Richard Vogel/The Associated Press
Letters to the Editor should be exclusive to The Globe and Mail. Include your name, address and daytime phone number. Try to keep letters to fewer than 150 words. Letters may be edited for length and clarity. To submit a letter by e-mail, click here: letters@globeandmail.com
..................................................................................................................................
Species: Human, extinct
“One million of Earth’s species are threatened with extinction caused by humans, scientists warn in a landmark report.” This notification dropped from my newsfeed at the very moment that I happened to be reading Pierre Desrochers’s and Joanna Szurmak’s column, Population Growth Isn’t A Bogeyman (May 6), in which they argue that packing more humans onto this planet is a good thing.
I am not a scientist, so what do I know? But given what is happening to the Earth’s non-human species, I think the most prudent thing for me as a citizen of the world would be to err on the side informed by good, old-fashioned common sense.
From the perspectives of the aforementioned endangered million species, and from that of our planet, exhausted and bottomlessly scarred by human activity, our own extinction cannot happen soon enough.
Charles Sager, Ottawa
............................................
As Dr. Pangloss averred, the best of all possible worlds is one in which the balance of nature is maintained by human overpopulation and powered by fossil fuels.
Lawrence Bennett, Toronto
Drugs’ destruction
Re Pharmaceutical Executive Found Guilty Of Bribing Doctors To Push Opioid On Patients (May 2): My sister, Margot Kidder, died a year ago. An autopsy showed that her body was full of drugs that she had ingested, so her death was ruled a suicide by the coroner in Montana. Much was made of the “mental illness” that caused her to take her own life.
Margie was a brilliant actor and a fierce and effective activist for the public good. She was also famously manic-depressive. But her bigger problem was that she was addicted to legal prescribed drugs. In the four days before her death, a local doctor wrote two prescriptions, each for 125 Oxy-contin tablets, as he had been doing for her for years. The prescriptions were filled by a local pharmacy, as they had been for years, and delivered to her home by taxi.
This is dealing in toxic drugs, not prescribing medical pharmaceuticals. The people in charge of this industry played a huge part in my sister’s death, and their shareholders profited from her death and the deaths of hundreds of thousands of others.
In a separate but related case, Rochester Drug Co-operative agreed to co-operate with prosecutors, accepted a deferred prosecution agreement, agreed to pay a US$20-million fine, and promised to stay clean for five years.
Justice for my sister and all the others is not served by trivial fines. Jail the executives and the directors, and put a stop to this pernicious “business.”
John Kidder, Ashcroft, B.C.
High-octane hypocrisy
Re Conservatives Love The Carbon Tax (editorial, May 6): Your description of Conservative legal opposition to the carbon tax as ironic is extremely generous. In my view, it is evidence of the moral bankruptcy into which the Conservative Party has descended.
Thoughtful party members (or former members) who understand markets and economics know that a carbon tax is the correct response to climate change. Pandering to the party members who do not understand this drives away more thoughtful supporters, and makes market-driven public policy even more unlikely.
Lyle Clarke, Whitby, Ont.
............................................
There is a major problem with the federal carbon tax and rebate scheme as it’s designed. When demand is highly price-inelastic (because there is no real alternative), as it is for gasoline, this small carbon tax (about $2 for an average fill-up) will have a minimal, if any, effect on our use of gas-powered vehicles.
Worse, we may collectively use the rebate to continue to use gasoline just as we have in the past. In this sense, it’s simply a tax to continue to pollute.
Other more meaningful measures exist to curb our carbon footprint: We could lower speed limits, or we could mandate electric vehicles by a certain date.
David Enns, Cornwall, Ont.
............................................
Federal Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer and his provincial conservative colleagues’ approach to the so-called carbon tax reminds me of the way the United Kingdom’s Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage pursued the Brexit vote – a barrage of specious promises about financial benefits, including for health care, that have been proven since to have been sheer hype.
Mr. Scheer, Doug Ford, Jason Kenney & Co. have misrepresented the carbon tax as an attack on taxpayers’ pockets, and on industries’ competitiveness. Proceeds of the tax will be returned to the province in question, and the lion’s share of taxpayers, except the wealthiest, will receive rebates in excess of what they paid.
As Campbell Clark notes, what Canadians have seen of Mr. Scheer’s “own, personal brand of politics has come from his criticisms of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau” (After Two Years, Andrew Scheer Plans To Tell Us Who He Really Is – May 6).
Ex U.S. vice-president Spiro Agnew famously referred to the media as nattering nabobs of negativism: It’s a label that also characterizes Mr. Scheer’s approach to politics, at least until now. It’s even worse when the complaints play fast and loose with the truth, as our friend Boris did.
Richard Cooper, Ottawa
............................................
Conservative opposition to the carbon tax is “high-octane political fuel”? Try high-octane political hypocrisy.
Angela Mason, St. John’s
Freedom of thought
Re World Press Freedom Day 2019: With Rights Come Responsibilities (letters, May 4): In the past 15 years, the free market has destroyed more of the free press than all the world’s tyrants. In the United States, in this period, the workforce in newspaper newsrooms has been roughly halved, an apocalypse of private, equity-led takeovers and downsizing that would make any CEO or tin-pot dictator drool.
An important step in defending a free press is to recognize the connection between the economic interest in extracting short-term profit, and the political interest in suppressing freedom of thought.
Ryan Whyte, Toronto
............................................
I was struck that the latest World Press Freedom index rated Canada as merely “satisfactory,” the same as Ghana, Burkina Faso, and South Africa, and not “good” (What Is The World Coming To? – Opinion, May 4). The United States, along with Brazil, is labeled “problematic.”
I would have thought that you might have wanted to explore the reasoning behind those ratings. Freedom begins at home.
Richard Harris, Hamilton
............................................
You ask, “What is the greatest threat to a free press?”
Answer: unprofessional journalism. Manipulated news. Slanted news. News outlets supporting one political party.
All leading to a loss of credibility by the viewer/ reader.
Paul Larocque, Markham, Ont.