Letter: Human hubris faces a reckoning with nature

Martin Wolf sets out four contrasting scenarios associated with increasing longevity (Opinion, May 13).

However, the medical advances that have led to our longer lives have all meant challenging nature by overriding natural selection and survival of the fittest. Similarly the benefits of healthier lives have come about because as a species we have exploited and modified our environment and consumed resources with no regard for long-term consequences or impacts beyond our narrow self-interest. One result is all of us are taking part in a global experiment, because never has our species lived in an environment driven by greenhouse gas concentrations at today’s levels. So perhaps in a fifth scenario, nature’s laws will reassert themselves and homo sapiens, with all their hubris, will be brought to heel. It is even possible that Covid may come to be seen as a dress rehearsal.

Robin Cooke-Hurle
London SW11, UK