Guardian Weekly Letters, 16 November 2012

A naturalist's warning; the future of nuclear; expanding the vote

Attenborough's warning

How fortunate we are to have someone of the stature of David Attenborough still around after six decades of educating us about the wonders of nature (Force of nature's stark warning, 9 November). And who better than he to pinpoint the blame for the current terrible loss of biodiversity: " many mouths, so many people in the west offering to pay for these forests to be cut down...", he says.

Climate change will also impact adversely on biodiversity as species move polewards or to higher altitudes to try to survive a warming Earth. Many will be impeded by human settlements that have not been there in the past when the planet has warmed or cooled. It is one of those problems that could be solved easily if you reduced human population, as Attenborough says.

George Monbiot may claim that climate change is caused only by the richer world burning fossil fuels and the poor are not to blame (Extreme weather will cause salvation, 26 October). But it is also exploding populations who cut down forests to grow food, or intensify agriculture for greater yields. Taking everything into account in the production of food from fertilisers to machinery to transport, agriculture now accounts for 30% of greenhouse gas emissions. The more mouths, the more farming, the more emissions.
Jenny Goldie
Michelago, NSW, Australia

Future of nuclear power

Thank goodness the Bric countries have not been spooked by the Fukushima incident and are continuing their building of reactors (Nuclear still generates a buzz, 2 November). The knee-jerk response by Japan (understandable) and Germany (fooled again by the irresponsible Greens) has probably set back a global clean, emissions-free, base-load energy supply by several years.

Bric nations obviously know that nuclear is their best, probably only option for a secure, clean energy future. The British and the Americans are building new reactors as well.

It's interesting that the UK energy minister has recently put paid to the development of any more onshore windfarms, citing them as grossly inefficient and expensive and only good for wealthy landowners collecting rent from hosting them on their land. The UK has finally joined Canada, France, Spain and several US states in reducing or discontinuing subsidies for wind.

If only countries would ignore the scaremongering Greens and other anti-nukes and look at the truth about the essential safety and that nuclear is the most powerful source of energy known to mankind, I'm confident that countries, including Japan, will come back to it as an essential part of their energy future.
Terry Krieg
Port Lincoln, South Australia

• Nuclear power is not a greenhouse-gas-free source of energy. That assumption has long been proven wrong. The industry is heavily dependent on fossil-fuel energy.

This is because the nuclear fuel cycle is exceptionally demanding of energy sources that exist outside its original uranium. The mining and processing of the uranium, the elaborate transport procedures necessary to move these materials with any safety, the significant carbon dioxide debt carried by the construction of the plants and the investment of energy in storing nuclear waste add up to large-scale carbon dioxide emissions.

We must add to this the energy in decommissioning and dismantling aged reactors. This will soon be a significant factor because high numbers of the world's reactors are at the end of their working lifetimes.

In July 2005 the journal Australian Science published an analysis of the greenhouse gas costs of nuclear reactors, excluding decommissioning costs. If the reactors were using the increasingly scarce high-grade uranium ores as their fuel source, the greenhouse gas cost was already high. If they were using the low-grade ores, the only ones available after 2024, the greenhouse gas emissions of the reactor become more than those for a gas-fired thermal station of the same electric output.

To all the other terrible problems associated with nuclear reactors and nuclear fission, we can safely add that of their being large emitters of greenhouse gases.
Denys Trussell
Auckland, New Zealand

We must expand the vote

I nodded in agreement as I read your lead article on the possibility of the world being able to vote in the US election (Too bad the world can't vote, 26 October). Indeed, if the US is meddling disproportionately in a particular country's business, then why shouldn't the citizens of that country vote on who governs the US? The outcome of the vote affects them just as it would a US citizen.

This is a fascinating thought, a whole Pandora's box that urgently needs to be thrown wide open. For example, if EU trade policy has targeted markets in Africa and caused significant disruption to those markets, then surely the Africans affected should be able to vote in European elections. If a sovereign wealth fund or global corporation has acquired agricultural land in a developing country for industrial farming operations, then surely those who have lost their farms, their homes and their grazing land should be able to vote on the board of that fund or corporation.

Furthermore, if a country has squandered mineral resources, destroyed natural habitat or has polluted the environment, then surely those as-yet unborn citizens who will suffer disadvantage due to that policy should be allowed to vote.

Of course, none of this is possible but the point we need to recognise is that democracy is worth nothing unless it is applied responsibly and compassionately. And even worse: if democracy panders solely to the short-term desires of a particular electorate, then such a system can easily become a vehicle for inadvisable decisions, for injustice and, at times, for evil.
Alan Mitcham
Cologne, Germany

Other people's children

I congratulate Clare Kathleen Bogen for having the courage to write what a lot of us have been thinking and saying (Yummy mummies are rude, 26 October). Other people's children are not the centre of my universe; why do mothers (and fathers too) think they should be? The health and safety issue in this article is an interesting point too – other patrons tripping over scooters and children running around in cafes while hot drinks are being served. Who is to blame when one of the little darlings is injured?

I also commend Kate Connolly regarding the Berlin coffee bar owner, Ralf Ruller, banning pushchairs and prams (Pushchair ban causes a froth, 19 October). What about the affront to other customers who have to dodge these monstrosities and the little darlings contained therein, and put up with the noise created by them?
Ruth Ehrlich
Alanya, Turkey

Writers and art lovers

Edward Dolnick tells us that there are no unscrupulous billionaires looking for stolen Picassos to adorn the spots above their fireplaces, and that art thieves only steal for bragging rights and because it's easy (No one wins in this game, 26 October). He also puzzlingly states that few art thieves have ever entered into an art gallery except to rob it, and finally that they see art theft as kidnapping without all the fuss. Dolnick has such insight into the world of art thieves that I finished this pleasant little piece wondering if art thieves also occasionally write for the Guardian.
Ryan Grant Little
Berlin, Germany


• Further to the story of scientists being imprisoned in Italy for not predicting an earthquake (2 November): earthquakes are "acts of God" so the person who should be most able to predict them should be the man who claims to be closest to God. When will the Italian police arrest the Pope, for not having predicted the earthquake. Or is he in fact a fraud?
Nick Bagnall
Omokoroa Beach, New Zealand

• I love the juxtaposition on the front page of the 19 October edition. Under the feature title Are women pushing men to one side? there is a great picture of four of Europe's most powerful bureaucrats. Christine Lagarde and Angela Merkel are sitting in the centre, with two blokes whose names and faces I would never recognise sitting either side of them. Women at the top are pushing men to both sides, apparently.
Katherine Short
Penang, Malaysia

• Kudos to Alexis Petridis for having sketched such a well-rounded portrait of that most enigmatic of rock personalities, Pete Townshend (26 October). Having shed so much light on who he is, this startlingly candid autobiographer has left one question unanswered: namely, what gave him the courage to launch the deeply spiritual and neo-Freudian rock opera Tommy and the even more daring semi-Wagnerian Quadrophenia when Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka-dot Bikini and Lonely This Christmas were topping the charts? In his Indian guru Meher Baba's vein, the answer may well be found in silence.

Frank Landsman
Bandung, West Java, Indonesia

• Ian Cobain asks why the British government continues to resist the Mau Mau claim for compensation and an apology (2 November). The obvious answer is that having the case heard may expose the fact that similar behaviours have been stand operating procedure for the army in Northern Ireland, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Alex Bell

Newstead, Tasmania, Australia

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