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Nikil Saval writes that “Globalisation could take place in services, capital and ideas … but what it meant most often was making it cheaper to trade across borders” (The great globalisation backlash, 15 July). We hear no more from him about cross-border movements of capital. When I studied economics in the 1950s we spoke of “capital flight” as a major cause of economic stagnation and regulatory capture. The rich in most of South America appeared to be free to invest their winnings in US equities to the detriment of their local industries. My pension fund invests more abroad than in UK equities. Am I complicit in a modern version of capital flight? Could it be that another tenet of conventional wisdom needs to be challenged: that free movement of capital across borders benefits us all? David ChambersStroud, Gloucestershire

• The main drivers of environmental destruction (Earth faces sixth mass extinction, 11 July) are over-population and economic growth. Over-population is caused by poverty. Economic growth – seen by most as a good thing – is needed only to service debt. This was pointed by CH Douglas’s Social Credit movement in the 1920s and more recently by EF Schumacher and others. Allowing banks to issue 97% of money as debt is at the heart of the problem.Chris HughesLeicester

Donald Trump regrets the “bizarre mistake” of withdrawing the US from the Paris climate agreement, Sir Richard Branson has said. The British billionaire also urged the president to help phase out the ailing US coal industry.

Related: Donald Trump offers hand of friendship to Emmanuel Macron on Paris visit

There’s no guarantee he’ll change his mind. Who knows what goes on in there. The Paris decision was a bizarre mistake

Related: All the president's men's lawyers: who are Trumpworld's leading attorneys?

Without the cooperation of our imaginations, we cannot tell stories about what is happening to our planet. This may be why we’ve been so slow to act

The most terrifying read of my year so far (amid stiff competition) goes to New York magazine’s piece this week on climate change.

It’s all there, all the gruesome ways our planet is going to die, sooner than we think, and that people who are children now will, in their lifetime, face the unbearable misery of rising temperatures. Crops destroyed, ancient diseases trapped in icebergs, farm workers whose kidneys will cook as they work the tundras of our warming world.

Related: Missy Higgins: how an obsession with apocalyptic climate fiction changed my life

Related: Amitav Ghosh: where is the fiction about climate change?

Royal Academy of Engineering report backs increased use of biofuels but warns that some have been as polluting as fossil fuels

Biofuel use needs to increase to help fight climate change as liquid fuels will be needed by aircraft and ships for many decades to come, finds a new report requested by the UK government.

The Royal Academy of Engineering report says, however, that some biofuels, such as diesel made from food crops, have led to more emissions than those produced by the fossil fuels they were meant to replace. Instead, the report says, rising biofuel production should make more use of waste, such as used cooking oil and timber.

Related: MEPs vote to ban the use of palm oil in biofuels