MR HORA’S letter (Oxford Mail, February 18) suggests we should be maintaining a coal industry whose time has gone and that we should ignore consensual scientific evidence on human-induced climate change as well.

He refers to the Didcot A power station’s demise as if it was a misfortune.

When Natalie Bennett, leader of the Green Party spoke on sustainability in Didcot earlier this month, no one came forward to suggest that there is a sustainable future for the coal industry. In fact, leaving fossil fuels of all types in the ground is critical to reducing human-created greenhouse gas emissions which are changing our climate rapidly.

Today's Letters

A combination of a better insulated built environment and more renewable energy will create jobs in Didcot and elsewhere to add to the million or so “Green economy” jobs we already have.

There is even a costed programme to add one million climate-related jobs to our economy at a cost of £16 billion: that is £10 billion less than the £26 billion a year our government is spending on subsidising fossil fuel industries such as the Didcot A power station.

We can easily meet our energy needs in the future by being a lot more energy efficient and using renewables.

Fighting climate change is about resisting energy wastage, reducing flood risks and extreme droughts.

It is also about ending air pollution that kills about 30,000 people in this country each year and perhaps as many as 370,000 a year in Europe as a whole.

It is about preventing catastrophic temperature increases and sea level rise which are already in progress and have been repeatedly measured by climate scientists.

The fantasy of climate change denial is that human action which pollutes our environment is without consequences.

It never has been in the past, nor do we have any reason to think it will be in the future.

STEVE DAWE

County Press Officer,

Oxfordshire Green Party