We’ve already exhausted 'nature’s budget' for the year - time for a change in approach: Yorkshire Post Letters

Rosalind Dean, Sheffield.

This year Earth Overshoot Day fell on July 30. This marks the date when humanity has exhausted nature’s budget for the year. It arrives earlier each year. For the rest of the year, we are going into deficit, liquidating resources and accumulating carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. We are using as many ecological resources as if we live on 1.7 earths. We are busting our budget. This cannot go on. There is no Planet B.

We have a finite amount of land to provide us with crucial biological services like fresh water and clean air. But there is competition for land that also provides us with food, fibre, timber, minerals; accommodates roads and buildings; and absorbs or neutralizes economies’ waste.

The amount we extract from the planet has two elements: how many of us there are and how much we consume in material terms. Providing all the women who want it with safe accessible family planning helps enormously in stabilising population, and switching our priorities to non-material goods like health, education, leisure and culture could help reduce our demands on the natural world.

Of course we must make sure that everyone has enough for a decent life, like nutritious food and a warm secure home. But a good life also includes a meaningful way to earn our living, time with our family and friends, and a society that respects us.

Governments pay a great deal of attention to economic statistics, such as Gross Domestic Product (GDP). So it is an urgent job to find new, or additional, measures of social progress that incorporate our sense of well being. This is a challenge, but work is being done by the UN and others to find ways to measure things like food security, health, education, political voice, social networks and housing.

The UK’s individual Earth Overshoot Day this year fell on May 16. Our country’s ecological footprint is the equivalent of about 2.3 earths per year. As a country we are about twice as rich as we were 40 years ago.

Do things feel twice as good? Maybe it is time to pay more attention to those things we cannot touch but help us feel secure, engaged, effective - and part of something bigger than ourselves.

Clark Cross, Springfield Road, Linlithgow.

Taxpayers are being forced to fund Net Zero. The EV industry, heat pumps and wind turbines are all heavily subsidised. EVs benefit from reduced road tax, exemptions or reduced congestion or low emission zone charges and favourable benefit-in-kind tax rates for company cars. Various government grants and rebates are available to help offset the cost of purchasing an EV. Businesses can reclaim 50 per cent of the VAT on lease costs and 100 per cent if the vehicle is used exclusively for business.

The Boiler Upgrade Scheme (BUS) which runs until April 2028 gives a grant of £7,500. Local authorities in England can however provide up to £15,000 towards heat pumps through the Warm Homes Local Grant for households with an income of £36,000 or less. So far this "generosity" has cost £148 million with two more years to go.

Wind turbines have received over £2 billion and counting for switching off their turbines. It is called "constraint" payments but should be called "renewable blackmail payments". Why should taxpayers subsidise EVs, boilers and wind turbines?