Dear Sir, 

Thank goodness the Prime Minister has turned his attention to the environment and the need to achieve local and global sustainability (Blair spells out new greenprint for Britain, 25 October 2000;  Prime Ministers speech: Richer and Greener [24 Oct 2000].

It was good to read much of what he had to say, but he is still a long way from recognising the full gravity and urgency of our situation. 

It is not good enough to place the environment on the government's list of top priorities. If we are to avoid catastrophic climate change and ecological breakdown, which at the moment we are still racing towards, it must become our ONLY priority. 

 
Since everything else, even health and education, pale into insignificance compared with the importance of maintaining our planet's life-supporting ecosystems. 

 
Ask James Lovell, the commander of Apollo 13, how important a spaceship's life-support systems are. After his spacecraft's life-support systems were damaged (by an explosion in an oxygen tank) the only thing that mattered was keeping them going until they had got safely back to Earth. The mission (what was to be the 3rd lunar landing), and everything else that had seemed so important up until then, was forgotten. 

 
Our life-support systems (aboard Spaceship Earth) are the environment. 

 
This very simple, but vital fact - with its far-reaching consequences - has yet to sink in.