Stop complaining and start saving the planet

If, as you report, the majority of the British public doubt that climate change is caused by humans then environmentalists should pause for thought ('Poll: most Britons doubt cause of climate change', News, last week). Might one problem be that environmentalism talks the talk but doesn't walk the walk?

Having frightened us half to death, environmentalists then consistently oppose all large-scale solutions: wind farms, nuclear power, the Severn barrage, carbon capture. People aren't stupid. They see the idea of a return to some pre-industrial Elysium as bonkers. And they know that it won't be enough just to turn down our thermostats, lag the loft, drive a bit less, turn off the telly and perhaps stick a solar panel on the roof.

Having noticed the gap between the scale of the problem and that of the environmentally 'acceptable' solutions, they assume that the problem is exaggerated.
Hugh Pemberton
Bath

The Observer's climate change poll results reflect the reality that many of our fellow citizens are not so much dumb as ostrich-like in refusing to acknowledge that our currently high-carbon consumption lifestyles are a direct contributor to the extreme weather that swept away much of Boscastle in 2004.

The rebuilding of the village (News, 22 June) is a beacon of hope to a less fossil fuel dependent future. A future that makes building a successful sustainable lifestyle possible because of the renewal of a sense of community: a restoration of collective purpose and goodwill.
Richard Denton-White
Citizen party spokesman
Portland, Dorset

It is no surprise that many people are sceptical about the human contribution to climate change. Recent severe weather has been put forward as evidence of climate change, ignoring the disastrous floods in Lynmouth and East Anglia in the early 1950s. Hurricane Katrina caused tragic devastation in 2005 but so did hurricanes in North Carolina in 1776 and Galveston in 1900, which killed thousands of people.
Anthony John Augarde
Oxford

While Andrew Rawnsley's Comment article last week ('Don't rely on the boys with the black stuff, Mr Brown') is bang on target as a lecture to the politicians, we do suggest that it can 'be woolly to be green', but only in a limited sense. We are delighted to note that Rawnsley is not only aware of the hydrogen-powered car, but also of solar power. Put solar-generated electricity together with electrolytically generated hydrogen, and we can start talking of hydrogen-fired power stations and a world living at last on its energy income, not on its nearly exhausted carbon capital.
Sir Leslie Fielding FRSA
Elton, near Ludlow, Shropshire
Dr Cyril Laming FIMechE FRSA
Woodmancote, near Chichester West Sussex

The majority of Britons, you suggest, don't believe climate change is man-made. You refer to possible influence from Nigel Lawson and the Danish economist Bjorn Lomberg. I'm surprised Sooty and Sweep didn't get a mention. What is it that the majority of the British public don't believe in? The huge tonnage of carbon dioxide emitted to the atmosphere? The quantum mechanics of radioactive transfer with regard to carbon dioxide? Inconvenience, wilful stupidity and selfishness have more to do with the MORI poll results than belief.
Dr Sam Langridge
Buxted, Sussex

The main problem that scientists face in getting this message across is the result of previous scares that have become unfashionable, been fixed, or maybe have been just plain wrong: the millennium bug, acid rain, the ozone hole, to mention a few.
Peter Buckland
Uxbridge, Middlesex

Source - The Guardian