We need to rein in naked capitalism that creates depressed and unhealthy societies - Yorkshire Post Letters

Climate change politics continue to attract correspondence while some writers suggest that the topic is of minor importance or provokes too much anger and should be hidden away on a back page. These are the correspondents (and politicians) who believe that the whole topic is ‘garbage’ or a ‘scam’.

Why is it that the deniers/diminishers are so angered by the topic? Is it a refusal to face the challenge to our comfortable way of life? Comfortable for some of us - we should never forget that 18 per cent of the UK population ‘live’ in absolute poverty so EVs and heat pumps are ludicrous at present. But money would be available if our governments were to end the subsidies given to fossil fuel companies.

The 'Energy Solution’ publication states that £10.5bn was provided in both 2019 and 2020 to help oil companies resist essential adaptation and to provide enormous bonuses for CEOs and more wealth for investors. These sums should be invested in sustainability in all its forms.

Why do some of us find that concept so alien as if the only indicator of human progress is continuously expanding consumption. Further funds would be unleashed by Patriotic Millionaires who repeat that those worth more than £10m should face a 2 per cent tax on their spare wealth.

We should also end the madness where, in the UK, the ‘top’ 1 per cent have as much wealth as the ‘lower’ 50 per cent (ONS stats). The anti-realists are shouting pie-in-the sky but we need desperately to rein in naked capitalism that creates, as all the research shows, depressed and unhealthy societies.

Why else such irrational anger against essential reform? Some blame Ed Miliband for attempting to explain Net Zero. They shout that all information on climate danger is ‘just opinion unsupported by science’. To counter this irrationality is impossible; such writers have dropped their logic down a conspiracy theory rabbit hole and misguidedly pretend to triumph in this debate.

Is it only when climate chaos comes to bite us in the UK that these pre-Galileo guys will understand? Ignore the rest of the globe and assert that those who report their experience of climate extremes are ‘climate-obsessives’.

One example of what we have so far escaped: in 2012 Hurricane Sandy hit the east of the US and 72 were killed in the Mid-Atlantic area alone. A 10-year-old who lived through it says in understatement "it is seared into my mind".

The mental ravages for the survivors are as deeply negative as the economic destructiveness. American psychologists report that in the two years after a major hurricane suicide rates in the victim population increase by 31 per cent. In a global survey of over 10,000 children just under half say that climate change knowledge significantly undermines their mental strength.

A tiny spark of humane leadership after the 2012 storm - photos of President Obama hugging survivors. Meanwhile the current President has denied US Government funds to areas that suffer such storms if the citizen majority there voted Democrat in elections.

For comfy Brits: it will never happen here. Is this an adult reaction? Keep shovelling your retirement funds (if you're lucky enough to have such money) into Shell or BP. The latter just cut their research funds spent on sustainable energy by $5bn.

To continue to finance our energy systems as they are is to follow the little Dutch boy who tried to support the collapsing dam using one finger to block the leaking hole.