SIR OLIVER Letwin in his weekly message chose to give a Global View on Climate Change (Dorset Echo, March 2nd). He was one of the handful of Tory MPs who could be bothered to listen to the climate change debate in Parliament last week, and is to be thanked for that. He recognised that the effects of climate change “would be with us for a long time after Brexit is a distant memory.”

But his take home conclusion was merely “It does, as they say, make you think”. But just “thinking” is not good enough. We need urgent climate ACTION now, urgent political action in order to make the societal changes that are necessary now in order to avert total climate catastrophe.

Tory Ministers since 2010 have consistently failed to give leadership on climate change.

Despite it being a Tory Chancellor who introduced the fuel duty escalator in 1993, Tory Chancellors have frozen the duty for the past nine years. The result is that carbon dioxide emissions from transport have not fallen and transport is now the largest emitting sector of the UK. [ 1 ]

This Tory Government has continued to support fossil fuel exploitation (such as the oil rig off the Dorset coast) despite the fact that the recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Report set a carbon budget [2] which can only realistically be met by keeping fossil fuels in the ground.

This Tory Government has slashed the support for home insulation, a scheme which would have benefited efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, created jobs and at the same time reduced fuel poverty. In a damming report last month, the Committee on Climate Change opens by saying that “UK homes are not fit for the future” and points out that wall and loft insulation is a mere 5% of the peak market delivery of 2012. [ 3]

Failure to support public transport, removing the incentives for household solar power, blocking community wind projects, supporting airport expansion, supporting fracking; all of these and more are the “head in the sand, leave it to the next generation” approach of the current Government.

Children in Dorset, throughout the UK and globally are demanding action NOW on climate change. The time for just thinking is long, long past, the necessary remedial actions have been known for decades.

Fiddling while Rome burns is not a credible option.

Jacki Lambert

West & South Dorset Green Party Press Officer

Gypsy Lane, Weymouth