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Guardian Weekly Letters, 19 January 2018

Our destructive species

George Monbiot paints an alarming picture of the cruel reality being wrought by our planet’s most invasive and destructive species – Homo sapiens (5 January). In the UK we have one of the most depleted nature-banks in the world and the result of this destruction will be the shifting baseline inherited by my grandchildren, who are destined to grow up in a massively degraded environment.

Human population increase is a planetary problem, but here our response is to build more and more houses – increasingly on greenfield sites, which further exacerbates our ecosystem’s impoverishment. No argument seems to convince the planners responsible for this carnage, which will help to ensure that we pass on a ransacked store of natural capital to future generations.

Similarly we are constantly being urged to think of economic growth as a benefit to society, when it is no such thing. Most of us are now aware that our planet comprises a finite array of resources. To destroy that treasure at the rate that we are, and to consider that increased consumption will somehow help us in the future, is solipsistic myopia.
Brian Sims
Bedford, UK

• Regardless of his merits, Monbiot is blind to one fact: we live in the information age. Everyone is well informed about the terrible consequences of ecological actions. Why is Monbiot pretending that people don’t know what they’re doing? Week after week, the media are telling us what damaging effects all those unnecessary car trips have on the air we breathe. Everyone knows how vile the consumption of meat is. All have seen the horrible pictures from the burned forests in Brazil. People know their behaviour damages the environment of their own children and grandchildren. Well-informed people harm others, even though they have alternatives. In bygone times this was called evil. I call it the complicit society.
Karim Akerma
Hamburg, Germany

The role of good news

Your roundup, Annus Mirabilis: all the things that went right in 2017, struck me as a somewhat desperate attempt at identifying a silver lining in the first year of the disastrous Trump administration (22 December). For 99.9% of us, the possibility of microbes on a moon orbiting Saturn is neither here nor there. A global growth forecast of 3.7% is just another reason to weep. And although a few millionaire footballers giving 1% of their income away might make them sleep better at night, it is hardly cause for universal celebration.

If there’s no good news then there’s no good news – inventing some doesn’t get us any further down the road.
Bill Gilonis
Zürich, Switzerland

• Thank you for publishing examples of “encouraging progress” in a year that provided plenty of disasters both natural and manmade to depress us. Regular reporting of such “good news” stories could help redress the current imbalance of constant negative news.

I’m no Pollyanna but a psychologist whose clients with depression and anxiety are not helped by this diet of disasters and downbeat stories. As Katharine Viner says, it is the mission of the Guardian to “use clarity and imagination to build hope”’.

Thank you for your great work.
Margaret Wilkes
Cottesloe, Western Australia

History has a long reach

Events in Iran today should be seen in a historical context dating back more than a half-century (Iran shaken from within, 5 January). In 1953, the democratically elected government of Mohammad Mosaddegh planned to nationalise the Iranian oil industry, which was controlled by the Anglo-Persian Oil Company. Prime minister Churchill and US president Eisenhower then instructed their secret services to orchestrate a coup to overthrow the government. Mosaddegh was imprisoned, and Reza Pahlavi installed as shah of Iran. He ruled for 26 years as a western-backed dictator until he was deposed and exiled during the 1979 Islamic revolution.

Iran became a geopolitical challenge for the Middle East with turmoil there as we see it today. History has indeed a very long reach.
Reiner Jaakson
Oakville, Ontario, Canada

It means whatever you want

Regarding your piece on business bullshit (22 December): once, while working as a human resource officer in a Canadian government department in the 1990s, I was asked to replace my manager at a meeting. During the discussion I kept hearing “Blah, blah, blah value-added”. Finally, in bafflement, I asked for clarification. Of course, each person gave it a different definition. My suggestion that it might be a good idea for the group to agree on a meaning of terms before they used them was not met with open hostility, but I was never asked to sub for my boss again.
Brian Caines
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

Briefly

• If John Harris wants to resist the depredations of Silicon Valley (5 January), he shouldn’t knock using an old Nokia phone and continuing to write letters. I do, alongside more recent media, and it’s a pretty effective strategy.
Patrick Curry
London, UK

• Email letters for publication to weekly.letters@theguardian.com