"The sky is falling! The sky is falling!"

I am so important that the fate of the whole world depends on the wind blowing out my arse. Forcibly reducing the production of goods on which hundreds of millions of lives depend will, it is true, require human sacrifice on a largish scale - but think how much better I'll feel about myself!

Following on from the logic of the brutalists why dont we close most of the universities down.

A bit like during the disastrous cultural revolution in China under Mao---get all of these starry eyed idealists like Harriet out in to the real world, doing real things. Which was also done in Cambodia under Pol Pot. And by all the book-burners from all the totalitarian regimes---Nazi Germany for instance.

That is, abolish all of the schools and departments which teach what are called the Humanities and Arts: any and every thing to do with social studies, philosophy, theology (religion), art, literature etc.

Except of course so called philosophy and religion(which is completely lacking in Wisdom) that justifies and extends the brutalist world-view. The kind of philosophy promoted by the right-wing think-tanks.

Apart from the hard sciences (the really useful subjects). And get on with building more bull-dozers etc etc and so on, to get on with the REAL purpose/project of trashing the planet as quickly as we can.

And of course more and bigger weapons.

Amazing coincidence that what you see as the climax of civilisation should be happening in that small moment in history that you are completing your undergrad at uni, Harriet. Happened in mine too.

"...Plato (427-347 BC) argued in Timaeus that global warming occurs at regular intervals, often leading to great floods...Aristotle (382-322 BC), recorded evidence for climate change in Meteorologica. He noted that during the Trojan War, Argos was marshy and not arable, whereas during Mycenaean times, the land was temperate and fertile. Theophrastus (374-287 BC), in turn a student of Aristotle, followed the tradition with De ventis and observed that Crete's mountains had peviously produced fruit and grain whereas at the time he wrote, the winters were more severe and had more snowfalls." (Plimer, Heaven & Earth)

I think you write quite well, but good luck "holding back" back climate change. Many of your forebears, and still too many today, have more humble, down to earth concerns like survival. You might want to think more about where best to direct your intelligence, philosophy and youthful passion.

Alexander was one of the more robust influences on that era; he killed those that dissented, although his ambitions might have been great, his means were somewhat suspect. That was how you became great back then.

Philosophy does not mix with any climate change criteria, you can philosophise all you like but this great earth (which really is only a speck in the scheme of things) will go on doing what it has done for millenia until the cosmos changes. I hope human kind does not start to think we can change the cosmos. We are microbes in the universal scheme of things and there is nothing the climate change protagonists can do about that.

What is the fear, change, change of what? The weather, that will change anyway.

To point out the bleeding obvious this country is normally a drought ridden country; with periods of incredible flooding rains and drought -years not a week or two. There have been bush fires and floods since people populated this earth and before of course. CO2 emissions in the last 50 years have not been of any significance to any weather that is taking place now!

Thus it has been for millennia and thus it will be so for millenia. Only the sun can change us or a single quick large, meteorite perhaps!

W S Gilbert described the acting of Beerbohm-Tree (Famous 18th century actor) as Hamlet in the Shakespeare play as "funny without being vulgar". I think if he were alive today he would say the same about Harriet.

Perhaps before trying to "hold back" climate change, a trial run with the tides?