Green realism
From George Monbiot
Sir: I realised long ago that we environmentalists cannot win. When we draw attention to the problem, we are told we are doom-mongers who refuse to accept that markets and human ingenuity can solve any difficulties caused by the overuse of resources. When we propose solutions, we are accused of being utopians who refuse to accept that nothing can be done.
In reviewing my book Heat (Books, 14 October) Tom Fort agrees that the changes I propose are necessary to prevent runaway climate change, but claims there is no chance they will be adopted. He sees bus lanes on motorways, offshore wind farms and stronger building regulations as the stuff of science fiction. To me, they seem rather mundane.
Mr Fort appears to believe that governments are incapable of pursuing policies that are costly, contentious and technologically demanding. So how does he explain the Iraq war?
George Monbiot
Oxford
Freedom vs equality
From Helen Johns
Sir: If David Miliband’s observation that we humans are ‘interdependent’ and co-operate with others to achieve our ends is the ne plus ultra of British political philosophy, then God help us (‘Cameron has substance — but it’s nonsense’, 14 October). He is also wrong to imply that New Labour has neutralised the trade-off between freedom and equality. This trade-off will always exist, because the reduction of inequalities requires the diversion of resources and the limitation of individual freedom of choice.
For example, as a Londoner I enjoy far poorer air quality than a resident of the Isle of Mull. Would the Secretary of State for the Environment argue that this inequality, which exists through neither merit nor need nor desert, should be ‘curtailed’? This would require such a hugely unnecessary, wasteful and dictatorial disruption of people’s lives that, on balance, we live with the inequality.
This is an extreme example, but it illustrates that Mr Miliband is complacent to make claims of an internally consistent resolution to this recurrent dilemma. Furthermore, if the Conservative party does not follow New Labour’s lead into pseudo-intellectualising about ‘superstructures of tactical advantage’ while neglecting to do mundane things like build prisons, it will be to its credit, not its detriment.
Helen Johns
London SE1
Who is the real snob?
From H.O. Mounce
Sir: According to Charles Moore, it is snobbish to criticise the existence of cheap flights (The Spectator’s Notes, 14 October). For it is these flights, according to him, which, by allowing ordinary people to travel abroad, release them from a confined or impoverished life. My parents never travelled abroad. It was only on a handful of occasions, in fact, that my mother travelled outside the town in which she was born. Am I to conclude that she led a confined or impoverished life? Indeed, until recently, the majority of human beings lived as my parents did. Am I to conclude that the majority of human beings have led confined or impoverished lives, simply because they did not have the opportunity to go abroad for their holidays? This is itself snobbery. It is chronological snobbery, i.e., it is the assumption that people in earlier times were inferior to us because they did not live as we do.
H.O. Mounce
Swansea
Art and the God-feeling
From Denis Vaughan
Paul Johnson’s wise demonstration that ‘no great artist leaves God out’ (And another thing, 14 October) opens the way for a widespread acceptance of David Hawkins’s summary of the nature of God. His books, such as The Eye of the I, map out a scale of consciousness, showing how and why spirituality unites while religiosity divides.
Science, reason, intellect and words only get halfway up the scale. Above that love, joy, bliss and other states can only come into our awareness once our ego has been superseded, which requires a basis of unconditional love. If we practise going further up the scale, even for short periods, we have a taste of the God-feeling — unity — and can comprehend that it exists because of our joint participation. There is no upper limit, and inspiration is the order of the day, as any orchestral conductor knows from experience.
This wonderful overview is necessary throughout the world at present, to illuminate the power games of fundamentalism and the pointless squabbles about ‘intelligent design’.
Denis Vaughan
London WC2
Encore, M. Lévy!
From John Jolliffe
Sir: Congratulations on the splendid article on Bernard-Henri Lévy (‘Anti-Americanism is a form of fascism’, 14 October). Fancy such excellent ideas from a French left-wing intellectual: whatever next! But it is all very well saying that it is ‘our duty to help the moderate Muslims’. Could you not commission a piece from him on how this is to be done?
John Jolliffe
Alnwick, Northumberland
Gothic is best
From Anthony Jennings
Sir: Quinlan Terry (Letters, 30 September) is right to observe that, despite the widespread loss of conviction in the Church, there are pockets of Christianity that have not lost their evangelicalism. Why then does his architecture not take its cue from our Christian culture? Instead of his alien and polytheistic classicism, he should practise in the Gothic style, which is the true architecture of England, as the Victorians so well understood.
Anthony Jennings
London WC1
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