Baillie Gifford book festival protesters are losing the plot

Nils Pratley shows the Baillie Gifford literary protest has chosen an inappropriate target (Book festival activists are making absurd demands over Baillie Gifford, 4 June).

While oil and gas remain embedded in our economies, the idea of a fossil‑free anything – not least the paper and screens on which we read books – is absurd, as is the notion that boycotts can create the changes needed. Instead, they misleadingly imply the problems can be solved with the wave of a hand; that solutions are cheap.

Rapid decarbonising poses enormous political challenges and short-term costs that affect us all, not just a few demon firms. That the alternative of no change would be a global disaster does not alter that fact, and pretending otherwise empowers denialists. Right now, we should be asking politicians: what does a future government plan to do about the climate crisis? It’s complex. Writers, of all people, should understand that headlines are not enough.
Mike Pitts
Marlborough, Wiltshire

• I presume that Fossil Free Books would find increased government funding for the arts to be completely unacceptable on the basis that the source of much of those funds, ie taxation, includes money that comes from fossil fuel companies?
Harvey Sanders
London

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