Nearly all the major problems that we will have to deal with during the rest of this century will require international, if not global, responses.
I think the main ones are overpopulation on a world scale, climate change, the depletion of the world's resources (not just oil and gas but everything we have to extract from the ground), the difficulty agriculture will have to feed everyone in the world when aquifers used for irrigation are being drained and the availability of plentiful energy from oil to power large machinery and fertiliser production is no longer there, the impoverishment of soils in our best agricultural areas and desertification. We can only solve these problems if people all over the world work together in a spirit of unity to find solutions.
The United Kingdom is in a privileged position to influence these discussions. We are one of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, have highly-placed representatives on most other UN bodies, are a member of the G8, and have embassies and consulates throughout the world. So as part of the UK the people of Scotland can play a full part in deciding how our planet is managed and how we face its problems.
If Scotland opts for independence we shall have few, if any, of these opportunities to play our part in the world, and I fear that the country would become an inward-looking backwater.
This would not be the proud Scotland that I have known. Surely we owe it to our children and grandchildren to stay in the UK and use that influence to create a better world. We may have to kick the Westminster Government to make them do the right things, but we would have friends in the resr of the UK to help us.
Roger Hissett,
16 Kilburn Water, Largs.
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