Letter: Time spent 'bickering' should have been spent saving planet

As ice sheets retreat they reflect less solar energy, the exposed darker surfaces absorb more heat and trapped gasses escape causing more warming and more ice to melt.

Matters are further worsened by fires and dying vegetation so, even if human greenhouse gas emissions became neutral now there would still be massive problems.

Geo-engineering techniques like Solar Radiation Management are risky but may become necessary.

Over the last 30-40 years there have been many actions which would have made perfect sense regardless of the nature, cause, extent and direction of climate change e.g. if a major volcanic eruption like Tambora in 1815 caused temperatures to plummet.

Examples include restoring fish stocks, combining conservation with careful use, reducing waste, developing alternatives to fossil fuels, growing fewer cash crops, population policies and reducing the impact per head of conventional livestock and/or their numbers.

Instead the time was spent stupidly bickering over whether or not human activities could have such an effect when there were win-win options available instead if anybody could be bothered funding them.

It is now rather late and the efforts required will increase massively.

Who is going to take a few hundred million climate refugees from India and Bangladesh in a few years time, for example? I suspect well-off countries will fall over themselves to avoid any significant humanitarian effort.

Iain Climie

Whitchurch Hants