Denial will kill us

MAY I respond, reluctantly, to Anthony Weeden’s bait? He is good at what he does. But BFP readers should know that his conclusions are completely at odds with the world’s most respected charities, such as Oxfam. And at odds with reality too.

It is perfectly legal for him and his cronies to continue writing an endless stream of grossly misleading ‘expert’ letters casting doubt upon climate change reality. It is perfectly legal for the Bucks Free Press to print these.

But is it decent, and is it accurate? I attended Copenhagen. I simply cannot imagine anything less like an expensive Xmas party! Sleeping on wooden school floors; water and a bread roll for breakfast if you rose early enough; a cup of plain vegetable soup from a soup kitchen for lunch; daily abuse from the Copenhagen police and a painfully slow and sleepless slow coach journey! All this was fine, but not many people’s idea of luxury. I went at my expense, not the taxpayers’.

I travelled on a packed coach of members of the Stop Climate Chaos coalition, at a carbon cost of just under ten gallons of diesel each, for the entire trip. These were not fanatics, but decent, bright people, from diverse backgrounds, representing their charities: all sharing a common bond of caring deeply about others, and our common future. In ten years, if people look back at the letters pages of today, they will be appalled that a geographically distributed articulate and tenacious few could have found it so easy to prolong the era of ‘reasonable doubt’, for so long that our species almost left it too late to cut the carbon – and save itself from oblivion.

Dogged denial will kill us. Only truth will set us free. Will the Bucks Free Press report it?”

Dave Hampton, the carbon coach, Hyde Green, Marlow.