Short-termist policies are the big hurdle to tackling climate change - Yorkshire Post Letters

I hope that Dick Lindley (TYP, September 25), and the other regular climate change deniers whose inaccurate and illogical contributions we still, unfortunately, see published in The Yorkshire Post read Jayne Dowle’s excellent article in the same edition.

Dick Lindley makes reference to ‘...us shivering in our homes unable to afford the oil, gas or electricity.’

Does he not understand the simple logic that if our homes were properly insulated, this would not be the case? Investing in training for ‘green jobs’ such as home insulation installers, funded by taxing fossil fuel companies, would be an appropriate start in transitioning to a green economy.

It is the short termism of politics where decisions on policy are being made for possible electoral gain that is the biggest hurdle.

We are in a climate and biodiversity emergency, a more serious emergency than the coronavirus pandemic and unless appropriate bold decisions are made by our politicians now, for the long term good of all citizens, we will not avoid the existential threat of climate breakdown that has been warned of for so long.

Malcolm Parkin’s contribution (The YP, September 25) that we should not be concerned for future generations is both astonishing and depressing and I hope that most YP readers would not agree with him.

In suggesting that nuclear power is the answer to our energy needs he completely ignores the dangers that that poses. Does he not remember Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima, and is he aware of the stocks of dangerous nuclear waste still building up that we do not yet have the means to dispose of safely?

The useful quote ‘We don’t inherit the Earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children’ should inform all our responses to the climate and biodiversity emergencies.