The war on peat is misguided and doesn’t deal with planet’s climate woes - Yorkshire Post Letters

To correct eco-warriors, in 2020 39 per cent of peat in the UK was from UK sources which was 0.39 x 2.2 million cubic metres of peat, that is 0.858 million cubic metres. Now only 15 per cent of this is solid carbon matter and the rest is water. So the carbon content is around 0.15 x 0.858 million tonnes of actual carbon or 0.129 million tonnes.

If all of this were to oxidise to form CO2 it would make 0.472 million tonnes. This is very close to the value quoted by the government. However this assumption of the complete conversion of carbon in peat to CO2 is not true, it does not happen.

Dried out peat does not disappear so this estimate by the government or its advisors is false at the outset. Some idiot figured out that all of the peat would turn into carbon dioxide. Completely wrong.

Bizarrely, gardeners use the peat to grow plants which do capture and sequester CO2.

As to the importing of peat, it comes from sensible countries where peat is classed, and rightly so, as a renewable resource. Peat if farmed sustainably will regrow at approx 3cm per annum and could be very close to if not completely carbon neutral, due to the carbon capture of the redistributed peat and the amount of plants grown in it.

The removal of large swathes of rain forest in Brazil, Pakistan, Vietnam etc has been the main factor in warming the planet, blaming and punishing gardeners for using a small amount of the world's peat (1 per cent) is not the answer, who uses the other 99 per cent or does that not matter?

The majority of opponents against peat are obviously not true gardeners in the proper sense.

The wildlife trusts and the green lobby are the main opponents to peat being farmed, they in most cases are only interested in the funding it brings them.

When peat was added to compost in the 1960/70s it was hailed as the next best thing since sliced bread and still is for seed germination, potting on, rooting etc.

Draining for farming and forestry has destroyed and done more damage to peat bogs than a small amount of peat in compost has ever done.

I think we are being overwhelmed by climate change and the charge to net zero, we and everything on the planet need CO2 in one form or another. It appears to me that the wokerati are playing games with something they don't truly understand.