Madam, – Dr Gareth P Keeley (January 5th) suggests there is a proposed “roll-back of the industrial age”. The reality is that adaptation to and mitigation of climate change is driving new low-carbon industrial development and technological innovation.
Any government would be remiss to take Dr Keeley’s cynical view and not pursue these business and employment opportunities with vigour.
Dr Keeley states there is also a “significant body of opinion within the scientific community” which does not accept the theory of anthropogenic climate change. The reality is, as published in the June 2010 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, that 98 per cent of climate scientists support the view that human activity is contributing to climate change. It would be a lie to suggest there is no debate among scientists, but many of the prominent challenges to the scientific consensus on climate change to date, eg the Oregon Petition and US Senate Minority Report, have been shown to be either fraudulent or lacking in credibility.
Dr Keeley also suggests that developing low-carbon economies will be disastrous for the developing countries. The reality is, as seen recently in the climate change summit in Cancún, that developing countries recognise the problems and opportunities of climate change and don’t want to remain locked into old polluting technologies.
Debate is good, but action is better. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – James Nix’s letter (January 3rd) is a timely reminder of the need to take meaningful measures to reverse the progressive rise in carbon production on our planet if we are to avoid a cataclysmic effect on future generations and on the natural surroundings on which we are dependent. The task we face in making the necessary changes is formidable and will depend on many lifestyle changes including a need to review our burgeoning human population.
James Lovelock states that, by ignoring the truth of human population increase, we can do little to slow or stop climate change. Every year we witness an increase of up to 80 million people on the planet with an estimated total population of seven billion by 2012 – up from 2.5 billion in 1950. Lovelock is joined in this view by Sir David Attenborough and by numerous scientific colleagues. They too are joined by the World Bank and many other responsible international institutions. Add to this the rapid increase of carbon production which is inevitable among the 2.5 billion Chinese and Indians where both countries are still adding to their numbers while encouraging an advance in their standards of living. Eighty million souls every year to add to our overloaded carbon footprint!
Without population restraint and drastic changes in our lifestyle habits, we have little chance of achieving the carbon reduction which is essential to reverse the current climatic change This is reflected in the failure of our international politicians, in Copenhagen, Cancún and elsewhere, to achieve a meaningful reversal in our carbon production. We and our politicians can shirk from our responsibilities, but we do so at the peril of future generations. – Yours, etc,