To: : : "New York Times" <letters@nytimes.com>

Re: For "Homo sapiens" indeed!

Date: Sun 3 November 2002

 

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Dear Sir/Madam,

 

Reading the article “Climate Talks Shift Focus to How to Deal With Changes” in today’s NYT, I wondered if a sagacious person attending a diplomatic cocktail party in Berlin in the mid 1930’s and listening to polite conversation about the future course of European history, might not have had similar feelings to my own.
 
In plundering our planet we are heading towards catastrophe on an unimaginable scale, but because averting it will entail radical changes to current economic philosophy and lifestyles (and the values and aspirations on which they are based), we refuse to even contemplate it. Instead, we delude ourselves into believing that somehow all will be well in the end.
 
One day our own children will curse us for what we are doing to what is after all their planet too.
 
What irony that we presume to call ourselves “Homo sapiens” (wise man)!