Your article on climate change sounds a terrifying wake-up call, and rightly calls on political leaders to act with greater urgency (Worst ever CO2 emissions leave climate on the brink, 30 May).
That they have so far failed to do so, however, is not, as you suggest in your editorial (30 May), because "policymakers are out of solutions for slowing this process". It is not a lack of policy that is hindering a swift response, it's a shocking absence of political will.
The climate crisis is the greatest security threat that we face. If we are to avoid going down in history as the species that spent all its time monitoring its own extinction, rather than taking action to prevent it, we need to move to the equivalent of a "war footing", where the efforts of individuals, organisation, and government are harnessed together and directed to a common goal.
It will involve a major transfer of resources from north to south to help poorer countries develop in cleaner, more efficient ways than we have done, and a Green New Deal, based on a massive investment in energy efficiency and renewable energies, rolling out a comprehensive housing retrofit programme, creating hundreds of thousands of jobs, and eliminating fuel poverty in the process. At the same time, a shift away from intensive agriculture, serious investment in public transport, a relocalisation of our economies, and greater prioritisation of energy conservation could all be accelerated through measures to internalise environmental costs.
It's not that we don't know what to do. It's that the vast majority of politicians have neither the vision nor the commitment to do it. Recently, the decision to stage a short-term rescue of the economy meant that, almost overnight, the billions required to bail out the banks were found. It should never have been necessary, yet it sets a real precedent for what governments can do when the political will is there.
Caroline Lucas MP
Leader, Green party
• Fatih Birol of the International Energy Agency is right to have lost hope that greenhouse gases can be reduced before global average temperature climbs more than two degrees. But one reason they cannot be reduced is that the climate policy of energy efficiency, continually propagated by the IEA and virtually all other policymakers, has been a case of barking up the wrong tree: whatever energy is saved on a Tuesday through technical efficiency is consumed on the Wednesday for further economic activity and a larger number of economic actors. Birol knows this, as he has worked academically on this issue of "rebound" or "leakage", yet he repeats, one suspects in a rather low voice, that we must redouble our efforts for efficiency and "clean" technology. In fact, only caps on the offending substances will do the trick, yet we have wasted two decades on non-solutions. Can the IEA not finally doubt its policies?
Blake Alcott
University of Leeds
• Part of the reason for record emissions of fossil carbon is that the EU emissions trading system is not working. But some simple reforms would make it much more effective.
Instead of issuing allowances to a relatively large number of emissions-producing businesses it would be simpler, cheaper and more effective to control fossil carbon "upstream", at the places where coal, oil and gas come out of the ground, or are imported. This would provide control over 100% of emissions in the EU instead of less than 50% with the system as it is now.
With caps on fossil carbon determined in the light of climate science, and without free allocations of allowances, a reformed system is likely to raise the price of emissions much closer to its proper level. "Border levelling" measures in the proposals would ensure that businesses within the EU would not be put at a commercial disadvantage, and they would provide a solution to the problem of "import emissions" arising from fossil carbon that is embodied in traded products.
Money raised from the sale of permits may be used to help businesses and people make the transition to the clean, green economy of the future. More information about these and other benefits of upstream reform of the EU ETS may be found at www.k2support.org.
Dr Gerry Wolff
The Kyoto2 Support Group
• Chris Huhne (Letters, 30 May) repeats the coalition mantra: "too often a community can see what it will lose by having a windfarm in its midst, but cannot see what it gains". He should tell us what we do gain; we really don't know. He mentions "strict environmental impact regulations". No doubt developers do find the regulations onerous; but this is not the same as being effective. He should tell us when and how the Hayes Mackenzie study of best planning practice in relation to wind turbine noise will be published. He writes that wind turbines and associated development require a "full and proper democratic process", but he knows that guidance from government to local planning authorities endorses a strong presumption in favour of wind turbines.
Maybe Simon Jenkins does "offer nothing new for Britain's ... energy debate". He's a journalist Mr Huhne, you're the minister. If you want a serious energy debate, drop the distortions, and engage with the electorate.
Janet Dubé
Pencader, Carmarthenshire
• "The cheapest low carbon option ... is nuclear power", George Monbiot says – uncritically repeating the Committee on Climate Change's conclusion to justify more nuclear (Comment, 31 May). And yet the committee's own research (Mott MacDonald. Costs of Low Carbon Generation Technologies. May 2011) concludes that if offshore wind was deployed on a large scale it could be cheaper than nuclear. This puts the responsibility back on to government – it can choose to make renewable energy the cheapest option. Monbiot has missed a crucial opportunity to get government to face up to its responsibility.
Andrew Broadbent
CES Ltd Economic and Social Research