Billionaires are in a space race while the world burns - Yorkshire Post Letters

As I write this letter I am not sure whether my prevailing feeling is one of anger or despair. I am prompted by TV news images of the devastating fires in California alongside those of the Bezos rocket taking off to the wild whoops and rejoicing of the engineers involved.

The morality of two multi-billionaires (whose joint personal assets are claimed to be approaching half a trillion dollars) apparently fighting it out over domination of the new space race is one issue. But surely the much more immediate question would concern global heating, its causes and its appalling effects.

California has seen record destruction of life and property by fires which are described as unprecedented. Climate scientists have long since shed their reticence about the link between global heating and such events.

The entire personal vanity process of putting just one rocket into orbit consumes vast amounts of energy. Do the people involved really fail to appreciate the link? Do they really not understand that energy consumption must be dramatically cut in the immediate future if we are to stand any chance whatsoever of preventing the climate disasters of today becoming the much worse disasters of tomorrow?