Renewables will bring a safer future

I READ the recent news article announcing a review on fracking with sadness, given the very grave situation we face.

The latest IPCC report lays out the facts: to stay within 1.5°C warming, carbon emissions must peak by

2025 and be halved by 2030. Carry on as we are and we will exceed

3°C warming. What is the point when the business secretary states that “fracking in England would take years of exploration and development before commercial quantities of gas could be produced.”

One of the criteria for allowing shale gas to be extracted is that it is deemed sustainable. New sources are clearly not sustainable because we would fail to meet 2030 targets. All our investment is needed to decarbonise at pace, starting now.

The other criterion set by the business secretary is that fracking needs to be safe. Not so – we already know that fracking causes premature deaths to older people: https://bit. ly/3sEgkd9.

Yes, cold and poverty also cause premature deaths. But renewable energy is simply cheaper and landbased solar and wind are fast to deliver. It will be tomorrow’s poor who will pay the price of exceeding 1.5°C. If we cannot support people now with something like a windfall tax, who is going to support people at 3°C warming? We may not like how wind and solar farms look, but I don’t much like car parks, motorways or pollution from fossil fuels. We have to embrace the positives that renewables will bring: a cleaner and safer future. And we have to do that now.

Sue Nicholson Sidmouth, Devon