Editor,

Here in Meirionnydd we are blessed by the main candidates standing in last week’s election recognising the issues facing Wales and the world. They have their differences, but they do not deny the overwhelming urgency of tackling climate change.

Not so Boris Johnson’s Conservatives. More road building, freezing fuel duties, continuing to guzzle on North Sea gas. What planet does the man think he is on? Not the baking, burning and drowning world that the rest of us recognise. Not a planet that our children and grandchildren can survive on if he has his way.

Getting Brexit done? A distraction, and one he cannot deliver. We all know that the complex web of standards and treaties that make trade possible cannot be unpicked in a year, or even four years, on the basis of his sort of “agreement”. We could decide things more quickly, if first we reach a simple leave arrangement with Europe based around a customs union and, second, have a people’s choice referendum to choose between leaving on that specific proposal, or staying with our neighbours. Boris’s plan leaves us facing four more years of watching him witter on about Brexit, waving his arms around trying to perfect his big friendly buffoon image.

Not that we want to see him “dead in a ditch” - ditches are drainage features and we are likely to need all we can get on a warming planet. Far better if he were to go off with his friend Trump and bury their heads in the tar sands of denial.

Wales can do better. Wales is doing better. Our Senedd has been working on energy policies, on housing standards, on ambitious policies for public transport and active travel. Individually we know what we have to do. We have to get out of our cars and onto public transport, onto our bikes, and onto our own two feet. We have to insulate our homes properly, and change from those gas boilers we thought wonderful a few years ago, to sustainable electric heating.

We can take those decisions, and our local plumbers, electricians and building contractors can do the work. Sadly, everything we do as a nation, or as individuals, can be set back if Westminster does not seriously and consistently commit to renewables. If it does not tax frequent flyers so hard that they do not have enough of their excessive incomes left, to fritter it away injecting their greenhouse gases straight into our upper atmosphere. If it does not tell the big corporations that, from now on, the fossil fuels stay in the ground.

Tony Lovelock Glandwr Terrace Glanypwll Blaenau Ffestiniog

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