I WAS very glad to read the lead letter in the Echo today (May 14) speaking up for climate and environment.

I agree, we need huge changes of direction, lead by environmental science.

I find it then interesting how the life threatening dangers of Covid-19 are very similar to the case of “climate”.

UK government, as all world governments, knew very well in mid-January from China, and the World Health Organisation, of which we are part, a lethal pandemic was spreading from Wuhan.

UK government knew this and did nothing. This is evidenced from for instance the editor-in-chief of the medical journal, The Lancet, who has made clear many times government was warned in January at the highest levels of the spreading pandemic. But no less we end with tens of thousands of deaths and huge damage to the economy.

With then climate, over far longer time scales, it is all very similar with an invisible enemy. We can’t see the lethal payload of Covid-19 virus, and neither do millions see the enormous incremental dangers mounting in climate change.

We all see major weather events, such as the huge fires in Australia this year, and we see maps showing melting ice-caps, and vanishing glaciers, but no less it all seems very abstract, and distant, until it hits home.

The case now, as with Covid, we must do all we can to avert catastrophe. The time for talking is over.

BCP council should have cancelled the air show this year and for all years. I find it deeply lamentable that this decision has been forced onto council, not taken as a matter of corporate policy.

Shame on you BCP councillors. As much in lock-step with the tourist industry as previous councils. You need to speak up, and act. As it is as a council you are cast indelibly on the wrong side of history. You declare “climate emergency” and then refuse to put an end to a mass polluting air show.

MARTIN COOPER

St Luke’s Road, Charminster