Hard medicine needed to cure the climate

I FOUND Dick Barton’s letter (‘Cool response to global warming’, January 7) as amusing as it was irresponsible.

His ability to assimilate what he reads on Google is certainly (I can safely bet) not as good as thousands of scientists who analysed original data and who participated in the recent UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

It is very easy to accuse scientists of being corrupt, dishonest and only interested in the money, but if Mr Barton had ‘googled’ brain surgery, would you trust him to carry out your operation?

Would you bet your life, your car, your house on him? Or would you go for the best brain surgeon around, the one regarded as such by his peers?

You may grumble about paying your doctor, but you know that if you don’t follow his advice, you are a fool and may die.

A common response to the Vehicle Registration Tax changes is that it’s just jealousy, resentment of those who have done well. Wake up!

We need to respond much harder to the challenge facing us and our children. We need to stop dreaming about James Bond-type gadgets that will save us and swallow hard on our medicine.

We are a generation manipulated by and bound in debt to consumer culture who would rather risk our children’s future than forego our hire-purchased commodities.

The one thing more corrupt than politicians is the consumer marketeer. By their efforts it is we, including the Google expert, who are more committed to our mortgages than saving the planet.

Ann O’Connor

3 Lee View Court

Blarney Street

Cork