Letters | 2018 was not the best year for many, but hope lives on for 2019

The global forecast dips and rises in cycles, with recent times leaving us despairing and bruised, yet offering hope that the world might just turn the corner for the better

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Protesters from the climate change pressure group Extinction Rebellion demonstrate outside the BBC offices in central London on December 21. They called on the broadcaster to give top priority to climate change and environmental issues, in both editorial coverage and corporate management. Photo: Reuters

Published: 5:15pm, 2 Jan 2019Updated: 5:40pm, 2 Jan 2019

Your columnist David Dodwell, channelling Ebenezer Scrooge, cautioned that “the future holds possible horrors brought on by consumerism and climate change, and time is running out for prevention of a global catastrophe” (“A Christmas wake-up call: don’t forget your planet”, December 23). And then your year-end online poll, “How are you feeling about 2019”, augured overwhelming pessimism.

As a positive antidote, I’d suggest Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities, as offering a balm to the fractious fracas and deep wounds of 2018. I’d argue that each year that passes turns a page on “the best of times”, “the worst of times”, “the age of wisdom” and “the age of foolishness”, and that “we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way”.

Reading Dickens is a reminder that the global forecast dips and rises in cycles, with recent times leaving us despairing and bruised, yet offering hope that the world might just turn the corner for the better in 2019.

I’d agree that we’d do well these holidays to not forget our responsibilities to humanity’s only home, our singular blue planet, as Dodwell urges, to surface from our deep-seated dysphoria into the “season of Light”.

Joseph Ting, Brisbane