The scientific consensus is perfectly clear: burning fossil fuels destroys the earth’s ability to support civilized life.

Yet energy-related emissions of CO2 are still increasing.

With Antarctica losing 150 billion tonnes of ice per year, North Africa soon to be uninhabitable, and wildfires becoming more frequent and intense, António Guterres, the Secretary-General of the UN, has said: “We are in the fight of our lives, and we are losing”.

Yet this government, in blatant disregard of its own independent Committee on Climate Change and of the International Energy Agency, has authorized more drilling in the North Sea, more expansion of airports, and a coalmine claimed - fatuously - to be ‘carbon-neutral’. This is demented.

And now a reduction in the effort to reach net zero!

OTHER NEWS:

Craig Williams (CT, September 22) hails Mr Sunak’s announcement as a “pragmatic, proportionate and realistic approach that eases the burden on working people”.

Such rubbish, from the government that created the most unequal society in Europe, smacks of hypocrisy. Its own Office for Budget Responsibility has acknowledged that “delaying decisive action to tackle carbon emissions could double the overall cost”.

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In fact, the only people to benefit from a delay will be those who profit so enormously from fossil fuels. And those who suffer will, as always, be the poorer half of the human race, who produce fewer emissions than the richest 1%.

Yet rather than recognize the emergency, Williams prefers to outlaw dissent, and to indulge the power of a few to countermand the vital interests of humanity. His nose will grow.
S R Baker,
Via email