Dear Madeleine,

 

Thank you for your article in today’s Guardian ("The hidden toll we all pay"), in which you make some very important points.

 

However, what you say about us “slowly developing an understanding in the 60s and 70s of the concept of environmental sustainability” is mistaken.

 

In the 60s and 70s we may have learned the vocabulary of environmental sustainability, but sadly and tragically even now, 30-40 years later, have still not really understood what it is about, or its implications for human behaviour and survival.

 

We are literally addicted to our growth-dependent economy and materialistic lifestyles (in the pursuit of which we are - again quite literally - plundering our planet, Spaceship Earth, decimating its biodiversity, while disrupting its climate and life-supporting ecosystems), about the fundamental non-sustainability of which we are in a state of mass denial.

 

“Fundamentally non-sustainable” because the values, attitudes and aspirations on which our economy and lifestyles are based are largely rooted in our “more animal than human nature”. Thus the difficulty we have in even recognising the problem.

 

We are facing, but as yet not facing up to, the biggest threat to human survival (let alone happiness and well-being) there has ever been.