STUART Flemming (Letters, Dec 21) berates BCP Council for continuing with the air festival when it has declared a climate emergency.

He suggests the festival's pollution will not be neutralised by "a few sapling trees" and appears to lay the blame for the refusal of the Navitus Wind Farm at the door of the BCP Council.

While air transport emissions are a significant driver of climate change, particularly emissions at altitude, the direct air festival emissions are actually miniscule. At 65 tonnes, they amount to the annual carbon footprint of just thirty people.

Tree-planting will play a useful role in global climate change mitigation. A recent study suggested up to 200 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide could be sequestered over the next century in global reforestation projects.

But tree-planting is no substitute for speedy reduction of our fossil fuel use.

The Navitus scheme would have cut all Dorset's carbon footprint by half. Local Tory politicians who fought so hard to prevent Navitus should hang their heads in shame.

Their arguments were pure nonsense and indeed the inspector's reasoning, which ignored the nonsense, was also fundamentally flawed.

Do note that the Tory councillors who behaved so disgracefully on Navitus do not control BCP Council.

So I look forward to the public consultation of BCP's climate action plan.

And given all the signs that the new Tory government under Boris Johnson is still not taking climate change seriously, the country will have to act despite them, hopefully with the likes of BPC Council taking the lead.

DR MARTIN RODGER

Bloxworth Road, Parkstone