Climate change politics is hot air

In view of the UN’s ‘code red’ climate change report (MetroTalk, Thu) and discussion on electric cars and the terrible human cost of Cobalt mining in Congo for battery components, Dave (MetroTalk, Thu) and Anna (MetroTalk, Tue), what worries me is what happens to lithium vehicle batteries after their eight to ten years of useful life.

I understand that presently there is no possibility of easily recycling them. Most countries will allow the batteries just to be dumped, as with plastic bags. But plastic bags don’t, leach the extremely poisonous lithium and cobalt into the ground as they decay. Hydrogen power may not be very efficient but it doesn’t damage us. John Green, via email

Hydrogen is a very dangerous fuel and you couldn’t have enough of it to get 10 miles. The solution is the enormous power of the aluminium-air battery – something people are already working on.

Keith Schofield, via email

If you dare suggest we need to protect our precious countryside (which also absorbs greenhouse gases) from developers you’re immediately and unfairly labelled a

Nimby. If the government were serious about climate change, it would take steps to reduce cars and put new, affordable, housing on brownfield sites near amenities. But they’re in the builders’ pockets. All talk about climate change is just hot air. John Daniels, Redhill

Climate change is a reality, so what do we do? I don’t think my 20p carrier bag is going to solve it – world leaders are still chopping down the rainforest in Brazil and pouring out emissions in China, still polluting the oceans...