I SUBMITTED a question to February’s cabinet meeting asking when residents would have a carbon-type alert, like the Covid alerts.

Bill Gates, Mark Carney and others warn us climate change is a much bigger threat than Covid.

Risks of feed-back loops, domino-type feedbacks and runaway climate change need to be avoided.

Atmospheric carbon needs to return to 280 parts per million CO2 for safety. We are now at 417ppm and rising.

We can all, especially representatives, help do something about this.

I noted East Dorset Friends of the Earth’s criticism of BCP’s shockingly delayed, inadequate response to the climate and biodiverity crises.

The portfolio holder for regeneration, economy and strategic planning, deputy leader of BCP Council, Philip Broadhead, did not answer my question.

He bracketed his answer to me (“response as above”) with one submitted by Zoe Tees which referenced the Dasgupta Report, commissioned by the UK Treasury, warning of the “devastating costs” to the ecosystems that provide humanity with food, water and clean air.

Sound economics means rebalancing our demands on nature’s goods and services to avoid accelerating mass extinction.

Zoe Tees asked BCP to rethink its approaches to its priorities.

This includes valuing the irreplaceable beauty of the Wessex Fields, how we should use the changing high street for community well-being and alert the public to the extremely dangerous imminent loss of albedo ice referred to in BCP’s report of November 24, 2020.

Frozen Texans, a flooded Indian hydroelectric plant, animals and people dying of thirst or filthy water in Africa, burning wildfires – we can all see what is happening as atmospheric carbon mounts up, despite Covid.

Zoe Tees deserved better than Cllr Broadhead’s vague hopes that everything would be all right.

It’s as if the British Expeditionary Force were being sent a good luck postcard from Churchill as they were being shot to pieces at Dunkirk.

Unfortunately the very late action to globally decarbonise will significantly impact on the future life prospects for our children.

They will inherit the unbelievably cruel decision of the adults at COP 21 (Paris 2015) to deal with the carbon we are presently permitting each other to add to our collective atmosphere.

This they must, after 2050, draw down with as yet unproven technology and unknown resources as they struggle to deal with already compromised ecosystems, reduced harvests and climate migrations.

BCP needs councillors who take seriously the threats to our well-being, who help with communications, with zero carbon solutions and with preparations for and warnings about the changes ahead.

This resident deserves an answer please Cllr Broadhead. Not “response as above”.

And Zoe Tees deserves a proper answer involving scientifically literate leadership, the funding of zero carbon projects and the defunding of carbonic enterprises.

SUSAN CHAPMAN

Parkwood Road, Southbourne