Big decisions to make on climate change

YOUR small piece headlined ‘Support for solar panels on cottage’ (Newbury Weekly News, April 7) about a proposal for solar panels on a listed building in Eastbury, supported by Lambourn Parish Council, was such a refreshing contrast to recent letters from climate change denier TT Weller in nearby Brightwalton.

Your readers might be surprised that I wish to link this to the war in Ukraine and the furore over Rishi Sunak’s recent tax proposals and his Government’s response generally to the cost of living crisis caused by energy price hikes.

But it has been obvious for decades that reliance on autocratic states for strategic supplies like oil and gas is foolish. If not Russia, then the Middle

East: Saudi Arabia wouldn’t need or deserve to be an ally if it wasn’t a prime source of oil.

If climate change wasn’t a good enough reason to massively increase investment in homegrown renewable energy sources, then geopolitics ought to have been.

Just because we are suddenly faced with an immediate need to respond to Russian aggression won’t make climate change go away.

Turning back to coal and relying on other fossil fuels to plug the gap in energy needs of western countries for any longer than absolutely essential will just increase the existential threat to the whole of humanity, giving us even less time to make the necessary changes to every aspect of our way of life.

There is no greater threat to Conservation Areas in West Berkshire villages than climate change.

If I had to choose for my sons and grandsons between letting them live under Putin’s thumb and helping to make it impossible for them to have a life at all – because the means to support human life were destroyed – I would have to choose Putin.

And I do think that is a choice we may have to face – and we need a Government which is able to make it.

To be able to stand up to Putin, we need to be able to demonstrate credibly that we don’t need his gas, or his fertilisers, or his wheat for more than a few years, if at all. So why was there no mention of climate change in Mr Sunak’s March statement or in our Prime Minister’s last week about the obvious short-term energy security measures possible?

You cannot defend Britain’s future against one of these threats without also dealing with the other – and it is quite possible to do both.

Government just needs to allow on-shore wind turbine investment immediately and also invest in tidal power, which could deliver base load energy from all around our British shores 24/7 in far less time than any new nuclear.

Also you need to invest in the reduction of any need to consume energy in millions of poorly insulated homes.

Nothing was said about home insulation and fuel poverty, which

may not affect the PM or his neighbour personally but affect the poorest of our fellow citizens. Nuclear is enormously expensive and delivers nothing whatsoever for at least 10 years.

So I ask your readers to write to West Berkshire planners on planapps@westberks.govuk with support for the solar panels on Bumblebee Cottage (reference 22/00754/HOUSE) so that this can have a full public debate on the relative importance of tackling climate change as opposed to preventing visual harm to a listed building.

TONY VICKERS

Liberal Democrat council for Newbury Wash Common ward West Berkshire Council