Our politicians are addicted to fossil fuels but unlike smoking we all feel the consequences - Yorkshire Post Letters

Smoking and politician’s addiction to fossil fuels can be considered as two forms of self-harm. Smoking primarily damages one person’s body, while the consequence of fossil-fuels affects the entire planet. Both are forms of pollution, where known gases are continuously introduced into complex balanced systems.

The addictions persist through reward, peer conformity, fear of change, delayed consequences, and misleading narratives promoted by those who profit most from these harmful products.

Despite scientific evidence linking smoking to respiratory disease and premature death, the immediate relief from nicotine often outweighs the distant risk of illness for the individual.

Similarly, despite the scientific evidence and the onset of planetary heating, politicians remain addicted to coal, oil, and gas as there are many pressures on them to tow the party line; particularly when vast sums of money are involved and when fossil fuels are portrayed as the only affordable and reliable energy source by the media.

This analogy has limits: a smoker’s direct harm is largely personal, and quitting is an individual decision. Politicians cannot opt out overnight of economies and infrastructure built around fossil fuels.

Many do, however, choose to ignore the scientific warnings about climate heating because transition to renewables entails disruptive economic change. And the cost of transition is exaggerated and exploited by fossil-fuel companies for their own benefit.

Overcoming planetary pollution requires politicians who communicate the facts and present a credible, positive vision of the future. As with tobacco, reducing fossil-fuel dependence will require clear public information, provided by our leaders, about the dangers of greenhouse-gas pollution.

They should support a true green economy; make stronger laws to protect the atmosphere; and legislate so that prices reflect the damage greenhouse-gas emissions cause.

Smokers and many politicians are responsible for poisoning the environment on which they depend for survival. Yet change is possible. The World Health Organisation reports a substantial decline in smoking prevalence.

A comparable energy transition will require politicians to detach themselves from the ‘evil’ fossil-fuel financial inducements and act in the public interest - the term evil is usually defined as profound immorality, related to acts that cause pain and suffering.

So, as voters we should encourage our current MPs to wean themselves off this dirty habit and in future we should be thoughtful about who we place in parliament.