Observer article - reader comments 06 October 03

I’ve had an amazing response from the weekend’s article which was published in The Observer here in the UK. Two Peruvian experts have contributed their own observations on glacial retreat in South America, and I’ve also had weather reports from northern Mexico and a very supportive email from a Germany, where villagers in Heuersdorf are campaigning against the opening of a lignite (a type of coal) mine – on the basis that lignite emits more carbon dioxide on combustion than any other fuel. I’ve even received a poem, from Angel LaCanfora in Los Angeles. It’s entitled ‘The Slow Burn’:

The waters of Venice,
are rising.
They creep,
uninvited,
into homes,
galleries,
plazas,
like a watery shadow.
The coral of Heron Beach;
decaying.
Its’ hundred years tenure
now shunted.
The Inuit winters
are growing warmer.
But this warmth is unwelcome
for it signals ominous.
The deserts of Gobi,
are lately more so.
Relentless dust clouds,
choke all in its path.
Majestic glaciers;
groaning ice rivers,
melting away.
How DOES one save this Earth?