Tory is right on student votes

Regarding the comments of Anna Firth about student votes, I completely agree with what she says. Students should only be allowed to vote once at their permanent home address.

It is well-known that a number of students vote twice at their home and also their university address, which of course is illegal.

I feel that if the students had not been able to vote as they did we would have a different MP and not Ms Duffield.

M. Graydon

Rattington Street, Chartham

Your correspondent, Bob Britnell [Letters, February 6] informs readers that ‘the worst offenders’ in respect of climate change are China, Indonesia, India and Brazil. The evidence suggests otherwise. The US Environment Protection Agency names the burning of fossil fuels as the largest contributor to the increase of climate-changing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. In 2017, the latest year for which comparable figures are available, the four biggest emitters of carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels were: China, USA, India and Russia. Indonesia and Brazil ranked only 12th and 13th.

However, the figures for carbon emissions per person tell a different story. The five biggest emitters per capita were Saudi Arabia, Australia, USA, Kazakhstan and Canada. All of these emitted more than 15 tonnes of carbon dioxide per person, more than twice the emissions per person of China. The UK was the biggest source of cumulative carbon dioxide emissions in the world until 1911, when it was overtaken by the USA. In cumulative emissions per person, the UK remains the second largest source after the USA. True, the UK stands out as the country that has most reduced its carbon emissions since 1992. Yet if the UK’S carbon emissions per person are now lower than those of China, it is mostly because the UK increasingly relies on China for manufactured goods. Thus we have exported our carbon footprint to China and other developing countries. The impact of our consumption is disproportionately great. If we act to reduce our carbon emissions, we demonstrate to others that it is possible to do so without living in misery.

Climate change is a global issue, but it is also a local issue. We may not be the people most vulnerable to the consequences of global heating, but we will not escape them. Increased global temperatures warm the oceans which then produce more intense storms, and, in many places, more torrential rain.

Local newspapers may be forums for local issues, but if national and global issues are to be discussed in them, that discussion should be informed by evidence.

Christopher Rootes

Professor of Environmental Politics, University of Kent