WHEN I “came out” as an environmentalist in the late 1980s and expressed concerns about global warming, most of my friends and family thought I was a bit of a crank.

It has taken a long time for scientists and environmentalists to persuade politicians and the wider public that something is up – and what do we get? People like A West (Letters, December 10) who seems to think climate change is a massive hoax or some sort of Government conspiracy to raise taxes.

It is neither. I assure you the science behind the ability of CO2 to absorb long-wave radiation has been known since the 19th century. The assertion that there is no correlation between CO2 increase and an enhanced greenhouse effect is plainly ludicrous.

Climate change data is freely available – just take a look at the IPCC website. Yes there is “evidence” against the idea humans are responsible but allow me to be just as sceptical about the sources of this information.

This tendency to bury one’s head in the sand and deny we have a problem is presumably motivated by a desire to preserve our patterns of overconsumption. Human existence has a long history and yet, in the space of half a century, we have become enslaved by fossil-fuelled machines.

I wonder what an alien would make of it, hovering above the M25 in rush hour seeing ape-like creatures sitting alone in one-ton metal boxes on wheels, travelling at less than walking pace.

We use precious energy locked up in long-dead plants and animals for comfort, convenience and vanity. Eighty per cent of that energy is lost as heat, disrupting ecological systems in the process.

Come on people. Get real. Millions of years of evolution have equipped us with a very efficient means of locomotion. They’re called legs.

C A Melhuish, Western Avenue, Polegate