This is a party I'm looking forward to
When I did a politics course back in the 1970s, the lecturer told us that a large majority was just as difficult, and often more so, to handle than a small one (Welfare climbdown lets genie out of the bottle, and no one knows what happens next, 2 July). How right he was. Elizabeth GoaterSalisbury
Kevin Ward (Letters, 2 July) should know that Royal Mail has a long history of inspired delivery. In 1967, I received my first (and only) piece of fanmail. Addressed to Dave the Folk Singer, Westward Ho!, the letter was personally delivered by the head postmaster, who was also my father.David CooperNafferton, East Riding of Yorkshire
Re the cost of Glastonbury (Letters, 2 July), go to the Proms instead. Promming (standing) tickets are £8. Who runs it? The BBC, of course.Michael FullerBedford
Regarding what makes someone cool ('You know it when you see it': experts size up scientists' attempt to define cool, 5 July), if you think you are cool, you probably aren't.Sheila Campbell Bristol
Alison McIntosh is right – it is what it is (Letters, 3 July).Marilyn RowleyDidsbury, Manchester
We have just received our first Christmas catalogue!Mary HuttyBath
Have an opinion on anything you've read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters section.
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9 hours ago
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Money can buy comfort, but energy makes comfort possible in the first place. Energy is the great enabler of the modern world. It connects the globe by moving people and hauling goods. It loosens the grip of the weather by warming our homes in winter and cooling them in summer. It forges the steel that raises our cities and synthesises the fertilisers that keep half the world's population from starvation. It increasingly empowers us by electrifying the technologies we rely on daily. It is also the great enabler of socioeconomic development. Monetary wealth and energy abundance move in lockstep: plot a graph of GDP per capita against energy consumption per capita, and you'll draw a straight line. Low-energy, high-income nations do not exist. Prosperity and energy are inseparable; you cannot have one without the other. Sure, GDP per capita isn't a perfect measure of socioeconomic development. It says nothing about how evenly that wealth is distributed, for instance. 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They've grown richer over the past few decades, even though their energy consumption per capita has flatlined or even declined. But these countries are outliers: rich, highly developed economies with infrastructure already in place. For the vast majority, the link between energy and prosperity remains unbroken. Denying the developing world access to abundant energy would be a profound moral failure, not to mention an act of breathtaking hypocrisy. The answer is not less energy, but cleaner energy, and more of it. Wind and solar power are often offered as the solutions. But their power is intermittent, energy industry jargon for 'unreliable'. They're fundamentally constrained by meteorology and celestial mechanics: wind turbines falter on still days, and solar panels don't work on the side of the Earth facing away from the sun (colloquially called 'night-time'). I would love to live in a world where wind and solar alone could replace fossil fuels, but there's no beating the laws of physics. Elaborate backup systems won't cut it, either. Pumped-storage hydroelectricity – which represents 95% of the world's electricity backup capacity – and batteries discharge in minutes and hours. Yet wind and solar falter for days and weeks at a time. To replace fossil fuels and support renewables, we need something that's always on, potent and, crucially, emissions-free. Nuclear reactors meet these ideals. They're dispatchable, industry parlance for reliable. A single one generates enough electricity to power the lives of 2 million average Europeans, even after accounting for downtime and maintenance. And they don't emit carbon dioxide. 'But doesn't nuclear take too long to build?!' Not necessarily. Between 1973 and 1999 France built 56 nuclear reactors with a median construction time of just six years, cutting the fossil fuel share of electricity in its grid from 65% to less than 10%. (Incidentally, France's GDP per capita rose by 58% over the same period.) It's true that sluggish build times torment the west today. Flamanville 3, France's first and only reactor of the 21st century so far, was supposed to take five years to build but ended up taking 17. Hinkley Point C – the UK's first since 1995 – is still a construction site seven years after breaking ground; the British government recently announced another power station – Sizewell C – will be online by the mid-2030s, but many fear the actual completion date will recede quickly into the future. Across Europe, the median build time since the year 2000 has dragged out to almost a decade. But it's not a problem with nuclear power per se; it's a symptom of the west's chronic inability to deliver large pieces of infrastructure, an ailment that affects everything from laying high-speed railway lines, to building new housing estates, to filling in potholes. By contrast, rapid build times remain the norm in other parts of the world. China's median build-time since 2000 is five years and 10 months; South Korea's is six. The delays experienced by the west are regulatory and managerial failures, not technological ones. There's also a perception that nuclear power is dangerous, yet the data show it's as safe as wind and solar. People believe that it's expensive, yet the International Energy Agency finds it to be 'the least cost option for low-carbon generation'. Perhaps it's bad for the environment? Well, the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe concludes it has the lightest ecological burden of any power source. 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More From Less by Andrew McAfee (Scribner, £9.99) Enlightenment Now by Steven Pinker (Penguin, £14.99) Not the End of the World by Hannah Ritchie (Vintage, £9.89)
