In 'Inconvenient truths for Al Gore' (September 11), Bjorn Lomborg asks which is more important: spending US$75 billion annually to provide water, sanitation, health care and education to every human or US$150 billion a year to stop global warming. He is wrong to use an either-or argument. Both are necessary.
Letter writer Simon Patkin accuses former US vice-president Al Gore of ignoring a 1990s petition denying global warming is man-made ('An inconvenient truth - however you look at it', September 12). The signatories - 17,000 right-wing politicians, businessmen, entertainment stars and a few academics - were hardly scientists, as he claims. The petition is part of a sustained campaign sponsored by the energy industries to deny global warming.
Big tobacco companies generously funded obscure researchers to question links between cigarettes and disease, and along with economic shroud-waving, delayed tobacco control for decades. The energy industries follow suit, use the same public-relations agencies to mobilise tens of thousands of 'citizens' to oppose any threat to their interests, buy political influence and even air TV adverts that wrongly claim carbon dioxide levels are actually falling (read Sharon Beder's Global Spin).
More than 62 per cent of US and 90per cent of Australian citizens want their governments to act on global warming, yet they are ignored in favour of business (as we are over CLP Power's plan for the Soko Islands).
Mr Patkin, read the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's consensus report, signed by 2,500 real scientists instead. Read Nature and Science magazines, rather than energy-industry propaganda.
Britain's The Independent reported on Monday that the US had spent US$450 billion and killed an estimated 62,000 to 120,000 people pursuing wars since 2001. Don't tell me we cannot afford to fight global warming.
