To: letters@guardian.co.uk |
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Dear Jackie,
In referring to
our "addiction" to
the motor car ("Divorce the
car, and learn to love the
traffic warden") you
have hit the nail squarely on
the head. Although I doubt you
realise quite how serious an
addiction it is; or that it
is not just the motor car we
are addicted to, but our whole
materialistic, non-sustainable
way of life.
Today's
Guardian headline, "An
unnatural disaster"
throws yet another spotlight -
yet again - on what a perilous
situation Spaceship Earth
is in.
I suspect that you use the word "addiction" as a metaphor. In fact, we are addicted in a terribly real sense. As a society and civilisation we are in a comparable situation to an individual on hard drugs, and facing the same hard choice: either to get off them or to perish. At the moment, however, we are not even facing up to our addiction, but still in denial - as the latest figures for car sales in the UK indicate ( "UK's love of motors pushes sales to 2.6m").
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