Sir – It is human to err and politicians are not exempt from making mistakes. The 2008 Climate Change Act introduced by Ed Miliband made a few errors unfortunately.

One of these mistakes was to target carbon emissions by encouraging the sale of diesel vehicles to unsuspecting motorists.

These diesel vehicles are now found to be responsible for at least 7,000 deaths a year due to the irritating arborne particulate matter from their exhausts.

The Government is now trying to rectify this legislative mistake by trying to deter diesel drivers from entering London and introducing stricter exhausts’ emissions rules. Another strategic error was the closure of our coal power stations in a bid to curb carbon emissions.

Again it is a similar error to that of the diesel vehicles. Most of the power station emissions were steam and virtually no particulate matter or irritating pollutants.

This was due to the chimney scrubbers that removed the pollution. So now we have an unintended consequence of a looming power shortage that will result in even more dangerous airborne pollution reaching the skies. Why do I say this?

Well, when winter power cuts arrive, many homeowners will open up their fireplaces and start to burn coal and wood to keep warm. This will release huge amounts of dangerous particulate-filled smoke that is proven to cause asthma, lung cancer and heart disease.

The burning of these fossil fuels indoors also completely negates the whole point of closing the coal power stations.

What the 2008 Act failed to grasp is the vast improvements that had been made to power stations to safeguard people’s health.

Therefore it would have been better to curb carbon emissions by other means such as encouraging recycling and not concreting over land. Garden soil is a fantastic carbon sink. One third of all carbon is already locked up in the soil.

Susan Thomas, Oxford