Changing climate is still world’s big problem
ALTHOUGH there’s lots of dreadful things going on and catching people’s attention, the big issue facing humanity is still climate change.
The Guardian recently (June 30) reported scientists saying heatwaves that saw deadly forest fires in Portugal and soaring temperatures in England were made up to 10 times more likely by global warming.
Heatwaves and global warming aren’t the same but only contrarians and public bar professors deny the realities that serious, respected and international scientists accept.
Conditions like this contribute to the deaths of hundreds if not thousands of people, not only in the global south, but also in our country where building standards need to be tightened to take account of this as well as dealing with fire.
This week across the country the Climate Coalition calls us to ‘speak up for the love of’ things we could lose if our politicians and the powerful don’t take action. The coalition includes the British Mountaineering Council, Surfers Against Sewage, WWF, RSPB and Christian charities.
If you like your world, children or heritage, join us in speaking up – details can be found online. Climate lover
Pollution adds to NHS woes
I AM puzzled by David Smith’s letter
(Viewpoints, July 4) in which he complains that the council has ‘by stealth strangled car traffic in the city centre.’
I note he makes only one brief mention of pollution, but time after time complains of the difficulty of driving in the city centre and even puts pollution down to the ‘slow moving traffic.’
The reality is that every year there is more traffic on the roads and in the past 12 years the number of high polluting diesel cars has increased from under two million to over 11 million.
This increase is the cause of most major cities having dangerous pollution levels way above the legal limits.
These are not necessarily safe limits and the pollution is also at dangerously high levels on the main roads in and out of cities, including Manchester.
Air pollution is a killer. Outdoor pollution is responsible for 40,000 premature deaths a year in the UK (more than alcohol or obesity) according to a 2016 report by the Royal College of Physicians and Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health.
The report also says that high levels of air pollution have been ‘linked to cancer, asthma, stroke and heart disease and changes linked to dementia.’ All of this adds to the burden on the NHS.
Whatever the council is doing about restricting motor vehicle traffic in the city, it is not enough.
We have a health emergency which is damaging, in particular, children, the elderly and people travelling in motor vehicles taking in the concentrated polluted air on the roads. It is not good enough for David Smith to demand the freedom to pollute at will. Sam Darby, Burnage Green Party
Inequality is worse now
IF I had to name one thing that disrupts our society more than anything else it would be inequality.
In the past inequality was not really a problem because the vast majority of us were equally poor. Now society has changed dramatically. Many people now own their own homes, have cars and go on holidays abroad. This highlights the problem to the poorer members in our society. They also see the super wealthy and you can understand the resentment certain people may have.
Of course if we all started equal today then inequality would soon appear. There will always be people who are good at making money and people who are not. What is so sad is that we still live in a postcode lottery scenario. Lots of people born in certain areas are more likely to suffer from relative poverty the whole of their lives.
Ultimately every child deserves an equal opportunity to succeed in their lives and reach their full potential. I know from experience that a poor background has many disadvantages. I also know from experience that the most effective way of breaking away from the poverty trap is education. Harry Singleton, Ashton-Under-Lyne
I’m tired of all this exercise
SO many of my friends and acquaintances seem to spend so much time jogging, cycling or going to the gym, that I find it exhausting just to think about it.
If physical exercise is so good for you, why was life expectancy so much lower in the days when most men had jobs which were physically demanding? J Collier, Milnrow