AS the global temperature rises there has been an exponential increase in warnings to the public of the inevitable dire consequences to humanity if we don’t make drastic changes to our lifestyles.

We, the great unwashed, despite currently struggling to put food on the table and keep a roof over our heads due to an inflationary spiral we didn’t create, are told we are causing the problem and must make fundamental changes. For example we need to scrap our perfectly serviceable cars and buy new electric ones, our gas or oil-fired central heating systems need to be ripped out and replaced with heat pumps which will increase our reliance on electricity to make them work. Nobody ever mentions the impact on the environment or global warming of the mining of the materials required to create these new products or their manufacture.

Apparently, the long-term plan is that we are all to be herded into neighbourhoods where everything we need is within walking distance, assuming, that is, that you can walk. We have to start eating lab-manufactured meat since cow farts are prejudicing the existence of mankind.

Meanwhile the 1% of humanity which possesses 80% plus of global wealth dines on paté de foie gras, has multiple homes on different continents, flies about on private jets and plays at being spacemen in rockets commissioned by competing billionaires. The surplus resources they have and can never need could be used to ameliorate climate change and save a doomed planet but they do nothing.

Our governments are happy to be involved in wars anywhere despite the unnecessary carbon footprint this creates, never mind the unnecessary loss of lives and the destruction of property that will need to be replaced. India, for example, has horrendous levels of poverty and destitution and is still supported by British taxpayers via overseas aid yet is firing rockets at the Moon. We import food from New Zealand that can easily be produced here in the UK. Your current edition carries a picture of two UK aircraft carriers that cost us the thick part of £10 billion to build but run on oil-based fuel and are designed to carry jets that will also run on fossil fuels, that is if we ever can afford to buy them ("Ship mates", The Herald, August 5). The ships are expected to cost £7 million a day to run, burning fossil fuels just to wave the Union Jack in the Pacific. Is that good global warming?

Millionaire Westminster cabinet ministers see no problem flying everywhere by private jet despite contributing to global warming and taxpayer debt by doing so.

I’m getting mixed messages here.

David J Crawford, Glasgow.

Read more: It's time SNP owned up and stopped hiding behind Calmac

Give us realistic electricity price

I DON’T know what planet the entrepreneur and ennobled Lord Haughey is on but he is certainly not in the real world.

To suggest that everyone should install electric boilers is uninformed lunacy and it is pretty obvious he is not struggling to pay his energy bill like the majority of the poorer people I have experience of ("Harvie urged to be honest with Scots on domestic heat pumps", The Herald, August 2).

Electric heating other than by a heat pump is massively more expensive and as not everyone has access to gas or hydrogen if this replaces natural gas, there will always be a requirement for heat pumps.

There may be problems with some installations and I suspect that this could be because of unfamiliarity regarding the design, installation and maintenance of heat pumps, however if installed correctly they perform well.

Give the public a realistic price for electricity and the use and knowledge of heat pumps will increase rapidly to everyone’s benefit.

The only problem then will be the inability of the grid to cope with the increased demand due to heat pumps and electric cars, unless local generation and storage is encouraged.

Iain McIntyre, Sauchie.

Harvie's war on our houses

PATRICK Harvie has declared war upon Scotland's houses and housing market ("Harvie's stance on hydrogen boilers attacked", The Herald, August 4).

This is a politician who has a very small electoral vote base who is nonetheless dictating to the entire country what they should be doing and threatening sanctions if they don't.

Humza Yousaf seems to be very quiet on this subject. Does he fully back Mr Harvie and is he also prepared to take the blame if this rushed scheme falters like everything else the Greens have been involved in?

Scotland's Government is being made to look very foolish by those who actually know their field. Not for the first time, sadly. Lessons have definitely not been learned. It is high time they were.

Dr Gerald Edwards, Glasgow.

• DOES Patrick Harvie propose that not only hydrogen boilers will be banned by the SNP/Green alliance but that it will be extended to include the 25,000MW of gas turbine plant detailed in the SNP Energy Paper? If so, will this mean that, when the 60,000MW of wind farms fail to generate due to a lack of wind, Scottish consumers will be left in the dark over the winter?

Ian Moir, Castle Douglas.

Read more: This life-threatening plan is all about saving the Tories' bacon

We need energy planning body

VICKY Allan’s recent article ("Offshore wind sector threatened by the UK Government", The Herald August 3) reads like a voice for Scottish Renewables rather than an insightful examination of what is of national importance: that is, the provision of an energy policy which delivers a secure energy supply at lowest cost. While there is a place for wind generation as a significant contributor to clean energy, it is not part of a rational energy strategy to place a disproportionate amount of the solution on an energy resource which cannot be relied upon to supply energy when it is required.

The variable character of wind means that offshore wind farms, on average, can only supply, over the year, less than half their rated capacity. Furthermore, the periods where little or no power is generated can extend over weeks with the wind lulls sufficiently extensive to cover the British Isles and the European mainland. Building more wind farms without a strategy which recognises the need to provide dispatchable generation in the form of stored energy solutions, gas with carbon capture and nuclear, is a dangerous planning failure. Until this fundamental issue is properly resolved there should be a complete halt to further investment in wind energy.

The cost to provide storage for the quantity of energy required to offset wind power’s deficiencies alone, and meet decarbonising targets by 2050, would be truly astronomical. Forget the mantra that wind energy is cheap. As part of the whole energy system, it is anything but cheap.

There is an urgent need for a whole-system planning authority, staffed with appropriate professional expertise, divorced from the pleadings of vested interests and political prejudice, to formulate a robust energy strategy which is solely concerned with energy security and cost. There are signs that the UK Government is beginning to realise that a "green future" based solely on intermittent generation is a dangerous and expensive mistake.

Norman McNab, Killearn.

• I NOTE that the UK Government’s net zero electricity tsar, Nick Winser, has said that people should be paid to have pylons near their homes to speed up the construction of 600 miles of new cables across the UK.

Far from receiving payment, any householder wishing an electricity supply should be required to sign an undertaking that they will not object to infrastructure.

Scott Simpson, Glasgow.

Harper had it right

RE your piece on Robin Harper’s letter of resignation to the SNP ("Former Greens MSP says party has ‘lost the plot’ as he resigns",The Herald, August 4): his appraisal of the direction of the Green Party is as ever, measured and insightful. He is too much of a gentleman to highlight the fact that he at least was elected into Holyrood in his own right, not by squeezing in through the back door on the transferable vote allocation. Nor will it escape observers that the Greens only enjoy the political high of power-wielding in government because the SNP needs its support to shore up its wobbly majority.

As for the Green spokesperson who commented that its policies are “delivering what Robin [Harper] and others could only have wished for back in the days of devolution” – I think not. We need only mention the mire that is gender recognition and the trans community, the failed DRS and most recently Patrick Harvie’s headlong, blinkered sprint to embrace heat source pumps in favour of all other options.

Let’s be careful what we wish for: unelected politicians ignoring expert advice and rushing to rash and costly mistakes – sound familiar ?

Colin Allison, Blairgowrie.