Dear editor,
Responding to Otto Schulte’s letter Climate change panic is nothing more than scare-mongering, Thursday, May 9.
Taking a very long view, millennia, that is, we humans have had no perceivable impact on our planet. There were more than enough resources to go around. However, since the beginning of the industrial age our species has been drilling, felling, mining and combusting not just to provide for our own needs but also to accumulate wealth. It is not earth’s doing that the Atlantic cod fishery died, that we’ve lost much of the carbon sink in the Amazon, or that our oceans are increasingly polluted with fish-killing plastics. It will take an enormous and unprecedented act of collective will to address these and other issues. Is it even possible to rein ourselves in and effect change? I do not know. But one thing is certain: until we acknowledge our causative role in the calamities we face, we will never find the will to address them.
Kate Ramsey,
Courtenay