What do you think?
Are you tempted to go vegan – and if so, why? Join the debate by emailing letters@westerndailypress.co.uk and including your name and address
is brought in, whether we will pay less tax. After all, our taxes mean that health care is free for most people at the point of access. Will we end up paying twice?
Successive Conservative governments have systematically decimated the NHS and NHS dentistry in order to wear the electorate down so much they readily agree to privatization.
Which means a poorer service at a higher cost. In common with all privatised industries.
For the many people who will not be able to afford private insurance, or to pay directly for their care, it will mean worse health, shorter lives and being refused life saving treatments, as happens in the USA.
But then this government resents the “unproductive elderly”, and people who rely on benefits. We don’t make them wealthy.
My heart goes out to my colleagues. They are being used in the most cynical fashion.
Karen Jacob, retired nurse
By email and caused $25 billion damage. This year, forest and grass fires in Spain, Portugal, Greece, France, Russia, California, Australia, etc, have been the worst in recent history. Between half and two thirds of Pakistan was flooded this autumn.
Fifteen Pacific Islands are drowning irreversibly due in part to the Arctic temperature rise.
Swiss glaciers are losing 6% of their volume p.a. (Swiss Academy of Sciences). Russian permafrost is melting, releasing CO2 and methane at scarcely measurable rates.
UK fish and seabird patterns are changing significantly and we can all see that primroses and cowslips flower throughout the year, due to the temperature. How many other examples could we quote, either from personal experience or from around the globe? We are supposed to be keeping the global temperature rise to 1.5° but the vast majority of climate scientists say we are almost inevitably going to get to 2.7° by century’s end.
Meanwhile, the seven major oil companies have made £150bn so far this year (figs from S&P
Global Market). Our current UK Government is still intent on granting over 100 licences to extract more oil and gas from the North Sea.
The UN General Secretary says: “We are on a highway to climate hell with our foot still on the accelerator”, and David Attenborough says: “If we bring emissions down sufficiently, we may yet avoid runaway climate change”. Greenpeace has been demonstrating for decades on oil platforms; result: expanded fossil fuel production. How are we responding in the South West? Do we put our heads in the sand (a suitable word for future decades?).
Exeter University has produced a book entitled We still have a Chance. This had a public launch in Exeter recently; the audience participating was around 40. At least the book will soon be published and the essence of the work has been captured by a local artist, whose painting can be seen at Exeter Library.
Earlier in the year there was a discussion at Exeter Quay of how scientists and authors see the climate crisis – six on the panel, 10 in the audience. An alternative attempt to remind us of environmental reality was a march in Plymouth (November 12th) by climateconscious Devonians. Numbers on the march were maybe 200. Plymouth population – 240,000.
Many bystanders seemed uncaring about their climate future. Ironically, on the wall of a Plymouth cafe there are photos of the suffragettes who, in the early years of the 20th century, took very provocative actions to help achieve votes for women. Over 230 were imprisoned. How determined were those women and how essential their demonstrations? How much more important is the current crisis?
How do we get enough momentum amongst our UK population that we forge a generation-inclusive determinedlymotivated community that will take the profoundly important steps essential to give our children and grandchildren a chance? Do we even have anything like a sufficient sense of community to make this possible?
A majority of MPs seem more interested in saving their seats than in their kids’ future. Some influential personalities on TV’s Good Morning