To fix a broken economy, drop money at its base
It would be a shame if none of the three books on how the global economy is broken that Joanna Kavenna reviews mentioned the way that Australia dealt with the 2008 financial crisis (3 August, p 30). The Labor government of the time, headed by Kevin Rudd, recognised that employing trickle-down economics would be futile.
Money doesn’t flow down from the wealthy. It mostly gets moved upward, concentrating wealth even more. A government that wants money to move throughout an economy needs to invest in its base. That is what Labor did, through a lot of make-work schemes. Australians didn’t experience the horrors that people in other countries did.
We suspect we're addicted to reading and writing (1)
I sometimes joke about being a print addict, and now I see disturbing similarities between my reading habit and the behavioural addictions that Moya Sarner discusses (14 September, p 42). I look up and find I am somehow still reading at 4 am. I experience a “flow state” and am uneasy if deprived. Reading blanks out unhappiness, pain, misery and illness.
I feel compelled to read any print 鈥� yes, including cereal packets. While reading, I am almost totally unaware of anything outside of the story. I have a house full of books and keep a spare e-reader handy.
Of course, pursuing an academic career has allowed me to use this tendency quite a bit. And no, I don’t plan to go to rehab.
We suspect we're addicted to reading and writing (2)
Reading about addictions to behaviours, I realise I have become addicted to writing letters to 快猫短视频. I scan each issue, looking for some topic that I can pretend to be an expert in.
As your article points out, unpredictable rewards strongly increase the addiction, and you contribute to this by only rarely accepting my letters. When each issue arrives, I scan it quickly to see if I have been published, then get grouchy and irritable when no letter is there or euphoric on the occasions when my letter appears.
I could possibly fix this addiction by cancelling my subscription, but I can’t because the rest of my family is addicted to reading 快猫短视频.
A hard lesson that cod should teach all electorates
Graham Lawton’s discussion of the tension between action on global warming and electoral outcomes brings to mind a grim precedent (14 September, p 23). Newfoundland cod was until the fishery collapsed in the early 1990s.
快猫短视频s warned that quotas needed to be reduced. Elected representatives didn’t dare impose the required limitations for fear of being labelled “anti-jobs”. I fear we are seeing a repetition of this, scaled up, with the global climate.
In May, Australia elected a government that vowed to increase coal mining. Brazil’s president was candid about his plans for the Amazon before his electoral victory last October.
Unless voters see real, personal, economic opportunity in carbon dioxide reduction, Newfoundland’s experience may be a prelude to what awaits us all.
Give the rich an incentive to offer an example
Adam Vaughan lists challenges facing the UN Climate Action summit (14 September, p 6). One hurdle that plans for climate change reduction must overcome is that they often involve cutting things that people find enjoyable or convenient 鈥� cars and flights, for example.
Humans are very short-termist as a species, as our continuing appetite for unhealthy but tasty food shows. We have an odd sense of jealousy and of fairness: if someone else has something, we may feel entitled to it too. We are reluctant to give something up if someone else has it, even if doing so benefits the entire planet.
So we may resent taxes on fuel if we see very wealthy people paying the same flat tax rate or continuing to fly when we are supposed to cut back. Maybe we need graded carbon taxes. The richer you are, the more you would pay for emitting the same amount of carbon dioxide.
Perhaps the very well-off could publicly commit to not flying to persuade the rest of us to follow suit. Carbon taxes that rise suitably steeply with income would give them an incentive to provide this example.
Can you be catapulted off to start your holidays?
Crispin Piney suggests ways to book flights to minimise your carbon footprint (Letters, 24 August). Couldn’t we adapt the technology that launches planes from aircraft carriers to take-offs from land-based airports? Clean power to catapults could be supplied off the grid and, for some, the buzz would be great.
Backing for an ammonia-based fuel economy
I would like to add to the argument for an ammonia-based fuel economy suggested by Phil Pope (Letters, 14 September). You have reported that researchers at the University of Tokyo have developed a low-energy alternative to the Haber-Bosch process that makes ammonia from atmospheric nitrogen (27 April, p 8). This strengthens the case for ammonia as a carbonless fuel.
Ammonia could be used to fuel gas or steam turbines as well as internal combustion engines, thus providing for all forms of transport. It could also be used to meet all domestic and industrial heating needs. It offers the prospect of a completely carbonless fuel economy.
Rejecting global cooling strengthens the science
Were scientists worried in the 1970s that we were about to plunge into another full-blown icy spell? Jon Stern thinks not, and you suggest that it would have been better to say only a few were (Letters, 10 August).
As part of my botany course in the early 1970s, I was taught that we were most probably in a warm interglacial period, and that the climate could swiftly revert to the icy conditions that had prevailed during previous advances of an ongoing ice age.
From time to time, there was some discussion about the possible impact of industrial air pollution on climate, but this wasn’t a formal part of the course, and it certainly didn’t seem to dominate the thinking of my lecturers at the time.
Far from supporting climate deniers, as Stern suggests it does, I think the fact that this former interpretation of the prevailing climate has been so unequivocally rejected only adds to the strength of the scientific consensus about anthropogenic climate change.
Not everyone benefits when drivers become safer
You give figures for road traffic casualties, without distinguishing between those who were in a vehicle and other victims 7 September, p 20). You also report a claim that advanced driver assistance systems could have the same kind of effect on fatality rates as the introduction of seat belts. But for whom? Some suggest that the UK’s introduction of seat belts increased the risk to cyclists and pedestrians.
For the record 鈥� 5 October 2019
鈥� The earliest of our photos of the Mer de Glace glacier was taken in 1919 (21 September, p 8).
鈥� The United Nations is an income of US$1.90 per person per day adjusted to 2011 purchasing power parity (7 September, p 46).
鈥� Flaming hell. Harold Gasson was employed by the Great Western Railway to stoke fires, not extinguish them (Feedback, 14 September).