Goodwin on Environment

Please spare us; our lives have been plagued by endless wars, and now by the knowledge that our life styles are unsustainable and destructive of hundreds of thousands of other species. Over and over The Times dutifully runs articles like Goodwin’s warning us of our glutinous ways and imminent self-destruction. This is a waste of time and, worse, hypocritical for The Times itself is a vast user of natural resources--forests--and advertisers’ products which are destroying us all.

The least we can conclude is that the more successful and rich one is, the more that person is an “enemy” of society and the ecology. Next time you see a poor homeless person remember that there goes a life probably less destructive than your own. This is a rather fundamental paradox which promotes nihilism.

Will we be “saved” when the oil runs out? Will that be the metaphor for the “second coming”?

J.R. STONE, Fresno