Sir: Thanks for your excellent Review of 2003 (27 December), but missing surely, was the climate change story and our state of denial about its cause: the billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere, every year, from our fossil fuel gorged lifestyle.
Your pages, last year, carried a great many well-informed stories about the changing climate. Were there not more floods, fires, and freak weather events than any year before? Virtual scientific certainty now exists - there is man-made climate change from our fossil-fuel abuse. Will we be the first generation to knowingly stay on our gas-guzzling course, ignoring the warnings of disaster? Will the Independent review of 2100 précis news of a century of weather-related devastation? Or will it tell how the species woke up - and adapted - just in time?
Reading that 2100 review, will our grown-up grandchildren feel sad for the children: nostalgia for polar bears (then extinct) and for snow? Will they wonder why their grandparents failed to report the big news story of all time?
The solution we need is neither scary nor complex, just urgent. But it's common sense, and it will be fun. Just as our unthinking use of carbon derived fuel, as we work rest and play, is the problem, so will changes to these habits be the solution. Our herd instinct can yet save us! It will soon be cool to be "carbon-lite", de rigueur to switch to a green tariff, and passé to drive a gas-guzzling SUV. Utterly dated to be carboniferous!
The sun still shines for us. Solar energy can meet our species' energy needs many times over. The carbon fuel era is over. The writing is on the wall, if not yet in the papers.
DAVE HAMPTON, ABS consulting
ANTONY TURNER, Carbon Sense
JONATHAN REED, Sponge
Marlow, Buckinghamshire
( The Independent carries readers' letters on its website).
Related Links:
- UK Government Chief Science Advisor Prof David King calls for phasing out of internal combustion engine - and its replacement with electric & fuel cell alternatives. See Independent interview(Feb 2002) with Prof David King. Boy, how the mainstream media and govt buried that 'dangerously' sensational story!
