I NOTE your report on Chancellor Phillip Hammond's remarks on the cost of cutting carbon emissions ("UK risks a £1tn climate crisis bill, fears Hammond", The Herald, June 7). In the same issue we read "Doomsday report on global warming scenario for 2050".
Numerous international climate change scientists are agreed that the cost of mitigation against climate change will be far less than the cost of adaptation when the crisis happens. Not only in the purely monetary and economic terms of dealing with the structural disasters such as flooding, drought, heatwaves, fire and so on, but the global human misery of increased disease, starvation, migration, and conflict resulting from unrestrained climate change. Not to mention the loss of thousands of species other than humans, and the entire natural environment upon which we, as the only species in control of the future, depend.
I strongly suggest that Mr Hammond spends his money now, rather than leave it to others – that is, his and my grandchildren, to pick up the bill when we are gone. They will not forgive us.
Rose Harvie,
Dumbarton.
DAVID Munford (Letters, June 7) has failed to point out to your readers that the demise of the UK grid results in English consumers no longer being liable to pay 92 per cent of renewable costs.
A ban on 150 TWhours of gas over the next decade means an annual £18 billion increase in Scottish energy costs. In addition, to replace gas with wind turbines operating at a 20 per centload factor at a cost of £2 million/MW is a debt of £175 billion plus interest charges.
If MSPs refuse to price-match renewable energy prices to that of gas (4p/unit) then only the rich in Scotland will be able to afford to cook their meals and heat their homes.
Ian Moir, Castle Douglas.
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