Last Friday (November 19) you reported that flooding incidents in Dorset had more than tripled “over a two-year period”.

On a different page, you showed the young climate activists who have been given custodial sentences for holding up traffic on the M25.

The demonstrators are part of Insulate Britain, whose objective is to wake people up to the catastrophic results of human development, to which motor traffic is one of the main contributors.

The group has not been popular because the general public seem to think they are demonstrating and disrupting everyday life for the fun of it; it has therefore been vilified.

This means that the group's intentions are not getting across. (The PM despises them as “inconsiderate crusties”!)

The Highway Authority says: We welcome this . . . we do not condone the actions of anyone who puts their lives and the lives of road users at risk”. This is reasonable on the face of it. But how many lives have been lost in the past by people holding up traffic? I’ve never heard of one.

Being in a traffic jam is frustrating and tedious but rarely, if ever fatal. The media is partly responsible, using terms like “misery” to describe a hold-up - frustration yes but “misery” describes, eg, a flood or a wildfire - things that cost lives and make survivors homeless. And these are the kind of happenings that environment campaigners are trying to reduce.

Motorists who really do put their lives - and others - in peril, through drink or drugs or simple recklessness are most often given a suspended sentence or a very short driving ban, perhaps a token fine; but rarely a custodial sentence. It’s as if depriving them of their cars is an attack on their deepest self.

I feel that we need to look much more closely at our slavish reliance on the private car and think how we can reduce its power over us.

The fact that our recent local flooding is more than likely due to climate change should make us think harder on this issue.

Lynne Crowe

Fancy’s Close, Portland