MICHAEL Fry postulates that capitalism will create the solutions to environmental issues (The National, January 23). This is Orwellian gobbledygook even by Mr Fry’s standards. It is quite simply impossible to deliver infinite growth in a world with finite resources. The so-called free market that Mr Fry worships as sacred dogma does not work. It privatises the profits and makes the public pay for the externalities.

The problem with capitalism is that the hungry monster of unlimited consumption is heating the planet up beyond the limits of human endurance. If the current warming continues, within 100 years the Middle East will have heated up beyond these limits.

Mr Fry tries to pretend that there is some doubt about human-induced global warming. It is the fossil-fuel-funded scientists and think tanks that deny global warming, and it is independent scientists who say it is occurring and who are concerned with the implications. Saying there is “doubt” about global warming is like saying there is some doubt between astrology and astronomy or creationism and evolution or alchemy and chemistry.

Michael Fry seems to accept the destruction of privacy and civil liberty out of fear of essentially non-existent terrorists created by propaganda, but he ignores the threat of climate change presented by independent scientists.

Mr Fry says that there have been periods of warming in the past. This is true, however climate scientists can account for the cause of those periods of warming. The best conclusion form the available evidence is that human activity is heating up the planet.

Capitalism is in a fatal decline. Its latest stage is a perpetual sequence of calamity aggravated by the actions (credit bubbles, deregulation, the curtailment of state spending) that were meant to provide never-ending growth. The method the rulers have sought to stabilise is intrinsically unstable; erected on debt, stimulated by speculation, run by sharks.

The question Michael Fry has to answer is why he wants to the natural world and public services to generate growth, when that growth is not delivering contentment, security or even greater prosperity (apart from the super-rich)? Why does he ordain growth, irrespective of its usefulness, above all other eventualities? Why, in spite of all its malfunctions so immense and recurrent, does Michael Fry insist on defending the same model? When the next crash comes, these questions will be inescapable.

Alan Hinnrichs
Dundee

I WOULD suggest it hasn’t been capitalism which has cleaned up many of the worst polluting industries, but rather good people who have seen the consequences of these industries. Another major factor in the general “progress” of our societies has been the introduction of compulsory education. I believe it can be shown time and again that education is the key to progress, not capitalism. To confuse the effects of these two is unhelpful.

It should be obvious to anyone that as we (hopefully) see some restraints put on the capitalism we have seen over the past 30 years, it has been a cul-de-sac where the mega rich and their corporations have raped our communities.

While capitalism has its place – after all it is a base human instinct to do better – it does have to be placed in a regulated box to prevent it from spilling over into areas where it has no right to be – natural monopolies being at least one, another being gambling with or even selling off public goods.

Some people have woken up, others haven’t.

Brian Rees
via thenational.scot