THINKING LONG TERM
"Right now, we are facing a man-made disaster of global scale, Our greatest threat in thousands of years, climate change... If we don't take action, the collapse of our civilisations and the extinction of much of the natural world is on the horizon.” said David Attenborough this week in Poland.
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The 10,000,000,000-plus tonnes (thats like 10 cubic kilometres) of fossil carbon we humans add to the sky every year seems a colossal amount yet is easily confirmed from any encyclopaedia.
The composition of the atmosphere is easily measured and it’s shown to act as more of a blanket when carbon is added, easily demonstrated in any school lab.
The carbon in the sky is now nearly 50 per cent more than it has been for over five million years - long before humans were around.
It light of these things I fail to see how anyone can deny the basic science of global warming and human involvement.
The only thing we can't be sure of is the extent and speed of the changes it will bring.
It’s time to stop debating this issue, and start working together to halt it.
We all want a safe and prosperous world for the long term. Don’t we?
Tom Hunt, Oak Flats
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
Don Tate’s main lament regarding the dropping of Jim Molan to an unwinnable position on the upcoming Liberal senate election ticket seems to be that the country needs “real men” to defend it, and implies that only people whose political views are right of centre fit that bill.
Perhaps Mr Tate is unaware that the greatly lauded Liberal of the 50s and 60s, Bob Menzies, served the country in the Melbourne University Regiment but did not volunteer to serve overseas, whereas the ‘socialist warrior’ of the Whitlam government, Tom Uren, not only volunteered for overseas service but was captured and spent years as a POW.
When the Menzies government introduced military slavery, Uren showed concerned for the men who had been conscripted.
It is people like Molan who get us into questionable wars at the behest of other countries rather than in defence of our sovereignty, like Iraq and Afghanistan, where human rights are seen as subsidiary to ‘winning’.
We are told by the current Coalition that abuse of some human rights is necessary to ensure that our borders are safe. I do not wish to have this kind of cruelty perpetrated in my name.
Ben Morris, Wollongong
TIME FOR ACTION
The “Knockout Game of Destiny” dance party reinforces the belief that more and more people have no interest their own safety, or simply not intelligent enough to understand danger.
At some stage, do governments consider it is time to protect some people from themselves or do they just continue to look the other way and let these tragic outcomes continue?
Richard Burnett, Wollongong
EDITOR’S NOTE: Reader contributed images of our beautiful region you are used to seeing here now run with the letters to the editor online on our website at illawarramercury.com.au.