Reopen Levenmouth rail link and we’re a step nearer to beating climate change
Scotland’s First Minister has declared a“climate emergency” in response to the wave of school protesters and the Scottish Government has recently boasted of its “worldleading climate targets”.
According to the European Environment Agency, rail travel accounts for 14 grams of CO2 emissions per passenger mile, dwarfed by the 285g generated by air travel, and the 158g per passenger mile from car journeys. One immediate, simple and practical response to this emergency would be to reopen the Levenmouth rail link pronto.
This would capitalise upon an existing green asset in the form of a line already in place but currently mothballed and at a fraction of the cost of any new road project they have favoured for decades.
Or are these statement merely more gesture politics like the claims of inclusive growth and tackling disadvantage which has left the former mining areas such as Levenmouth lagging behind? JAMES ROBERTSON
Casan, Leven
Mention the words “climate change” or “climate emergency” and climate scientists and “entrepreneurs” are drooling at the mouth in anticipation of the research grants, subsidies and investment grants which will keep them in luxury for years.
Now scientists at the University of Cambridge plan to set up are search centre to develop new ways to repair the Earth’ s climate (your report ,11 May ). These include refreezing the earth’s poles, removing CO2 from the atmosphere and fertilising the sea with iron salts to promote the growth of plankton. Over the years there has been failure after failure on climate schemes but still the government ploughs more taxpayers’ money in.
Remember Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) was going to “save the planet”? A costly failure.
Remember Salter’ s duck, a device that converts wave power to electricity? Another non-starter.
Then there was the idea of dropping a weight down a disused mine shaft to turn a generator and produce electricity. The company received £650,000 in government grants, but no grid electricity so far.
However, pride of place must go to the people who were proposing to fly kites to produce electricity. I think they were told, “go fly a kite”.
CLARK CROSS Springfield Road, Linlithgow