Capitalism v the environment | Letters

Alan Rusbridger failed to mention (Why we put the climate on the cover, 7 March) that Naomi Klein's This Changes Everything is subtitled Capitalism v the Climate. Her thesis is that global capitalism, as it demands ever-increasing consumption of goods and services by the world's population, is the main driver of catastrophic climate change. The agents of capitalism like to believe that consumption will go on for ever, and ignore, and persuade us to ignore, the unpleasant fact that the earth's resources are not infinite.

The sad reality is that so entrenched is capitalism in governments, corporations, banking systems and other global elites, and so dependent on it are "we", the ordinary working people of this planet, for our lifestyles, comfortable, impoverished or luxurious as they may be, that the chances of getting rid of, or even modifying, capitalism are effectively nil. It's all about power, and the ability to enforce the status quo. The likelihood is, as Tom Lehrer put it: "We will all go together when we go."
Tony Cheney
Ipswich, Suffolk