Sir, – I welcome Prof William Reville's unequivocal statement of the scale and urgency of our collective climate emergency (November 8th). However, in response to my own urging of journalistic leadership in clearly and consistently communicating these same facts, he suggests that I "steer close to advocating censorship". I must respectfully disagree, and ask to be allowed correct this unfortunate misapprehension.
In fact, I am passionate in my commitment to the right of every citizen to express (within the law) any opinion or belief of their choosing – no matter how bizarre, contrarian or delusional such belief may be.
But the right to speak confers no right to be listened to, much less a right of access to any particular platform or media channel to promote or amplify such speech. For example, it would be, I suppose, quite legal to proclaim that neither smoking nor obesity contribute to ill-health; or that consuming alcohol does not impair the ability to drive safely. However, I would be appalled if any reputable media channel were to propagate such dangerously mistaken ideas (be that in its selection of readers’ letters or otherwise). So how much more reckless then must be the promotion of denial of the nature and scale of our climate crisis – a crisis that “merely” threatens the entirety of human civilisation? – Yours, etc,
Prof BARRY McMULLIN,
Executive Dean,
Faculty of Engineering
and Computing,
Dublin City University.