Sir, – While it’s always a good thing to point out the power of human ingenuity and the benefits that it has brought for many of us, particularly when it comes to health and resulting life-expectancy, William Reville’s piece (“Our virtually infinite human ingenuity is reason for optimism”, Science, January 19th) only mentions what he anachronistically calls “global warming” in passing.
In fact, one of the main arguments that is used in the piece as a reason for optimism hinges on a story in which the outcome is humanity’s ability to find new ways of extracting resources from the planet.
While this approach has undoubtedly brought huge benefits to millions of people over the past couple of centuries, without careful management it has incurred a long-term debt that we collectively appear to be unable to fully recognise, let alone reduce.
Obviously, scientific and technological advances have a huge part to play in solving climate change, but given the very limited time that climate scientists say is available to avoid the worst impacts, it’s extremely unlikely that an innovation will come along that will mean we don’t also need to address the huge emissions from the planet’s wealthiest people (including Prof Reville, myself, and most people reading this). Pretending otherwise seems more akin to wishful thinking than to optimism.
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Where optimism does have a place is in communicating clearly that curbing emissions is achievable without reverting to the “stone age” lifestyle that’s often invoked by those unwilling to contemplate anything apart from the most minor of changes.
But time is of the essence, and we need to act on the science that exists right now, and that is telling us loud and clear what we need to do. – Yours, etc,
DAVE MATHIESON,
Salthill,
Galway.
