Uphill struggle for HRH and Sir David

AS much as I admire Sir David Attenborough and the Duke of Cambridge, I think they are prophets in their own land and in their own time but, sadly, no-one is listening!

It’s all Biblical – the love of money is the root of all evil – in a word, Greed! The dramatic before and after photos during lockdown of cities in China showing the pollution and then clear skies and visibility was proof, if proof were needed, of the damage being caused. We have only to go back to the 1960s when we had the knee jerk, quick-fix Beeching cuts to the railways which were simply to prop up the ailing car industry and get more people buying cars etc. In no time we had the biggest car park in the world

– aka the M25, hundreds of miles of new or widened roads creating enormous pollution everywhere and becoming a health hazard. Now we have another knee jerk reaction trying to get people off the roads and to abandon the use of cars by using public transport! Building cycle lanes to lure people into using bikes!

Plastic was hailed as the new wonder material but in the 1970s we were actively encouraged to be the throwaway society which is the basis now for many of the problems we have – plastic bottles being discarded everywhere, etc, etc, causing litter and damage worldwide to our seas and wildlife.

The environmental cost literally is huge to clear up the mess but governments do not like spending money like that, and when you have the President of the USA, Donald Trump claiming that climate change is fake news, anyone attempting to make a change before it’s all too late is only banging their head against a brick wall!

We have the knee-jerk reaction to building housing. I have for at least 10 years been writing to MPs to state my concern about the amount of top quality agricultural land being used for this purpose, despite the dire warnings of climate change and not knowing what effect this may have on our traditional crops. It’s no use assuming we can import food in the future because climate change will affect crops worldwide and other countries may not want to, or be able to, export food.

I have said that all this building on agricultural land will probably mean in the future that people may be able to starve to death in the comfort of these houses! But I too have been ignored! The only person who will probably be able to say in the future with glee will be Greta Thunberg “I told you so”.

It’s no use just clearing up the litter and plastic – its use has to be severely restricted. There are more acres of agricultural land being used as solar panel farms. Why is it not mandatory for all new buildings – housing, schools, supermarkets, industrial units etc – to have solar panels? Supermarkets could/should have roofs over their car parks using solar panels which would help customers anyway loading their cars in either very hot or cold weather.

Any spare power generated can be fed into the National Grid which I assume would reduce the need for more new power stations, and preserve agricultural land.

Wind turbines were hailed as the solution to energy requirements, but they have now been proven to be not as good as expected and are a blot on the landscape and causing some health problems.

So sorry Sir David, Your Highness and Greta, but I think your efforts you will find very difficult and you will continually come up against brick walls because you have to convince governments as well as local populations that this is a serious problem – which few want to confront because of the financial implications! But best of luck!

Jillian L Chave (Mrs) Ottery St Mary, Devon