Letters: Making Earth inhospitable

Re “Why the gloom and doom?,” Opinion, July 2

Faced with the statement that the physical environment of Earth is being ruined beyond repair, Jonah Goldberg argues that human society and its achievements have made great strides, improving daily life for the world’s inhabitants.

Well, yes, but people will not always “live longer, eat better [and] have more leisure time” as they do now if drought, floods, crop failures and the like continue to wreck the planet.

It’s rather like arguing that, yes, the passenger jet you’re on may be in a death spiral, but have you considered how much more comfortable the seats are compared to the planes of yesteryear?

Michael Chaskes

Los Angeles

I wish Goldberg were right. Using Steven Pinker’s “The Better Angels of Our Nature” as his source, he insists that because humans have become less violent over the last 250 years and society has become more “hospitable,” it is “ludicrous” for environmental activist Bill McKibben to claim the planet is becoming “inhospitable.”

McKibben is pointing out that humans haven’t treated the Earth with the same enlightened thoughtfulness as we’ve learned to treat one another.

If we were to see Mother Earth as an extension of ourselves, with similar rights and needs as we’ve declared for humans, then she wouldn’t be in the process of kicking us out of her house.

Goldberg and shortsighted economic power brokers still don’t get it.

Dennis R. Hicks

Venice

When we warn children about looking both ways before crossing the street, are we being gloomy? What about when we’re warned to watch our diet?

Our intelligence, science and technology have allowed us humans to progress. It’s about time that we accepted and embraced these tools rather than hamstring ourselves because we choose to ignore warnings just because they are dire (which they are).

Joan Kroll

Lake Forest

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