LETTER: Focus not only on carbon emissions

I refer to Peter Bruce’s most recent column (“Dealing with climate is messy and often unrewarding,” April 18).

China emits more carbon in four years than the UK has emitted over the last 300 years. Therefore, the best thing anyone can do to help stabilise the climate is to stop buying cheap “Made in China” junk. Like that iPhone.

Meanwhile, climate deniers will soon see fragile GM monocrops (maize and wheat) start failing and realise it’s not just El Niño or drought causing it. Some will spout the old “CO₂ is plant food” mantra without realising that soil death and heat stress are far bigger issues.

Meanwhile, we are wiping ourselves out, mainly thanks to plastic and chemical pollution of our rivers, which ends up in the sea. We are engaged in a slow mass suicide, but instead we choose to focus on carbon emissions only. The real problem is pollution of all the elements (the air, water and earth/soils that sustain life).

We are the only species nuts enough to do it, and until we start paying for the costs of our damage and start regenerating, we will have to accept the consequences. Earth wins in the end, whether we learn the lesson and evolve symbiotically, or die on the cross of our necro capitalist model.

Bevan Jones
Via BusinessLIVE

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