I WOULD like to take issue with Rev Dr John Cameron over his comments regarding Sir David Attenborough (Letters, May 22). Let me say right away that there are issues that I have with Sir David. First, he is an evolutionist and second, he doesn’t believe there is a God. I am a creationist and I do believe in God, so we don’t see eye-to-eye on those issues.
However, as far as Sir David’s attitude concerning humans goes, I think he is right. After all it’s not hedgehogs or badgers that discard their coke cans and pizza boxes on our roadsides, or “fly-tip” and despoil the countryside. It’s not whales or dolphins that have introduced the thousands of tons of plastic into the oceans causing widespread pollution and loss of life to fish, birds and sea mammals that consume it. Nor is it the gorillas in Africa that are poaching elephants to extinction, just so they can get their ivory to make pretty little trinkets and amass lots of profits. And it’s certainly not the Orang Utans in Asia who are cutting down the forest and destroying their own habitats.
READ MORE: David Attenborough appointed to key role at COP26 in Glasgow
As for the billions lifted out of poverty – is that why we see adverts on television every single day asking us to contribute money so that little children in Africa or Yemen can be saved from starvation? Is this also why we have food banks and even “school clothes banks” in a rich country like Scotland? We didn’t have those when I was a boy! All industrial progress has done is create a growing number of millionaires and even billionaires who accumulate so much money that they will never be able to spend it supposing they were able to live for 10 lifetimes, while at the same time introducing “zero-hours contracts” that prevent honest, decent people from being able to feed their kids. They even register their companies in tax havens so that they can avoid paying tax and accumulate even more money!
It’s human greed and lack of respect for the planet that has caused all of the above.
A couple of years ago, I heard a story in our local YMCA when it used to run the food bank, to which I contributed regularly. I believe it to be true. On a cold wet winter’s day, a young single mum arrived there and asked if she could have some food for her child. All she was wearing was a skirt and a blouse and she was soaked to the skin. The lady in the YMCA asked her why she hadn’t put her coat on as it was such a cold, wet day, only to be told that the lass had sold her coat a couple of days previously, to get some money to buy food for her bairn. She had nothing else left to sell – only the clothes she was wearing – and that’s why she had come to the YMCA to get food. Was she lifted out of poverty, Reverend?
But I bet that while Boris Johnson luxuriates in his own lavish lifestyle and at the same time cuts the social security money that would afford some dignity to that young mother, he will be very glad that the millionaires who are donating to his party, and maybe even paying for his luxury food, are all making fortunes from the industrial progress Reverend Cameron admires so much. The profit from this “progress” allows them to float around the Mediterranean or Caribbean in luxury yachts costing more money than 95% of us will ever earn in our entire lifetimes.
Open your eyes, Reverend Doctor! I’m sure that when God gave us this planet to live on, he meant us to look after it and the creatures in it; and not to expand our population, or our income, to the exclusion of everything and everybody else. I would remind you that everything on our planet is finite. When we have used all the oil and gas that’s underground, there will be no more. Once we have cut down all the trees to make furniture or rafters for our homes there will be no more. There isn’t another planet we can go to in order to import whatever extra we need. We have to limit ourselves to what this planet can produce.
Sir David is right in that respect. Unless our greed is brought under control, we will destroy the planet we are living on; and in so doing we will destroy our own human race.
Charlie Kerr
Glenrothes
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