The fact that the company relies on a guaranteed supply of coking (or metallurgical) coal, a major source of carbon dioxide (the primary global warming gas), to make its steel should leave no doubt that BlueScope management takes action on climate change seriously.

The steelmaker's action should be a clarion call to all Australian industries with a large carbon footprint, such as concrete production and construction, to manage their carbon dioxide emissions and join the fight against what could prove to be catastrophic global warming.

The recent landing on Mars highlights the stupidity and destructiveness of humankind, more so than our usual crass and cavalier behaviour.

For the commercial benefit of a select few "entrepreneurs", we are about to begin the pollution and degradation of yet another planet, after carrying out thousands of extinctions here on Earth.

On planet Earth we are yet to understand the function of soils.

In Australia, we terrorise our agricultural system with chemistry we have little knowledge of, abuse our water management processes in a similar way, and relentlessly dump poison and plastic into the sea and land which feeds us all.

In Australia alone we lose hundreds of millions of dollars of soil and water in the Murray Darling Basin due to naivety and simple theft every year; and yet we cannot contain our greed or prevent it by agreement.

Our federal government focuses on the benefit to the "landed gentry".

It puts profits above common sense and human health, while one in six children live in ruinous poverty.

I found Faye Thornhill's letter ("ACT demonstrators were pro-choice", canberratimes.com.au, February 24) rather confusing. Why the need for a "pro-choice" rally when the COVID-19 vaccination programs in Australia are all voluntary?

Perhaps I need to "gather information from many sources" on Facebook or Instagram before I can understand properly.

I've heard that QAnon, for example, provides very reliable facts about many things.

I shouldn't be put off by the fact that it's a neo-Nazi, white supremacist, anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant, anti-vax, racist, paranoid, conspiracy cult.

After all, facts are facts, unless they're alternative facts, in which case they're facts too.

It's not just fringe zealots like Craig Kelly and George Christensen who love Q.

Supposedly leftish alternative groups have taken up its misinformation, such as COVID-19 being spread by 5G, with enthusiasm.

Online alternative medicine and parenting groups are particularly susceptible.

Lack of evidence is evidence because the conspiracy has covered its tracks.

These are people who want the world to be a better place, and have been given reason to distrust politicians and institutions.

But it's becoming clear that substituting social media echo-chambers for good journalism can in stressful times rapidly turn healthy scepticism into off-the-planet paranoid delusions.

So what's the problem?

Infectious diseases physician Sanjaya Senanayake says that "only 75 per cent of the population need to be vaccinated in order for the nation to revert to a state of 'normal'".

If that is correct, and I am sure it is, why then are we bothered about the anti-vaxxers?

If you are one of those protesters who feel you would be "violated" if forced to get the vaccine, the answer is simple - you don't have to have it.

Leave it to us who wish to feel and be safer.

Australia should send any spare vaccines to the many less fortunate countries whose needy and poor are desperate to receive them.

Email: letters.editor@canberratimes.com.au. Send from the message field, not as an attachment. Fax: 6280 2282. Mail: Letters to the Editor, The Canberra Times, PO Box 7155, Canberra Mail Centre, ACT 2610.

Keep your letter to 250 or fewer words. References to The Canberra Times reports should include date and page number. Letters may be edited. Provide phone number and full home address (suburb only published).