YOU can understand the intensity of emotion which drives the environmental protests around the globe. For young people, the prospect is alarming and they feel time is running out.
After all, the planet will be their home longer than it will be for those of us verging upon, or in the throes of, old age.
If the planet is to survive the effects of exploitation brought about by capitalism with its need for continuous growth, increasing profits and rapid turnover of goods, all of which are globally unsustainable and a threat to the planet’s survival, there will need to be serious retrenchment of the activities which power capitalism.
We may need to revert to a more realistic version of the subsistence economy if we are to have a future on this otherwise-dying planet. In the long run we must become stewards of our planet’s resources rather than its insatiable plunderers. Needless to say, there will be great resistance to any efforts to cut back on the levels of output needed to maintain our current standards of living and we will be fed plenty of propaganda on that score by those who enjoy the pleasure of making vast profits over the short term with little or no regard for the environment.
We owe it to our children and the planet to dismantle the unprincipled drive to continue with the economic philosophy which we have enshrined as the best way forward for mankind. There has to be an end to the depredations we inflict on this planet on the altar of capitalism.
Failure to find a remedy will mean extinction on an irrecoverable scale.
Denis Bruce, Bishopbriggs.
I WONDER if the striking pupils would be prepared to go without their phones, laptops and other electronic equipment. The electronics that the young generation use, and so heavily depend upon, have a huge impact on the Earth from mining, and in the cost to the environment from production. Furthermore, they replace these items with a frequency that is quite staggering.
I admit to enjoying the advantages of living in the high-tech age, but I am from a generation that understands having to use the basics in life, when a television screen was 14 inches, radios still had valves, and groceries were placed directly into shopping bags. We did not ask for the current explosion of technology, nor would we be unhappy if we went back to the basics that existed before consumerism.
Frances Deigman, Erskine.
STUMBLING over a cartoon online which stated that “The Wealthy” have $32 trillion stashed away in tax havens a fraction of which would eradicate world poverty I decided to have a wee look online. Putting aside the fact we can’t all agree on just how many noughts follow the number one in a billion never mind a trillion it would appear that the “Global Elite” have stashed abroad, hidden away from taxation, the equivalent of roughly half the annual global GDP. Approximately 100,000 millionaires own these dodgy accounts with somewhat less than 100 being multi-billionaires holding the lion’s share.
If one bears in mind the UK national debt is roughly £1.8 trillion and the country pays eight per cent of tax revenue, the equivalent of four per cent of GDP simply to service this debt one gets a sense of just how skewed global wealth is. To me a significant fact is that it is exactly the same financial system that facilitates these few individuals to avoid paying tax that would happily charge me 19.89 per cent for an arranged overdraft and pays me 0.5 per cent interest on a savings account when the annual rate of inflation is 2.1 per cent.
Brexit aside – and some would say this financial imbalance is at the heart of Brexit – there is obviously something seriously wrong and getting worse with global economics. Money talks and our so-called democracies and elected representatives seem only too willing to listen or are unable unwilling or too incompetent to act in the interests of the majority. After all, if Brexit was not in the best interests of the rich and powerful it wouldn’t be happening would it? Ain’t that right, Boris?
David J Crawford, Glasgow G12.
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