Guardian Weekly Letters, 27 March 2015

http://www.theguardian.com/global/2015/mar/24/weekly-letters-fighting-climate-change

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Focus on climate change

Bravo, Guardian, for giving climate change the prominence it deserves (13 March). I hope it will contribute to international action that will take us off the current path that will lead to 4C – maybe even 6C – warming by the end of the century: a scenario that would be catastrophic.

In its Fifth Assessment Report (AR5), the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) listed population growth as a driving force of global warming. Many argue, like George Monbiot, it’s just a matter of consumption. Yes, we in the richer world do need to consume less, to travel less, to live in smaller homes.

The poor of the world may not contribute significantly to climate change through fossil-fuel emissions; nevertheless, they do need to eat. The deforestation that is associated with growing more food is definitely a major contributor to climate change, as is agriculture itself.

So, Monbiot notwithstanding, in this excellent initiative on climate change, please acknowledge that rapid stabilisation of our numbers could be both a significant mitigation and adaptation tool.Jenny GoldieMichelago, NSW, Australia

• As Alan Rusbridger puts it, the sceptics and deniers are wasting their time. The proven reality of humanly induced climate change has arrived. Yet, still, we are harried by a failure to reduce our uptake, consumption and discard of fossil fuels. Indeed, the catchy 2008 G8 communique “20% decreased carbon by 2020” is mocked by a 20% increase – with 2020 still six years away.

There are three main reasons for this. One, parliaments strive to maintain continuity in office with pork-barrel blandishments. Two, corporations seek profits that eclipse previous ones. Three, the top one-fifth of wealth perpetuate lifestyles perilous to all humankind.

Clearly, we of the upper-fifth cohort could cut by half our consumption and waste without any real hardship: curbing our mobility, fashion accessories, gadgets and appliances, food imports and waste generation.

Unlike the hapless Occupy movement, we have control over the bit of the system we want to improve. Reluctance from governments and resistance from corporations need not impede us – we already are an exemplary movement in the making.

Asceticism is not called for. In fact the reverse: a fulfilled, balanced and happy life, with social exceptions around continued access to modern indispensables. Having fun, sharing, giving back and a gentler lifestyle are the rewards. Maybe big government and big business will get our message?Robert RiddellHelensville, New Zealand

• The Guardian is taking action against “the climate threat to Earth”. And environmentalists talk of saving the planet. But Earth will survive us, as it has survived many other changes and catastrophes.

What we are really talking about saving is our lifestyle – particularly our affluent, developed-nations lifestyle – since the majority of humans live in poverty, which has a low impact on the planet.

Even a brief survey of the Guardian Weekly provides abundant evidence that we, as a species, are too stupid to save ourselves.Tim SprodTaroona, Tasmania, Australia

The credibility of science

Why science is so hard to believe (6 March) resonates here in Quebec where dozens of cases of measles, all originating in one visit to California’s Disneyland, continue to increase among the unvaccinated. The provincial government has made a creditable but unsuccessful effort to persuade the 16% who decline and, as your article points out, are in like-thinking clusters. Of this group 14% give religious reasons, over 20% fear autism in their children and some say they will not give “poison” to their children, even for a greater good.

Would these parents refuse pre-surgical anaesthesia, which can also be described as “poison”?

Should the media, which feast on disagreement, step away from “fairness”, from giving credence to the scientifically discredited? Unlike the counter-intuitive examples you cite, if measles disappears after 95% vaccination and the only negative result is a sore arm, why should those who oppose it have a platform at all?Elizabeth QuanceWestmount, Quebec, Canada

• Joel Achenbach seems a bit confused: he supports the fluoridation of water because it is a natural mineral, but so is arsenic. A naturally occurring element is not necessarily safe for human consumption.

On the wider point of the nature of science, he argues that science is true, in particular that evolution is true; but science is much more complex and limited than that: a scientific theory is a model of the world, describing things that occur naturally in a way that enable predictions to be made, particularly by using mathematics.

A theory is true only in the sense that its predictions are correct and that it is useful, but even the best theories may one day be replaced by models which provide different and more useful views of the world.

So he is right to argue that scientists need to avoid drawing final conclusions from their work and reporters need to recognise that scientists cannot say things with absolute certainty.William AckroydEsplas de Sérou, France

Psychology of terror

I admire the sincere ethical sensitivity of Jonathan Freedland’s essays on Israel’s predicament, but fear the misdirection of this latest one at a time of rising Islamophobic hysteria (6 March). The psychological reject narrative or political apology of organisations like Cage should not be so easily dismissed: current security and punitive policies do seem to be motivating more rather than fewer jihad extremists, the west’s colonial and postcolonial history in the Middle East is shameful and not forgotten by its peoples, and reactionary state terrorism and populist terrorism are increasingly real threats prompted by nations leading (or exploiting) the so-called war on terror.

Freedland’s alternative, although apparently sympathetic, is more reductively psychologistic than the reject narrative: charismatic inspiration of youths searching for moral absolutes. This explanation may only reinforce the bigoted and provocative targeting of “subversive” imams and “immature” cultures. His concluding recommendation juxtaposing “stronger and more confident” western nations with violent jihadism “terrified by modernity, terrified of the past, terrified of women and terrified of difference” also echoes too closely the binary absolutism of Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilisations and even Bernard Lewis’s The Muslim Discovery of Europe. These old rationales were part of, rather than solutions to, a historical and political economic problem that is now getting worse.Steven WebsterAuckland, New Zealand

American anxieties

In reporting a study by British scientists on average penis size (13 March), you clearly sought to reassure the average adult male that he need not feel “small penis anxiety”. Your intention, I fear, will have backfired in the United States.

When you decided to give those critical measurements in centimetres, you forgot that Americans haven’t the faintest understanding of the metric system. President Jimmy Carter tried to get us to learn it, but you know what the attitude towards any sort of higher education of his successor was, and the effort was dropped. Americans, therefore, mentally convert everything metric into the “English” system you have largely abandoned.

Already floundering in our sea of media-driven sexual anxieties, we read with panic the scientists’ numbers – “13.12 ... in length when erect, 11.66 ... around” – as inches. Meanwhile, our tiny percent who rise above the top end of the scale must face the disappointment of believing that what they’d thought exceptional is only “average”.

You will be responsible for the resulting stampede of average and above-average American males to the offices of our urologists and sex therapists – which you may well be reporting in your next issue.John RidlandSanta Barbara, California, US

Briefly

• Surely something important is missing from your article, EU needs army to defend its values, insists Juncker (13 March). We read that the British government insists “the idea is unacceptable”, that “there is no prospect of a European army”, that “it isn’t right for the European Union to have capabilities, air forces and all the rest” ... but why? How about giving us a plausible explanation for this authoritative and outright rejection?Alexandra TavernierMarcq-en-Baroeul, France

• Will Self’s review of Charles: The Heart of a King (6 March) shows the novelist letting us know how clever he is with words and not learning anything from the biography. It would have been better reviewed by someone cutting the subject down to a size he thinks he isn’t.Edward BlackSydney, Australia

• The sports item More shame for Armstrong (13 March) reports on the latest shenanigans in the sorry saga of Lance Armstrong’s attempts to return to cycling competition, and uses an analogy purporting to show that the affair is like “a malingering head cold … that refuses to go away”.

The lingering question is: was Lance Armstrong justified in using the “doping” as a justifiable treatment for (what sounds like) a particularly devious and pernicious disease, albeit one that is difficult to get one’s brain around?Anthony WalterSurrey, British Columbia, Canada

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