Letter: Climate change

Sir: Your correspondent M A Lees (letter, 29 January) is right to point out that a retreat from globalisation and attendant economic contraction is a necessary condition of averting catastrophic climate change. But to suggest that "the cure is almost as bad as the disease" is very misleading.

Actually, of course, it all depends on where you live: the benefits of cure will accrue first to the poorer nations who are most immediately in danger from climate change and who also lose rather than gain through globalisation; the disadvantages will be experienced by those living in the rich and powerful nations whose untrammelled industrialisation and commercialism got us into this mess.

But wherever you live, to use the notion that "we won't like it and neither will the markets" as a reason for carrying on as we are would surely be insane; like the rationalisation of the alcoholic who decides to carry on drinking himself to death on the grounds that it would be painful to stop and that Saturday nights wouldn't be the same any more.

CHRIS NEILL

Godalming, Surrey