Winds of change

One has to admire Lesley Riddoch for her perseverance on climate change and what should be done to stop the world from frying up or being submerged depending on the latest scientific “research” (Perspective, 12 November).

Every article she writes says what Scotland and the UK should do but never ventures into Chinese or Indian territory, where 35 per cent of global emissions reside and are not going to reduce for decades.

Does Ms Riddoch really believe that developing countries will leave fossil fuels in the ground? Does she really believe that developing countries will erect expensive wind turbines, which only provide part-time electricity, when there is all the reliable cheap fossil fuel below their feet?

I hope she reads the excellent letter from Lyndsey Ward on 12 November, which demolished the “clean” and “reliable” wind industry claims and highlighted the health hazards and the expensive – to the electricity consumer – wind subsidies.

CLARK CROSS Springfield Road, Linlithgow

In 2014 the Yes campaign told us oil revenues were “just a bonus” to the Scottish

economy post independence, presumably giving extra spending for health, education and so on.

Four years later, Mary Thomas (Letters, 13 November) claims that her rather optimistic forecast of oil revenues will be needed to cover “almost 50 per cent of the notional GERS deficit” – in other words, not a bonus at all, just leaving us

worse off but not by as much. I share her enthusiasm for renewables (basically wind), but the future of that energy depends on English consumers paying a bit over the odds for green energy. This is most likely to be achieved if we are part of the same country.

If we want to have both a thriving renewable energy industry and healthy levels

of public spending regardless of the GERS situation, we are best to stick with the Union. KEITH SHORTREED

Cottown of Gight, Methlick, Aberdeenshire