We should treat planet better but we’ll never be able to control changing climate

I fi maybe allowed to introduce some interesting elements into the climate change debate, I live at a place whose name in Gaelic means “the place where the boats were drawn up”. I am now half a mile from the shore and several metres above the water.

If I take a drive to Toward, I can see to my right where the beach used to be, many metres above the shore today to my left. The Holy Loch and the nearby Loch Eck used to be the same stretch of water, which is why Loch Eck (and Loch Lomond for the same reason) have exclusively a fish called powan. This is a herring which adapted to fresh water as sea levels dropped and Loch Eck was separated from the salt sea.

At the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314 a big concern with both sets of troops was malaria, as mosquitoes were plentiful in a much warmer Scotland.

There is a vast amount of evidence, easily accessed, that shows climate change has been a continuous factor of the world’s weather for hundreds of thousands of years.

This is not to suggest that I think we should continue pouring out dangerous, poisonous emissions or that we should continue to destroy our natural environment. It is to suggest that our climate, climate change and the global warming we are presently experiencing, is largely a result of relationship with the sun and how close or how far we are from it, something which changes slowly and steadily on a continuous basis.

A blink of an eye ago in world time we were skating on the Thames. So no matter what we do, control of our weather will largely be determined by forces over which we have limited control. So dealing with that should be the priority.

As big a concern to me in this warming environment is population explosion in many parts of the world. The population of West Africa, for instance, is forecast to double before 2025, with Nigeria expected to reach 400 million. Unless increased food production becomes a major concern, we are looking at real trouble.

But 6,000 years ago the vast Sahara desert was a forest and it had been a vast desert before that and at one point partly vast sea. In recent years a Sahara Forest Project has been launched to campaign for a worldwide effort to regreen the Sahara.

This strikes me as a really worthwhile project as a potential huge increase in food productionis possible with it. and, in fact, a huge replacement of the positive and useful growth which improves our atmosphere as our destruction of forests in many part of the world damages it.

DAVE MCEWAN HILL Dalinlongart, Sandbank,argyll