Not worst year

As the year draws to a close and environmentalists wind up the annual hysteria of claiming 2018 was the worst year ever for almost everything in the history of the planet, may I get my retaliation in first.

How about that day some 65.5 million years ago when the Chicxulub asteroid struck the earth. Or 536 AD, the start of the “volcanic winter” associated with the eruptions of Tambora (Sumbawa), Rabaul (Papua New Guinea) and Krakatoa (Indonesia). The long winter so weakened the population they couldn’t cope with an outbreak of the bubonic plague in 541, which killed around half of the eastern Roman Empire.

Then there was 1347, when the Black Death killed around half of Europe’s population, and 1520 when smallpox hit the Americas, eventually killing around 80 per cent of the continent’s original inhabitants. Finally, there was 1918, which witnessed some of the worst losses of the Great War as well as a worldwide influenza pandemic which killed around 5 per cent of the entire world population.

(REV DR) JOHN CAMERON

Howard Place, St Andrews