexandre Dumas fils novel on which the opera is based, is that, as a woman who earns her living by having sex with relative strangers, she wears a white camellia when she is available, and a red one when menstruating and not available.Philippa PigacheCross in Hand, Heathfield East Sussex Kensington blues On 16 November, the Observer published an article by Peter Kellner citing data gathered by Deltapoll in the Kensington constituency (“London polls show surge to the Lib Dems”, News). The data was seized upon by the Liberal Democrats. Countless fliers dropped though people’s letterboxes and it circulated on social media. The communications were being used specifically to target Labour Remain voters, and they cited the Observer as having commissioned the poll. Here are the results from the 12 December election, with the Deltapoll survey results and the percentage point difference in brackets: Conservative 38.3% (36%, +2.3); Labour 38% (27%, +11); Liberal Democrat 21.3 (33%, -11.7). Deltapoll conducted another telephone survey of 502 residents between 4 and 8 December. Here is the data that I found on their website – again the election result is listed first, with the poll result in brackets: Conservative 38.3% (39, -0.7); Labour 38% (29, +9); Liberal Democrat 21.3% (27, -5.7). These results were obliquely referenced in last week’s Observer, in another article by Mr Kellner (“Tactical voting was set to be Remainers’ saviour. So what went wrong?”, News). You can see that, with regard to Labour and the Liberal Democrats, Deltapoll got the results incorrect in both surveys. Indeed, I have shared the polling data and election result with a statistician and his conclusion was that something must have been wrong. The chance of arriving at a forecast for the Lib Dems of 33% when the actual result was 21.3% is less than one in a thousand. When I saw the results from the first survey, I dismissed them as rogue and ended up having arguments with Labour voters who were leaning towards the Lib Dems. I assured them that polling at a local level is notoriously unreliable; I pointed to the results from 2017 and explained that a swing of the scale forecast would have been close to unprecedented; I urged them to stick to Labour. My argument convinced some; I know that others went on to vote Lib Dem. Emma Dent Coad was a respected and loved Labour MP for Kensington. She has lost her job. And the people who depended on her to stand up for them in this constituency, those suffering hardship, those still traumatised by Grenfell, those who simply believe in a just society – they have lost her. Instead, we have a Conservative MP, Felicity Buchan, who has admitted to never having been on the Grenfell Silent walk.John LoweryLondon W11 Embrace the darkness It is not just the national parks that need to block the spread of electrical light, but the countryside as a whole – and much of the cities (“The battle to save our sky from light pollution”, Focus). Why are motorway lights not fitted with broad “hats” as they are in France, rather than throwing it up into the sky? Why do shops and offices still “need” to leave their lights on? Why, in an age of motion sensors, do street lights need to burn at full capacity when nobody is there?Amanda CraigLondon NW1 |