TWO respondents wrote taking issue with my views against fracking and in favour of renewables.
Despite my own views being in tune with the majority of the British people (source: carbonbrief.org), not everyone is convinced.
Last year there were points when half of all energy in Germany was generated by renewables (source: UNFCCC).
Each country has to tackle energy descent in its own way, and Germany has coal in the mix.
However, against the tide of international action against climate change, in the UK our own government has announced it is slashing the subsidies offered to build capacity and markets for renewables while increasing subsidies for fossil fuels.
This is at a time when leaked communications have shown that we will not meet our existing commitments.
David Clarke also questions whether there will be a climate catastrophe and, of course, there will be (as the overwhelming majority of scientists agree) unless drastic action is taken to reduce consumption and switch to renewables.
The problems faced by the steel industry over security of supply are real but overseas competition and the prospect of an uninhabitable planet are of starkly different orders of magnitude.
The energy generation and baseload questions have already been dealt with, as Herbie Renfield would know if he had read the recent report The Power to Transform the South West by the Resilience Centre.
It demonstrates that the Forest could easily become a net exporter of energy while enhancing, not degrading, our natural capital using a mix of renewable sources, including tidal lagoons, biomass, solar, wind turbines and heat pumps.
I recommend it to readers, available from our MEP Molly Scott-Cato’s website: www.mollymep.org.uk.
– Dan Cook, Pillowell.