When it is explained to him, he is dismissive. He has more immediate concerns The first thing I need is food, and then a job.

LG For a long time, researchers in emerging diseases were kind of dismissive of the pandemic flu threat on the grounds that back in 1918 they didn't have antibiotics.

Hurricane Katrina made the US public aware that global warming would likely raise the intensity of destructive storms. Australia s great drought this past year has similarly made a mockery of Howard s dismissive attitude toward climate change.

Indeed, at the seminar, European economists and journalists especially the Germans, and even some of the Britons in the room adopted a dismissive tone. Monetary policy's power is limited, particularly when the interest rate is so low, some said.

But that is true of any kind of dismissive view of the other. Our societies will hold together only if we talk to each other with openness and frankness, and, in doing so, recreate a certain sense of solidarity from all our different roots.