Oddly, and given the ACT's sunny climate, this doesn't translate strongly into rooftop solar installations.

According to the Australian PV Institute only 23 per cent of households in the ACT have rooftop solar, just above the national average of 21 per cent.

Queensland, South Australia, Western Australia and NSW all have greater penetrations ranging from 40 per cent to 25 per cent respectively.

Another surprise is that the most affluent suburbs in Canberra have the lowest penetrations, as low as 15 per cent, while the least affluent have the highest, up to 27 per cent. Perhaps evidence that solar power saves money on electricity bills.

However, moving from the rooftop to the road, the ACT has the highest number of electric vehicles per capita in Australia, with about one in 500 people owning an EV. Moreover, given that all of the ACT's power is generated from renewable sources, there's one less reason for the naysayers to nit-pick about the power source for EVs, like some do in my fossil-fuel state.

Smallpox broke out in the Sydney area in 1789. Its impact on Aboriginal people across Australia was devastating with an estimated one in 10 dying, perhaps more. They had no natural resistance, no vaccines, no public health officials and one can only imagine the political class looking on with detached interest.

In 2021, COVID-19 is now raging through areas of high Aboriginal populations in NSW. The concern of the political class when compared to the slow effort of arranging vaccinations once again shows the two class divide in Australia.

All was preventable with some seriously focussed risk assessments and some leadership from the top. Leadership is not just pithy announcements Mr Morrison.

H. Zandbergen (Letters, August 17) astonishes me, to put it very mildly. "Why all the concern about climate change?", he asks. As if the latest IPCC report didn't exist, reminding us of the dire existential threat the world faces and of the urgent need for action.

He claims that "We are way more at risk from COVID-19 than climate change". What a nonsensical statement.

It isn't a question of one, then the other. It's both. Now. Timing is a vital consideration.

The risk from COVID-19 is here and now. Although the effects of climate change are also with us now, these are now a mere picnic compared with what climate change has in store for us. It's just that the worst (and what a worst!) is yet to come. I repeat - that threat is truly existential. The IPCC report reminds us (as if we didn't already know) that urgent action on this front is needed - now. Not after we've dealt with COVID-19 (whatever that might mean).

That's "why all the concern about climate change".

Jane Malcolm's letter on "Cops" (Letters, August 20) got me thinking to earlier terms for police such as "peelers", "bobbies" and "wallopers". "Traps" was used by the bushrangers and the diggers on the goldfields. I suspect it could have also been used by the general public for a period.

Growing up in the 1940s we played "cowboys and Indians" and "goodies and Baddies". My father (born 1906) told me that as a child he and his friends played "bushies and bobbies" which related to the bushrangers and the police.

In his autobiography, former UK Prime Minister Clement Attlee said that he as a young boy also played "bushies and bobbies" and mentions that Winston Churchill did as well. I think many young colonials believed the "bushies" were the goodies!

The hysteria that surrounds the reporting of deaths from (or mostly with) COVID-19 astounds me. Daily deaths from all causes in NSW are around 140, so in the latest lockdown there have been nearly 8000 deaths with about 80 attributed to coronavirus; and for many of these it wasn't the main cause of death. In 2019 there were over 4300 deaths throughout Australia from Influenza A (ABS Statistics) yet we didn't have these reported almost daily.

I agree with Douglas Mackenzie's recent comment that arms manufacturers will be looking for another war to maintain their profits, now that Afghanistan is being left alone. Similarly, the pharmaceutical companies will be looking for another pandemic to bolster their income.

I share Malala Yousafzai's concerns about the plight of women and girls in Afghanistan ("Malala urges 'bold' action to protect women and girls", canberratimes.com.au, August 18) despite the Taliban in its press conference assuring them they would be safe. The proviso on their safety, of course, is that they abide by Sharia law. Such law can only be described as mediaeval and an offence against women.

Afghanistan has a very high population growth rate and the country is likely to expand from its current nearly 40 million to 82 million people by mid-century. To its credit, great strides were made by previous governments in bringing down the fertility rate from 7.5 children per woman to 4.5 in the past 20 years.

For the sake of the recovery of its country, let us hope the Taliban does not obstruct efforts to lower fertility further. It must allow expansion in the number of public health facilities offering family planning and help lift modern contraceptive prevalence from 20 to 30 per cent. Given the next best method after contraception for reducing fertility is education of girls, let us hope there will be no interference there, though I fear there is little room for optimism in that respect.

Many of us share Tiffany King's frustration with Canberrans fleeing to the beautiful South Coast, upon news of our lockdown (Letters, August 16). But I was a little surprised when she ended by suggesting that our high education rate in Canberra could be or should be an antidote to selfishness.

Sadly education has been shown in the 20th century to be irrelevant to empowering loving behaviour. As the great Professor C. S. Lewis said, "Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil."

It seems that our (my) heart and not the head is our problem.

What happens when a boat full of Afghan refugees reaches our shores? Or more than one?

Do we welcome them, assess their claims in a timely manner, and support them to start a new life here?

Or do we lock them up, punish and torture them for no crime and refuse to accept them due to their mode of arrival and try to "dump them" somewhere else?

Ludicrous is only one word to describe this.

Besides our unedifying, embarrassing, botched, too late attempts to evacuate Afghanis who have worked with our forces in Afghanistan, our asylum seeker and refugee policies for those who arrive by boat in particular are abominable and have been damaging people for years.

What is this obsession we have with boats? I am sure the psychologists have written papers on this.

"Saving loss of life at sea" is a cringeworthy justification that has passed its use by date.

"Stopping people smugglers" doesn't recognise that fleeing desperate people will do whatever it takes to get somewhere safe.

We do not seem to have "walked in another's shoes".

How do we resurrect our empathy and our reputation and help strangers as a natural part of who we are as a nation and people?

My heart goes out to those poor Afghans caught up in the two terror blasts, and to all those who won't be able to escape the grip of the Taliban.

Call me naive, but our last throw of the dice to assist Afghan people to flee seems to be a passage via the Red Crescent or Red Cross. Open a corridor to exit Afghanistan by road, without troops overseeing it. That satisfies the Taliban insistence that no foreign occupation should be in their country after their agreed exit at the end of August. They can claim victory, they will be shown to observe their commitment to portraying a more compassionate regime, people will be saved and repatriated elsewhere, and the war is over.

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