We must ensure that we preserve our fragile green lungs

How can we square the impossible circle between insatiable housing demand and saving our countryside, our biodiversity, from unsustainable loss?

PM Johnson and COP26 warn us ‘our world is at one minute to midnight having run down the clock on waiting to combat climate change’.

We have no time to lose: scientists are racing to finish a key IPCC report saying the situation is now so serious that carbon dioxide removal will be needed in addition to massive cuts in emissions.

Hundreds of campaigners are marching in Dorset protesting at plans to build 4,000 houses on open land. Dorset Council envisages a massive new development north of Dorchester which protesters say will desecrate the Thomas Hardy countryside.

Carrying effigies of a property developer, they demand the council rethink its draft plan. STAND, the pressure group which organised the protest, said fields were the ‘green lungs’ of Dorchester and the landscape were of huge historical, environmental and cultural significance to the county town.

Dorset Council’s David Walsh, member for planning, previously said: “We continue to work on the policies that underpin the plan. This includes research and gathering information to make sure the plan delivers what it needs for Dorset’s next generations.”

But will it? Can it?

Green public transport (buses and trains) must underpin all insulated energy-efficient housing development to include generous gardens, trees, expansive green communal spaces for active travel, walking, cycling, reliable comfortable free public transport within easy walking distance from where we live, and infrastructure that can cope. But will it? Can it?

It cannot be ‘business as usual’.

West Sussex , as elsewhere, must save our fragile green lungs from harmful unsustainable development and loss.

PETER LANSLEY

Cedar Drive,

Chichester