New Scientist - 26.10.2019

26 | New Scientist | 26 October 2019

Editor’s pick

Community building isn’t

enough to make morality

28 September, p 44

From John Hastings,

Whittlesey, Cambridgeshire, UK

Patricia Churchland’s account of

how our moral behaviour evolved

to promote the well-being of human

communities appears plausible,

but she leaves two major issues

out of her reckoning.

The first is that these community-

building behaviours apply only to

our own community or nation. In

relation to other communities, we

may be prejudiced and, in extreme

cases, regard the “others” as

subhuman. Such prejudices can lead

to conflict and even genocide. The

second issue is that for all of history,

women have almost universally

been regarded by men as inferior

beings to be kept subordinate.

These two aspects of human

behaviour have evolved just as the

community-building behaviours

have evolved. We can’t use

evolution to distinguish between

them. If we regard one set of

behaviours as morally good and

the other as morally bad, we must

be using some other criterion.

If we don’t have some standard

of morality, independent of our

evolved behaviour, against which

we can assess our behaviour, we

have no reason to say that any

behaviour is morally right or wrong.

So what is this standard of morality

and where does it come from? Or

are we simply wrong to think in

moral terms about our behaviour?

I wonder about another

role of female orgasm

5 October, p 8

From Margaret Jowitt,

Ventnor, Isle of Wight, UK

The female orgasm may originate

in a reflex that makes some female

mammals ovulate during

intercourse, Clare Wilson reports.

In humans, clitoral stimulation is

better at eliciting orgasm than

penetration. In 2005, Helen

O’Connell and her colleagues

wrote that “the anatomy of the

clitoris has not been stable with

time” – it has been written in and

out of anatomy textbooks

according to current medical

fashion.

They concluded that, like

an iceberg, most of the clitoris

is hidden inside the body. This

work led me to wonder whether

the clitoris has a role to play in

birth, with the passage of the fetal

head triggering orgasm. It would

thus provide a handy cushion

of engorged tissue, a shot of the

hormone oxytocin and both

vaginal and uterine contractions

to help complete the birth.

Some women report birth to

be orgasmic. I, alas, am not one

of them, but I certainly benefited

from the oxytocin rush.

Unfounded apocalyptic

claims harm climate action

12 October, p 22

From Gabriel Carlyle,

St Leonards-on-Sea, East Sussex, UK

Graham Lawton describes the

oft-repeated “fact” that we have 11

years to save the planet as “a subtle

misrepresentation of the science”.

Other misrepresentations are less

subtle. For example, Extinction

Rebellion co-founder Roger Hallam

claimed on the BBC HARDtalk

programme in August that “science

predicts” that 6 billion people will

die this century because of climate

change if we continue on our

current trajectory. This claim was

audited by Climate Feedback, a

worldwide network of scientists

that sorts fact from fiction in

climate change media coverage. It

concluded that Hallam’s assertion

was “not supported by published

research” (bit.ly/2pcKwis).

I agree with Lawton that

the current surge in activism

around climate change is “a long-

overdue outbreak of sanity”. But

unfounded, apocalyptic claims

risk undermining the long-term

health of these movements.

We need better incentives

for renewable energy

5 October, p 7

From Victor Cheetham,

Bolton, Greater Manchester, UK

Digging up coal may well be a

“strange decision” for a country

such as Botswana that has vast

solar resources, as Joeri Rogelj

at the International Institute

for Applied Systems Analysis in

Austria says. But we should also

be concerned by countries such

as Greece, which also has vast

solar resources but is mining

around 50 million tonnes of

lignite (brown coal) per year. The

EU needs to persuade the Greek

government to implement a solar

power revolution and

reject support for a coal sector

that campaigners describe as a

backdoor subsidy, in violation

of EU electricity market rules.

From James Runacres,

Kirby Muxloe, Leicestershire, UK

The failure to give developing

countries an incentive to transform

their energy systems is a major

stumbling block to meeting

the targets of the Paris climate

agreement. Renewable technology

is ready for deployment in

countries such as Botswana.

Population and limits

to Earth’s life support

14 September, p 39

From Colin Gallagher,

Hexham, Northumberland, UK

Fred Pearce asks Johan Rockström

whether human population size

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