Blinkering out the Obvious

### Reader’s Letter to The Guardian, 20th June 2024 ###

Dear Editor,

I sort of agreed with Tad DeLay’s assessment of climate denial (article by Maya Goodfellow, The Guardian, 20th June 2024, link below) and regularly ask myself “Who is most mad?”. Is it … a.) the climate denier? or b.) the person who accepts the facts but carries on with business as usual? I would say that b.) is more insane than a.)!

However, I feel that it is highly indulgent of scientists and pundits to analyse the problem (as Mr DeLay does) and then just “leave it hanging”. The media also frequently does this by publishing shocking reports but failing to draw conclusions. It is as if the philosophy is: “Problem identified, therefore job done!”

Maybe the most useful sentence in the whole report (and in Mr DeLay’s whole book?) is in the last paragraph where he mentions that “just by driving to get groceries you emit carbon dioxide … a fifth of [which] … will still be in the air in 500,000 years […]”. Indeed, yes, and so here I would say to Mr DeLay that maybe he (and all the rest of us) should live in places where we can walk to the shops?

I could fill pages with similar “down-to-earth” recommendations but know that we, as a society, have simply decided to “blinker out the obvious”. How sad!

Yours,
Alan Mitcham

Link to original article: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/jun/20/what-if-there-just-is-no-solution-how-we-are-all-in-denial-about-the-climate-crisis