The letter from Richard Belding highlights only one aspect of the transport problems we must address after Covid-19.

Cars are destroying our whole way of life and as usual ‘false gods’ are being promoted by those with most to gain financially. For instance, battery powered electric cars are being promoted as a solution. In my opinion this is an unrealistic assumption. Those with a good range are beyond most pockets and their manufacture employs the use of scarce chemicals.

We are avoiding the sheer impossibility of the infrastructure needed to charge car batteries. Even cars with very large electrical storage will need to recharge the batteries three times as often as they currently fill them with diesel or gasoline taking at least three times as long. How many of us could safely charge an electric car at our homes? Very few! Our walkways would become a 'minefield' of cables, would probably be banned even if you could find a convenient parking spot. The world has become one huge car park.

Important steps are taking place to use green energy from solar and wind sources to produce hydrogen. The technology is simple. Their clean energy 'splits' water by electrolysis into hydrogen and oxygen. This method is already being used In a few locations to 'dilute' natural gas with hydrogen to fuel houses and trains.. Hydrogen burns to produce only water vapour with no smell, no carbon dioxide, no smoke and no poisonous fumes. A domestic boiler can be converted in half an hour to burn pure hydrogen.

New materials are being tested to enable hydrogen to be stored in special vessels in cars, lorries and trains. These reduce the volume needed and the pressure required. These vessels will be capable of being filled just as easily as petrol at 'filling stations'. During the last war, gas bags were mounted on car roofs and filled with coal gas. Petrol engines can be converted to gas far more cheaply than buying a new electric car. Diesel cars cannot be converted and quite rightly are being phased out since they are poisoning us all.

Although a clean fuel will solve many of our problems, it won’t solve all of them. We need to use the new technology of hydrogen production to create forests and agriculture in our deserts. We need to be thinking 'big' but we are still thinking 'small'. Mother Nature has given us a stern warning. We will ignore it at our peril.

Mike Joslin

Dorchester