We can’t control the power of nature

POLITICIANS have always used the taxation system to either encourage or discourage people to live their lives in certain ways preferred by Government. It has always had limited success and often with unexpected, unwelcome or even quite absurd results. Predicting human behaviour is always fraught - as witness public reaction to the so-called poll tax or the latest referendum or the urge to promote diesel-engined or, as now, the sale of electric vehicles. Those supposedly in charge assume that they can dictate how the populace will respond. As I mentioned in a letter last April, there was no justification for them to interfere in ‘controlling’ an international global respiratory disease. As King Canute showed centuries ago, humankind, least of all a politician, has only limited control over nature, merely only being able to offer palliatives. We have all paid dearly as a result. Virtually every aspect of our lives seems to attract the heavy hand of politicians. When infection rates fall, Governments claim credit, when they rise the blame is attributed to irresponsible individuals.

After decades of waffling, politicians are still no nearer to ‘solving’ the problem of climate change, simply because they, like monarchs in the Middle Ages, know that they do not have the power to do so. Other species have an instinctive ability to control population growth in line with the planet’s ability to sustain it. Although global warming is affected to an extent by human lifestyles, by far the most significant factor in the anthropometric contribution to climate change is sheer weight of numbers.

In 1950 there were 2.5 billion people on the planet. Now in 2020, there are over 7.7 billion. By the end of the century the UN expects a global population of 11.2 billion. Politicians are no more willing or able to control the spread of a virus any more than they can realistically control climate change.

Anthony G Phillips, Salisbury, Wiltshire