We depend on growth Money and effort

The editorial by Stuff editor in chief Patrick Crewdson (Nov 28), accompanying the campaign Quick! Save the Planet, highlighted the huge gulf between what we say and what we do about climate change.

Crewdson says he is a middleclass hypocrite, his family drives two cars, and he eats meat daily and loves international travel. How refreshingly honest.

Take air travel. In 2017, Kiwis took 2.9 million trips overseas and aviation is one of the fastestgrowing sources of greenhouse gas emissions.

We live in a culture of frequent flyer programmes, competition between airlines and a free-for-all to advertise these on television and recruit big retailers (eg, airpoints are being offered at Mitre 10).

Middle-class retirees, particularly those with incomes, talk about their next holiday overseas or advise others on their next one. It isn’t easy to reduce one’s air travel for climate reasons. Those who choose to do this experience subtle pressure from friends and family and considerable inconvenience from a bus and train system with poor infrastructure investment.

Worryingly, if we solve this, a bigger problem emerges. If demand for air travel or bigger cars declines significantly, what are we going to do about economic growth?

It leaves us with the reality that we have designed an economic system dependent on growth and where growth is closely correlated with growth in energy use.

Deirdre Kent, Waikanae Recent articles on climate change suggest we can solve our carbonemission problems by avoiding international travel, taking the bus, better insulation, etc. This is wrong.

True, it will slow the effects, but the current level of additional greenhouse gases will continue to heat the world, while the amount of fossil fuel that must be burned because there are no alternatives yet will increase that heating.

To get around this, we have to become carbon negative, work out a way to get more snow on to Antarctica and Greenland, or