JOE MURPHY,
Madam, - The coincidence in your pages of reports on the global impact of local environmental catastrophes (November 7th) and the probability that the UN Security Council will at best rubber-stamp, a US-led attack on Iraq may be prophetic. The environmental and global economic consequence of an Iraqi scorched-earth policy of burning the oil that the Bush administration covets may be severe.
It is a terrible irony that what should be the real agenda of a united political leadership - namely the greenhouse effect and climate change - will raise itself, as it were, both within and despite the short-termism of the oil war. - Yours, etc.,
JOE MURPHY, Skerries, Co Dublin.