Letters / Travel broadens the mind
Our UKIP candidate Robert Smith says he was too busy catching fish from the ocean around him to travel to Shetland to participate in any debate in this general election.
After his Neanderthal outburst on your letters page yesterday (When will Danus tell us?; SN 4/5/15), it would seem he should take some time out and do a bit more travelling to broaden his mind.
He could start in the Indian Ocean where the people of the Maldives are being forced to leave their native islands because the rising sea levels are swamping them.
He could continue to south east Asia where the increasing intensity of hurricanes caused by the extra energy created by the warming climate is making tens of thousands of people homeless year after year.
He could carry on to California where the water is quite simply running out thanks to the most severe drought the state has ever experienced.
Then he could head to the US east coast where the climate has become so unstable the weather can shift up to 30 degrees in a single day.
En route back across the Atlantic to his safe Orkney home he could swing by the Arctic communities where villages are literally falling into the sea as the ice shelves collapse. And that’s just sticking to the northern hemisphere.
On his travels he might consider that a large number of the foreigners his party want to keep out of this country are only wanting to come here because the changing climate is creating massive food shortages that are creating riots, destabilising governments and breeding terrorism.
Meanwhile back in Orkney he could look around him and try to remember a time not so long ago when the skies would darken with seabirds, many of which are now disappearing altogether from these islands because the rising temperature of the sea is removing their source of nourishment.
Robert, do you not appreciate the fact that your entire living is given to you thanks to the bounty of the ocean?
The vast majority of the carbon dioxide that is being released at ever increasing levels into the atmosphere is being absorbed by the sea, raising its acidity to the point where crustaceans are less able to form the shells on which they depend.
The very food web upon which your living is being undermined.
I wonder what you and your fellow climate deniers will have to say to your grandchildren when you tell them the Scottish government’s Climate Change Act was “madness”.
Even the fossil fuel industry now recognises their days are numbered when even the World Bank insists that to save the planet we must switch to non-carbon energy sources.
Even the Rockefeller Foundation set up by the original oil baron is now divesting from fossil fuels.
If we want to bequeath a planet we can call home to our children’s children then yes, we must leave it in the ground.
But perhaps your next catch is more important than the survival of future generations.
Jacob Miller
Lerwick
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