Renewable energy is key to our future
ACCORDING to your report (21 April) there seems to be a majority of voters who want to extend the Brexit transition period indefinitely, because they see the possibility of never leaving the EU at all, and making the UK a junior member on a par with Bulgaria and Romania as mere sources of cheap labour for the office workers of Amsterdam, Berlin, Brussels, and Luxembourg, the idlest of all, with the highest GDP per head in the EU.
After the way the senior nations of the EU refused Italy and Spain financial support to cope with Covid-19, there is no hope the UK, that the EU wants to punish, would get a better deal than those worst hit by the virus. Most businesses will not be able to restart as though nothing has changed, because most of their markets will have shrivelled almost to nothing. Everything will be different and no country will be able to rely on “just-in-time” delivery of raw materials, supplies, crops and components from around the globe, or even other parts of Europe.
Nations will manufacture mainly for their own needs and the particular preferences of their own people, with vehicles and machinery that are easy to upgrade and repair to last for generations instead of merely months or years.
Last evening, there was a fascinating programme about wonderful Bentley cars, built by a venerable British company now owned by diesel-cheating VW, exporting dream machines to China and the Arabian peninsular for around £170,000 each.
I think most of us have outgrown such flamboyant toys and are more concerned about global warming, ocean acidification and climate change, global dangers which eclipse even Covid-19.
Instead of subordinating ourselves to any EU composite resolution, I believe the UK should renew its understanding of the power locked up in Earth’s oceans to reverse ocean warming and acidification, while continental powers can only think in terms of terrestrial solutions, as expressed in the Paris Agreement to phase-out fossil fuels over nearly half a century, which is far too slow.
I believe we must harness renewable energy to cool oceans, to cool the air, to cool the land and help polar glaciers and tundra to refreeze every winter, instead of allowing ourselves to be out-voted by 28 EU members, if you include Albania, to rely on phasing-out fossil fuels far too slowly. While the United States government remains unconcerned about climate change, it will probably be left to the rest of the English-speaking world to take ocean warming seriously, with the Commonwealth providing a structure for trying out possibilities, the best of which might then win the support of the UN and the International Maritime Organisation.
Tony Maskell Newton Ferrers, Plymouth