If George Monbiot really wants to get people talking about the connection between climate change and the economy, he’d do better to find a different question to “how do we stop growth?” (While growth continues we’ll never kick our fossil fuel habit, 26 September).

The elephant in the room is the assumption that nature’s resources and capabilities are so large that they can be considered infinite and so excluded from the economic cost of production. This has the unintended consequence of rewarding destruction. Hence the German situation in Hambacher: the lignite has value because it can be sold to be burned, the 12,000-year-old forest has none unless the trees are cut down for economic use. And, in an infinite world, there are always more 12,000-year-old forests.

This form of thinking might have been a useful simplification when human population and activities were at the levels of the Enlightenment, when much of the philosophy that still drives the economy was developed. Indeed, for any one individual the world is still a remarkably big place and it is difficult to imagine it running out of anything. But a resource that would have supplied an Enlightenment-sized population for 500 years would last today’s just 35 years. And that is without considering increased rates of consumption.

Maybe the better question is: how do we rewrite the rules of our economy to reward activities that nourish our future rather than those that destroy it?

Harold Forbes

Wareham, Dorset

• With reference to George Monbiot’s article and Sébastien Thibault’s brilliant illustration may I make two suggestions: first, that cycling in the UK is made much more user-friendly – at present only the most intrepid would dare to cycle on our roads, whereas in Holland cycling is an option for all ages, shapes and sizes, not just Lycra-clad athletes; second, when resources are scarce, it makes sense to introduce a fair system of rationing.

I remember the rationing of food, clothing and fuel in the 1940s. It was tiresome but necessary and it ensured that no one in UK starved. Rather than destroy our environment, we need to introduce a system of mileage rationing for people using modes of transport which run, directly or indirectly, on fossil fuels. I don’t believe it is a basic human right to be able to jet here, there and everywhere with no restrictions.

Jill Greer

Chadlington, Oxfordshire

• George Monbiot is right. It takes a peculiar form of obstinacy for news channels such as the BBC to consistently not mention climate change. Last week, for example, Jeremy Corbyn committed the Labour party to a huge investment in green technology coupled, to zero carbon emissions by 2050. This was ignored in favour of yet more pointless debates about Brexit.

Future generations will look back on the present era with a profound sense of disbelief that the Kardashians command 200 times more airtime than climate change does; and that the media’s obsession with Brexit resembles a pack of vultures fighting over a dead carcass from which every item of interest has long since been stripped bare.

Dr Robin Russell-Jones

Chair, Help Rescue the Planet

• George Monbiot is right (again). But is there any chance he could get together with, say, Owen Jones, Caroline Lucas and Justin Welby, to tell us how, practically, to get from where we are to where we should be, without catastrophic unemployment, poverty and civil unrest?

Philip Hall

Cotford St Luke, Somerset

• Re climate change, “be the change you wish to see in the world”. Stop driving fossil-fuel cars. Become vegetarian. Consume less. Use less energy. Do not follow fashion. Do not upgrade phones with every new model. Buy products, including clothes, furniture and household items to last. Recycle everything: plastic, glass, metal and organic matter. Take furniture, clothes, DVDs, CDs and everything else that is still usable to charity shops.

Neil Sinclair

Edinburgh

• George Monbiot considers the mismatch, between economic growth and environmental sustainability, on a global scale. At an individual level, we all need to forget what everyone else might be doing, and tailor our activities and consumption to much reduced totals. This has to mean a much simplified lifestyle: being happy with our personal relationships, reducing most forms of competition, and devoting our time to caring for other members of society. It means a fundamental change of attitude to everyone else. At a political level, we need to replace competitive politics with cooperative politics. Left and right politics is redundant, as are most of our politicians. As Larry Elliott once said in a related context, “best of luck with that”.

Martin London

Henllan, Denbighshire

• George Monbiot is of course quite right. But why will he not take his argument to its logical conclusion? There is one overarching problem which is behind all the others: it subsumes global warming, pollution, the ozone hole, shortages of basic ingredients. It is the population problem: quite simply, there are too many of us. Someone, I forget who, has suggested that if everyone on earth had a European standard of living we would need about three planets to sustain us (five for a North American standard). Some people get very exercised over the thought that there might be 9 or even 10 billion of us by 2050. That is the wrong concern: they (and we) should worry about the 7 billion we have now. I believe that it is not enough to slow or stop population growth; we need to reverse it – drastically, and fast – but this obviously raises some unpleasant decisions. The time to start thinking is now.

Tim Gossling

Cambridge

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