LETTER: We could be part of the solution

Nobody in their right mind would welcome climate change with its horrendous consequences for millions of people.

Would you have called Churchill an anti-Nazi proselytiser and accused him of rubbing his hands with glee when Hitler’s bombs began to fall?

After all, his warnings seven years earlier were ignored or derided by the press.

The warning lights on climate change have been flashing for more than a quarter of a century. If world leaders had taken robust action in the ’90s, maybe we wouldn’t be suffering so much now.

And if Britain had risen to the challenge, we could have been a world leader in renewable energy, with all the employment and prosperity that could bring.

Sadly a well organised denial campaign, amply funded by vested interests, lost us that opportunity.

The past cannot be undone, but the good news is that we still have a chance to mitigate much greater disasters that may await us in the future.

As Howard Johns of Ovesco explains in his recent book ‘The Energy Revolution’, rapid advances in energy storage and renewables mean that we can realistically achieve reliable, clean energy at stable prices for ever.

With storage and diversity of sources, it doesn’t matter that the wind doesn’t always blow or the sun shine.

We don’t need fracking, which is dirty, risky, disruptive, short term and, at present oil prices, uneconomic.

Nor do we need nuclear, which is even riskier, even more uneconomic, takes too long to build and leaves a toxic and expensive legacy of radioactive waste for millenia to come.

It’s time to leave climate change denial, fossil fuels and legacy technologies behind.

Future generations will not thank us for being part of the problem when we could be part of the solution.

Stephen Watson

Caburn Crescent

Lewes