Letter

In response to A man-made comet is striking the Earth

Look up

Julian Cribb likens our destruction of earth systems to the catastrophic reshaping of life wrought by a comet 66 million years ago. The idea finds echoes in the 2021 film Don’t Look Up, in which scientists warn the US government about an approaching comet – an allegory illustrating the absurdity, vanity and ignorance of those who could make far-reaching decisions to reverse our determined march into global destruction, but don’t.

Burning of fossil fuels has ramped up, in part due to the enormous influence of Trump, whose stance gave license to fossil fuel investors globally to “drill baby drill”. Land clearing is leading to animal and plant extinction, and risking new diseases (“zoonotic spillover”); desertification, oxygen depletion, water scarcity – as Cribb says, not an exhaustive list.

Polls in the wake of current oil shortages show nearly 70 per cent of voters support increased domestic oil exploration, at the expense of our 2050 net-zero emission targets. This panicked response, fuelled by mainstream media and a “dig-and-drill” Coalition, is self-sabotaging.

The growth imperative has led us to ignore and over-shoot our sustainable limits. Does some version of a comet need to crash-land before we look?

— Fiona Colin from Melbourne