Letters: Better to cut CO2 than complain about Paris deal

These letters appear in the 12th January 2015 edition of The Independent

Britain's leader of the opposition Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn (L), and fashion designer Vivienne Westwood (R) attend a rally held the day before the start of the Paris Climate Change Summit, in London (Reuters )

The criticisms from the 11 researchers (“Paris Agreement offers ‘false hope’ say climate scientists”, 9 January) appear to be based on a misunderstanding of what the Paris Agreement means. It does not “kick the can down the road”, but instead commits all countries to “holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels”.

This is a much stronger commitment than the previous agreement, reached in Cancún, Mexico, in 2010, to limit global warming to 2C. But it also recognises that current actions planned by countries need to be strengthened over the coming decades in order to avoid dangerous climate change. Governments will be required to reconvene regularly to report on how they have increased the ambition of their emissions cuts.

It would be far better if scientists devoted their efforts towards helping policy-makers devise ways of reducing emissions strongly and effectively, without reducing living standards or undermining poverty reduction around the world, instead of complaining about what they perceive to be the weaknesses of the strong international agreement on climate change that was achieved in Paris.

Bob Ward

Policy and Communications Director, Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, London School of Economics and Political Science

I applaud everything in the letter from Professor Beckwith and colleagues apart from their faith in geo-engineering as a solution to climate change.

If you succeed in promoting the growth of plankton, then the oceans may well absorb more CO2, but this will result in greater acidification. Artificial whitening of clouds may produce a local benefit, but if extended globally it may well have a devastating impact on crop growth.

There is no easy techno-fix for climate change, and pretending otherwise delays the measures that are so desperately needed to address the problem: namely renewables, energy conservation, and a carbon tax that reflects the damage that fossil fuels wreak.

Dr Robin Russell-Jones

Stoke Poges, Buckinghamshire

The Paris climate change draft agreement may help persuade some doubters of the imminent dangers about to befall this planet from man’s insatiable use of its resources. However, the proposals avoid any discussion of by far the most serious problem.

It is an inconvenient truth that the increasing population of mankind makes the forces driving climate change almost impossible to contain. That the draft fails even to mention the topic shows how far from reality the political debate has become.

I guess, as Margaret Thatcher told me about 25 years ago, there is nothing one actually can do.

Mark Bretscher

Swaffham Bulbeck, Cambridge

Cameron given a Hungarian lecture

David Cameron’s recent meeting with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban focused attention on the importance of precise language in discussion of the EU and in particular the Single Market (“We’re not migrants. We’re citizens of the EU”, 8 January).

Tom Peck reports Orban as saying: “We would like to make it clear that we are not migrants into the UK. We are citizens of the EU who can take jobs anywhere within the EU.”

Orban is of course right. In the EU’s Single Market, with its in-built mobility of labour, it is more accurate to talk of mobile workers from other EU member states than to use the inappropriate and increasingly toxic word “migrants” to describe them.

It speaks volumes for Cameron’s ineptness in his referendum-related discussions with other EU leaders that he leaves himself open to a lecture on the language of labour mobility from his political soulmate Orban.

David Head

Navenby, Lincolnshire

The UK is bound into the European Union by a series of treaties. The agreement of all signatory states is required to agree any changes. David Cameron has set out to obtain agreement that the UK will be exempt from the founding principle of “ever closer union”, a statement that the euro is not the “official” currency, thus preserving the pound sterling as a legitimate currency, a “red card” system whereby member states would be able to stop unwanted directives and scrap existing legislation, and a new structure which will protect the nine countries not in the Eurozone from domination by the other 19 and give particular protection for the City of London.

This might sound good for the UK, but “agreements” cannot overrule treaties. It is unlikely that the other 27 states will agree to all these demands.

How long then before the grandees of the EU dismiss these agreements as scraps of paper? The European Union of Socialist Republics seems to loom ever closer.

D M Loxley

Hartoft, North Yorkshire

People need to recognise the EU referendum campaign for what it really is: a conspiracy by a wealthy and powerful elite centred around Eton alumni who believe, like Charles I, that they have a divine right to rule.

The powers of the “Roundheads” of Europe have to be curtailed, and this can only be done by severing the ties with the EU,

Woe betide the peasants if they succeed.

Peter Booker

Sandhoe, Northumberland

How corporate fat cats share the cream

So the Adam Smith Institute defends high top executive pay awards on the basis of market forces (Ben Chu, 11 January). What arrant nonsense!

It is of the essence of free market theory that decision-makers follow their personal self-interest in coming to a decision. In form, the decision on top executive salary is made by the company, but in reality it is made by the directors. Their personal self-interest is to make the awards ever higher, since that will justify a higher pay increase for them in turn.

Having non-executive directors and remuneration committees makes no difference since the members of these are all on the same gravy train.

Nor do shareholders’ votes have any influence because the only effective shareholder votes are those of the big institutions whose directors are on the same gravy train. Occasionally, they may stop the most egregious pay deals; they do not want the system to get such a bad name that the Government is forced to do something about it, that would not be in their personal best interest.

The whole system has as much to do with market forces as modern football has to do with sportsmanship.

Tony Somers

London SW5

Does the Middle East want democracy?

Mohammed and Maryam won’t thank us in the holier-than-thou West for lectures about “democracy” five years after the Arab Spring (editorial 9 January). All they want is a semblance of stability and a decent chance to get on with their lives.

How good is democracy in the Middle East anyway? Is Israel a good example to follow? Nobody likes a tyrant, but just how viable is it for a squeaky-clean democracy to keep the peace in a Middle East state? Is the region really any better now without Saddam, Gaddafi and Mubarak?

Peter Burnand

Wirral

Children in Islamic dress

What an utterly depressing photo of the Kenyan school in your paper of 8 January. Not because of the missing teacher, but because half of the children in this photo have already been denied autonomy over their own bodies, denied the ability to run around waving their arms in the air and feeling the sunshine on their limbs. Why should any little girl be so hobbled? It is truly disgusting.

Every woman who dons a veil voluntarily should look long and hard at this photograph and realise just what it is that they are endorsing.

Helen Clutton

Dorchester

David Bowie in a frock

David Bowie will be greatly missed for so many reasons. Not just a rock star but a man of wit and many talents. I will always remember his reply to a policeman in New York when he was stopped and asked, “Why are you wearing a woman’s frock?”

Bowie answered. “It’s not. It’s a man’s frock.”

Barbara MacArthur

Cardiff

When ministers clash with doctors

When minister of health in the 1960s, Enoch Powell observed that he seemed to talk to doctors only about money, not medicine or health. Has anything changed in the past 50 years?

Dr John Doherty

Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire