Your feature "If global warming is real, how should humankind respond?" (OGJ, July 30, 2001, p. 24) contains any number of highly contentious propositions which the author has every right to air. It also contains at least two errors, both damaging and insulting, which deserve to be put right.
First, he states that the UK government has ignored the report of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution. This is absolutely not true. Possibilities for cost-effective and substantive reduction of greenhouse gas emissions are being studied across several government departments, and the RCEP report forms a major input to the thinking of the comprehensive energy review of the Performance and Innovation Unit, currently under way.
Equally erroneous is his statement that cutting UK CO2 emissions by more than 50% would "obviously have a dramatic effect on living standardsellipse"-the implication being that the effect would be derogatory. There is nothing at all obvious about this. To take one example, electricity transmission and distribution systems around the world, and their attached appliances, are designed to an early 20th century paradigm that is outmoded at the dawn of the 21st and becomes more so by the day.
The displacement of obsolete systems by more-efficient ones can certainly save plenty of CO2 and is hardly likely to be detrimental.
Roger A. Lampert
ST. Albans,
Herts, UK
