Vital for Earth’s future

Numerous media articles and street demonstrations by young people indicate an increasingly forward-thinking concern for the impacts that climate change will have on the lives and lifestyles of New Zealanders within the lifetimes of today’s rangatahi (youth).

Most, if not all, of these concerns have been orientated towards encouraging all New Zealanders to ‘‘do the right thing’’ to protect New Zealand’s lands, waters, oceans and atmosphere.

All of these efforts, while highly commendable and necessary to motivate our politicians into action, have been focused on the illusion that, if New Zealand meets all its targets for global warming, for example, it will somehow avoid the dysfunctions of climate change. Not true.

And even if all other countries meet

their climate change targets, climate changes will still occur at today’s levels of atmospheric greenhouse gases, unless people worldwide can accept two unthinkable requirements to conserve Earth’s limited (and fixed) resources:

A lower standard of living for everyone, especially in developed countries.

A voluntary restriction on population growth, especially in developing countries, to keep global warming where it is now.

Unfortunately, these essentials for Earth’s long-term supportable future conflict head-on with the tenets of capitalism. What government will be brave enough ‘‘to bite the bullet’’ first? Ray Richards, Trentham

Australian scientist Dr Gideon Polya’s dedicated studies conclude that by November 2015 the US alliance’s barbaric wars caused a holocaust of 27 million avoidable Muslim deaths from war and imposed deprivation in 20 countries violated by the alliance since 2001.

Regarding ballistic missiles: Iran has every right to defend itself from the US allies’ aggression in their continuing colonial violence on Iran, including nuclear threats.

The April 11 reckless sabotage of Iran’s Natanz facility is not the first cyber sabotage inflicted by Israel or America on Iran. Regarding the nuclear deal called the JCPOA, it’s the US and EU allies, including Britain, which breached the agreement after the US unilaterally withdrew, imposing illegal, destructive sanctions on Iran, causing deaths.

Iran is allowed to exceed some technical limits, under articles 26 and 37 of the JCPOA, when the other parties do not meet their obligations.

Kay Weir, Wellington