There’s nothing fanatical about green concerns

Colin Bullen’s letter on the environment really plumbed the depths. For his information, the ‘fashionable agenda of the Green lobby’ as he puts it, is far from being a recent development originated by ‘a Scandinavian girl’, which I take to be a gratuitously snide reference to Greta Thunberg.

Mr Bullen claims some sort of self-appointed right to speak on behalf of ‘genuine workers’ and ‘ordinary people’, whatever that might mean.

As someone from a working class background, trained and educated in environmental issues and now in my mid-70s, I have had a lifelong interest, expertise and concern about what humanity has been doing to the planet and this concern has been shared by many people that I know, over the years.

It has become steadily difficult during my lifetime, based on observations both in this country and on my travels in many other parts of the world, not to look with growing despair at what sort of environment the current generation is leaving for its children and grandchildren.

Since he clearly thinks that a concern for the environment is a fringe or minority interest in British society, I would refer him to the 5.6 million membership of the National Trust; the one million or more members of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and the 850,000 members of the county Wildlife Trusts.

All of these organisations have members from all walks of life and are supplemented by the countless thousands of members of other societies and organisations such as The Woodland Trust which have similar concerns about the environment.

Consider too, the enormous and concerned response from across all parts of society to the recent televised David Attenborough programmes.

These people are not fanatics. They have their minds and their eyes open, can see for themselves what is happening all around them and increasingly want something done about it.

Ken Chapman