Population expert Sarah Harper, of the University of Oxford, says falling total fertility rates are to be embraced, and that countries should not worry if their population is not growing (Expert dismisses fears over global fall in fertility, 26 December). Artificial intelligence, migration and a healthier old age mean countries no longer needed booming populations to hold their own, she points out. We would like to emphasise the major benefit, briefly pointed out in your article, that having one fewer child reduces a parent’s carbon footprint by 58 tonnes of CO2 a year. In fact, the most important contribution of a reduced birth is its long-term contribution towards mitigating global warming by reducing CO2 emissions. One major challenge to reducing worldwide CO2 emissions is the large variation between nations: 45 tonnes per capita per year in Qatar, compared with 16.5 in the US, 7.5 in China, 6.5 in the UK, 6.4 in the EU, 1.8 in Indonesia, and 0.3 in least developed countries, according to UN classification.
Reducing global carbon emissions while the developing world industrialises will require both convergence toward rates achieved in the most efficient industrialised countries and a global reduction in these rates, a strategy that the IPCC called “converge and contract”. But this strategy, with realistic levels of contraction, appears to fall far short of what is needed, especially with the recent recognition that the previous goal reducing global warming to 2C is insufficient to avoid major adverse impacts. It is here that population decline from falling birthrates can play a key synergistic role with the “converge and contract” strategy, perhaps to the point of making the need for geoengineering for sustainability only temporary.
Harold M Hastings, Tai Young-Taft and Chris Coggins
Bard College at Simon’s Rock, Barrington, Massachusetts, USA
• I am a grandmother, and the last thing I would do is book any flight for my grandchildren (How Gatwick drone saga broke my family’s hearts, Letters, 22 December). I would love to leave my grandchildren the world I grew up in, but given current circumstances that can’t happen. I applaud the people who flew drones over Gatwick, perhaps checking by a tiny amount the advance of global warming. If we don’t act differently soon, the chaos at Gatwick this Christmas will be as nothing compared to the catastrophe we seem to be refusing to face.
Diana Heeks
Llanrhystud, Ceredigion
• Please tell me that the aerial shot of Gatwick (Financial, 29 December) was not taken by a drone camera.
Allan McRobert
Dunfermline
• Re William Westermeyer’s article (In 1993 my agency warned of climate change. In 1995 it was abolished, 27 December), among all the manufactured and empty complexities of human life, it’s easy to forget that we are all just clinging, white-knuckled and terrified, on to this fast-spinning Earth together. In truth, no single one of us has any more idea than anyone else of how best to cling, or why to even bother continuing. Our only real choice comes down to whether we boot our fellow travellers into the void, or help them find a firmer grip – until perhaps this ruined planet shifts and rolls and belches its sorry self free of the whole damned lot of us.
Laura Clout
Ivy Hatch, Kent
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