Dear Sir/Madam,

Jonathon Porritt understands the importance of sustainability far better than most, but even he fails to understand just how urgent and dire our situation aboard Spaceship Earth now is ("No 10 adviser attacks green record"). 

He accuses the government of being in a "state of delusion" and not facing up to the threat facing the planet, but makes the same mistake himself, when he speaks of "today's wholly unsustainable growth . . . inevitably . . . . damaging people's real quality of life". It will do far worse than just "damage our real quality of life". It will lead to the destruction of our civilisation and the decimation, if not extinction, of our species!

The threat is very difficult to see, because we ourselves are the cause of it. There is no wicked external enemy to point our fingers at. It comprises aspects of our everyday lives that are so familiar to us that we cannot help but see them as being perfectly "normal", and thus okay, or at least, not too bad. And even when we do catch a rare glimpse of the threat, our spontaneous reaction to its magnitude is to stick our heads straight back into the sand, especially since there is very little awareness of what can be done about it.

In a BBC interview this morning Mr Porritt said that what the government needed to do was not difficult, but he is mistaken. Any government which tried doing what is necessary would be swept from office, because hardly anyone understands that achieving sustainability requires us making radical changes to our economy and lifestyles, AND to the values, attitudes and aspirations which underlie them (on which they are both based and dependent).

Jonathon Porritt is deluding himself (and others) when he suggests that government, if it were to heed his advice, can steer us safely towards sustainability. 30 or even 20 years ago that may have been possible, if governments had then given sustainability the absolute priority it requires - but not any longer. Two generations of politicians have failed us miserably, blind men (and women) forcing themselves to the fore, to lead the blind . . .

But pointing the finger of blame is not going to help us out of the mess we are in.

Pointing to the link for my homepage might: www.spaceship-earth.org