Mikhail Gorbachev

* Bravo, Gorby! As an environmental scientist and Christian, for years I have been trying without success to explain to my investor friends why I do not play the stock market. Oddly enough, it appears that none other than Mikhail Gorbachev (“Environment: Act Globally, Not Nationally,” Commentary, May 8) has the words that until now have failed me.

Both he and Jacques Cousteau warn us that a market system that produces money and nothing else ultimately undermines the global environment by virtue of its emphasis on consumerism rather than conservation. Even non-environmentalists must be sickened by the new wave of entrepreneurs who seek fortunes promoting bakeries for dogs and investors who drool over the money to be made selling automobiles and refrigerators to the billions in the Third World.

The words of Gorbachev and his organization serve as sober reminders that efforts such as the 1992 Rio Earth Summit will do little to change these attitudes. As he so aptly stated, we must instead promote the “virtue of enoughness” if our planet is to ever become truly sustainable.

WILLIAM O. STRAUB

Pasadena

* One of the more infuriating affronts to my sensibilities these days is having to listen to or read about how Gorbachev is leading a world green movement to save the environment.

This is a man who headed probably the most polluting regime in the history of mankind. For 70 years the Soviet Union devastated the Russian landscape, from Europe to Siberia, from the Volga to Noveya Zemalya. Now we have to hear this tripe that capitalism is the biggest threat to the future of the planet. And an atheist quoting the Ten Commandments? Enough!

In 1986, after Chernobyl, Gorbachev himself denied that there had been any event. Only after the evidence became irrefutable did he acknowledge the accident, but at the same time, he still downplayed its significance.

LEWIS OVERTON JR.