While the Trump presidency rolled back environmental protection policies and downplayed — or downright denied — climate change, the Biden administration has given me a glimmer of hope for my country, and the planet. I was heartened to read about Biden’s infrastructure bill that will contribute towards the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal #9: Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure. It’s a step in the right direction, but one that’s well overdue. Climate change has been affecting poorer countries for years, but the recent scourge of wildfires and flooding in the US could push policymakers to finally grasp how urgent the situation has become — and act accordingly. We’ve signed back up to the Paris Accord, and now we can only hope that our political and business leaders will rise to the challenge. I also appreciated your article about gender imbalance in the boardroom, and the “Big Three” investors (Vanguard, BlackRock and State Street) helping to correct it. We have more power than we perhaps realise when we raise our voices together as voters, consumers and shareholders to push for positive change.

Mary Simpson Portland, Maine

After a weekend celebrating the success of the world’s latest tennis star, Emma Raducanu, I am hungry for more sports coverage! You clearly appreciate that most top-tier business publications carry general interest content — and thanks for profiling pro athletes and the House of Guerlain in your Summer issue. I would love to see more reporting on tennis and other sporting events in future issues. And when you look at the financial rewards of the Grand Slam, it becomes clear that sport has a business side as well as entertainment value. I’m hoping to see more of Emma Raducanu (and my other sporting heroes) in the pages of a magazine I look forward to reading each quarter.

Alina Albu Bucharest, Romania

Our president, Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador, has a daunting task to sort out deep-rooted corruption and gaping inequality in Mexico — but he deserves some praise for his efforts. Small gestures notwithstanding — foregoing the presidential jet and other trappings of office — he has genuinely tried to make Mexico a more equitable society, while taking on the formidable challenges of the drug cartels and our noisy neighbour to the north. As a post-colonial society, Mexico has embedded class divisions, overwhelmingly based on race: European vs the indigenous population. And that will be a difficult hurdle to overcome. It could be that AMLO’s popularity has endured because he stood up to the US and the (locally despised) DEA. One thing is for sure: originating from Tabasco state, Obrador can stand the heat.

Feliciano Cuetlachtli Bernal Mexico DF

Full disclosure: I’m not a regular reader, and this letter is based on a half-hour browse through your magazine (at an airport, as it happens). Big, glossy, a bit full of itself, and aimed at rich people / CEOs: those were my first impressions. I did find that paging through your features helped time to pass relatively painlessly, though, so you must be doing something right. However, I do have one bit of constructive (?) criticism… As an ardent Remainer, I have recently had to struggle to avoid schadenfreude (or ranting like a lunatic) as I watch the good ship Blighty list to an apparently terminal degree as the Leavers’ wishes (and our worst fears) become reality. Empty supermarket shelves, a shortage of lorry drivers, exports down, imports more expensive, delays at Calais (and elsewhere). Brexit has been, and will continue to be, a mess. Has it really been good for anything, for anyone, anywhere? I was a little put-out by the lack of coverage in your magazine of the miserable months that have followed our (small, struggling) nation’s “liberation” from the EU. So much so that I took note of your email address to send this letter.

Peter Martin London, UK

While Poland has undoubtedly made enormous economic strides in the past three decades, for the World Bank to classify it as a high-income country strikes me as rather ridiculous. As a Pole who lived in the UK between 2005 and 2016, I made more money doing relatively unskilled jobs than I would have done working as a qualified engineer in my home country. Furthermore, the often-regressive socio-political policies of our governments have made me question how modern the Polish state really is. I always considered myself to be an Anglophile until Brexit, an event which made my mind up to return home. I found many improvements in the decade that I was away but now, five years later, believe much still needs to be done for Poland to deserve all these eulogies.

Maciej Michalowski Łódź, Poland

Things generally have been a bit fraught for the last two years, for obvious reasons. First there was Brexit to worry about, then the pandemic. I can’t help but notice a determination on the part of all media — your magazine included — to emphasise the positives of a situation that is, in reality, too miserable to contemplate. Lives lost, jobs lost, government stuff-ups, woeful vaccination programmes (for the most part), businesses ruined. Also, fortunes made (mostly by billionaires), entrepreneurs still plunging into the fray anyway — even during lockdown — to make a good fist of our collective recovery. On your pages, I have seen little about knock-on effects that will impact us all over coming months, years, and — quite possibly — decades. It’s mentioned, certainly, but mostly in passing, as you launch into yet another positive assessment of a dire situation. Admittedly, the Covid reporting space is crammed, and not exactly socially distanced, at the moment: every second article seems to mention it. But when will come the story we really need to see: the one that tells it like it is, and admits that — with Brexit, Corona, weather events, environmental destruction and other crises — we’re going to hell in a handbasket, and taking democracy, liberty, and the economy with us?

Sarah Porter Bournemouth, UK