SIR – Councillor [Neil] Laurenson’s evident disappointment at the failures of the Rio+20 summit (Worcester News, July 11) is perhaps predictable, but thankfully it seems as if world leaders have for once taken a pragmatic view of green policies, and even recognised them for the economic disaster that they are.

Perhaps “putting private profit before people and the planet” hopefully translates to following policies that will not marginalise and neuter an industrialised country like our own; a country which cannot be run on the intermittent power produced by a load of ugly, landscapedamaging, expensive windmills.

To subsidise renewables at a time when we are deeply in debt and struggling to be competitive flies in the face of reason, yet that is what we are doing in order to meet an insane EU target.

I suppose Mr Laurenson does not mind a bit that we all have to pay extra on our energy bills as a result and that this is a contributor to fuel poverty among the elderly.

But I suppose environmental zealotry will always win out over reason.

Yes, drive up energy bills in the pursuit of environmental nirvana and watch how wealth-creating energyintensive businesses will re-locate to other countries, taking their jobs with them.

Watch us sacrifice desperately needed economic progress in the name of dodgy science, and while you’re at it, keep that nasty shale gas from being exploited too. I mean, who wants cheaper gas and electricity anyway?

JAMES GOAD UKIP,
Worcester and district