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Green excuse to curb our liberty
• I CARE very much about our environment and just recently have offered my support to Green councillor Katie Dawson’s campaign against light pollution.
However, I really must protest at the way our council is proposing to waste millions of pounds of tax-payers’ money on measures to combat carbon emissions.
The case for carbon emissions causing global climate is not proven beyond doubt. A recent documentary revealed that there are many reputable scientists who query this link. Polar ice core samples do show that carbon emissions are linked to rises in global temperature, but the rise in carbon lags behind the rise in temperature by hundreds of years. It is a consequence, not a cause.
Also, in the post-war period, carbon emissions rose dramatically, but global temperatures dropped, creating fears of a new ice age. It seems equally likely that global warming is caused by solar activity, and there is very little we can do about that.
We should be spending money on addressing the specific results of climate change, not on pathetically trying to stop it, based on dodgy information.
The sad fact is that the whole carbon-emissions theory has become a bandwagon hopped on by opportunist politicians of every party who see a chance to raise more taxes and intrude even further into our private lives.
Laws are now being passed that could lead to us all being granted a carbon ration that could seriously affect what we do in our day-to-day lives. It is time to call a halt to this fashionable nonsense and call for a proper even-handed debate when scientists can speak without fear of having funding cut. Otherwise, environmentalism could well suffer a future backlash that could undo all its good work.
In protest at all major political parties stifling debate on this subject, I am resigning my brief membership of the Conservative Party. I also call upon residents to contact me if they too share my concerns at carbon emissions being used as an excuse to limit our civil liberties.
TIM NEWARK
Highbury, N5
•I MUST take issue with my old friend Tim Newark over Islington Council’s Climate Change Fund (£3m green fund ‘symbolic stunt’, March 16).
As a respected local historian Tim will know about the paradigm shift, the phenomenon of people hanging onto and defending old ideas until the new thinking becomes fully accepted.
It happened with Copernicus and his outrageous idea that the earth orbited the sun rather than the other way round.
It is happening now with the idea that man’s activities are contributing to the warming of the planet with quite literally catastrophic potential consequences. Thankfully, most people now accept the reality of climate change and are slowly beginning to change their behaviour to counter it but there are still some flat-earthers like Tim who remain in denial.
The local Tory Party spokeswoman thinks that global warming is a problem for governments to solve internationally, while the rest of us get on with our lives, content in the knowledge that “the government” will come to our rescue. How naïve!
Global warming certainly is a responsibility for national governments but it is also a responsibility for local government and for each of us individually.
Supporting the Climate Change Fund is an excellent place to start. As a small start, my family is donating our £20 discount for paying our council tax by direct debit to the fund. I hope Tim will do the same.
CLLR JOHN GILBERT
Lib Dem executive member for health and adult social services
• LIB Dems and Homes for Islington claim they want to combat global warming? They must be having a laugh.
On Wednesday, March 14, at the Leaseholders Forum meeting a HfI officer admitted that builders working on HfI sites add their congestion charge fees to the leaseholders’ major works bill.
D STEVENS
King Square, EC1
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