LETTERS: "We need to take urgent action now"

Travelling at 70mph is as polluting as 30mph, around 50mph is the least polluting for the average car. The M1 through Sheffield is such a source of air pollutants that a permanent 50mph limit was seriously considered to help bring them in compliance with the law.

There is no public charging infrastructure for electric vehicles in Ryedale. Until we have a government genuinely committed to fully decarbonising the grid, electric vehicles going large scale will be met by increased use of fossil fuels burnt for the electricity grid, not renewables.

In any case, electric vehicles, which could be part of the solution on pollution, do not of themselves solve the problem of congestion once you leave the dual carriageway on roads such as the A169 to Pickering, or the point at which the dual carriageway ends.

The only sustainable way of reducing congestion on the wider road network is to reduce the number of vehicle miles in the first place by cutting down on the number of journeys and car sharing or using public transport. New road building tends to increase, not decrease, congestion and frustration in the long term.

The IPCC has just issued a devastating climate change report. The more extreme and unusual weather that has already started, such as heatwaves, droughts, extreme winds and floods, will on current trends make huge areas of our planet uninhabitable and lead to hundreds of millions of climate refugees unless we take urgent action now and over the next 12 years to significantly cut our greenhouse emissions.

Urgent action points include cutting out most meat from our diets and curtailing wasteful consumption habits, as well as more rapid investment in renewables, phasing out fossil fuel use, and not fracking at all.

Ian Conlan, Malton

Thanks to friends

THE people of Ryedale and beyond - you have indeed been “a friend in need”, whether running the display in your church or helping to stand in at Kirkbymoorside Library upstairs guarding the display or as a poetry reader.

Thanks are due also to those who took the trouble to bring along their friends to one of the displays at Gilling, Kirkdale, Pickering, Malton, Helmsley and Kirkbymoorside.

We learnt of the high esteem in which Herbert Read has always been held at York Art Gallery by their Friends for his leadership of their organisation. Their display “70 Years of Giving Art” ran from May to September, and was followed by their booklet gifted to four Ryedale libraries.

At the Museum of the Green Howards (Read’s old regiment) on a very windy day recently in Richmond, a coachload of Ryedale Family History Group was shown a copy of “In Retreat” –his accurate account of the near-disaster which befell the British Fifth Army in March 1918.

This memoir was given by Read to at least two of the soldiers who were recommended by him for the Military Medal. The annotated museum copy is from one of them.

Recently, the museum learning officer gave a talk on Read at the Richmond Walking and Books Festival, which was well received by a capacity audience, who asked questions at the end of the session on topics ranging from Read’s poetry, his art criticism, his love of modern sculpture, his devotion to Yorkshire, through to his military service.

We are a small literary group-but part of a bigger picture-thanks to your support.

John and Helen Kirkdale Forum Herbert Read Group

Donate an hour

WHEN the clocks go back on Sunday, October 28, many people will enjoy curling up under their duvet for a little longer, before the pressures of normal hectic life resumes.

Time is incredibly precious for us all, but especially for those families who are caring for a child with a serious illness.

For these families, every minute matters even more and that’s why Rainbow Trust Children’s Charity is calling on the public to make the most of their extra hour this autumn.

The charity’s Big Hour Campaign is encouraging people to use their extra hour wisely when the clocks go back, to either donate an hour of their salary through its quick online “wage exchange” or organise a simple hour-long fundraiser.

An hour might not seem very much, but to the 2,500 families we support, who don’t know if their child will get better, 60 precious minutes makes the world of difference.

To get involved please visit rainbowtrust.org.uk/big-hour and find out more.

Oonagh Goodman, director of fundraising and marketing, Rainbow Trust Children’s Charity