Coal still king

The UK government has set a legally binding target to reduce emissions to net-zero by 2050. According to Chancellor Philip Hammond this will cost £1 trillion pounds that is £1,000,000,000,000. Reminder; the UK has only 1.3 per cent of global emissions.

Poland, backed by its eastern allies such as Hungary and the Czech Republic, and Germany, has blocked the idea for the EU to commit to climate neutrality by 2050. India will double its coal consumption by 2040. The US is exporting coal and its biggest customer is Europe. Germany’s eight coal-fired power plants alone create emissions of more than half of Britain’s emissions from ALL sources. No wonder Germany refuses to introduce a legally binding Climate Change Act.

In yet another shock for the Greens all across the world, the government of Queensland, Australia, has given final approval for plans to open coal fields the size of Britain.

So the world is returning to coal to drive their economies whilst the UK wastes £1 trillion that would be better spent on the NHS, education, the police and perhaps even a few potholes and TV licences.

CLARK CROSS Springfield Road, Linlithgow

In an exercise of arrogance and conceit unrivalled in my nearly eight decades, Theresa May proposes to use a “statutory instrument” to force the nation to commit to “net zero carbon” by 2050 as a “legacy” to her saintly self.

The only nation to have put an accurate price on such lunacy is New Zealand which estimated it would cost 16 per cent of GDP annually. That would equate to £560bn a year if applied to the UK – 70 per cent of current public expenditure.

In recent decades we’ve been deindustrialising, swapping home production for imports and increasing global warming.

Would it be unkind for a scientist to point out that nothing in Mrs May’s vanity project addresses that?

DR JOHN CAMERON, Howard Place, St Andrews