I HEARD we’d have birdless skies. On my walks in the marshlands and moors near the Campsies in the summer sunshine, I noticed I cannot see any white butterflies.

When I drove over on the M8 to Edinburgh my windscreen used to be covered in dead insects, but not anymore. What is going on? I read of sea lice in Scottish farmed salmon; disposable clothes; of the coral reef disappearing; of children dying of air pollution; and of the plastic choking our beaches and killing life in our oceans.

What are we doing? What are we thinking? Why aren’t the manufacturers going sustainable, the way we used to be? Why are governments not enforcing green laws? My instinct always told me that organic and free-range was best: these pesticides get into breast milk.

My mother used to grow her own vegetables. When I was growing up we had strawberries in cardboard punnets; potatoes in dirt sacks (they lasted longer and were fresher this way); fish and meat in greaseproof paper; milk in glass bottles; fruit in brown paper bags. Yes, there was life before plastic!

Now I am astonished at the amount of plastic myself and my husband generate each day. We are in an area that recycles, and I have cut down on my use of plastic bin bags – but it’s really not enough.

We’ve been a reckless, thoughtless society. I live in the suburbs of Glasgow and instead of having natural garden habitat or trees, some are concreting over their gardens.

We are building houses here on marshland (with the threat of rising sea levels) with no sustainable infrastructure. Who is agreeing to all this?

We’ve become a throw-away, wasteful world.

I was so pleased to see our young people finally take to the streets in large numbers in Friday of last week, to protest at our selfish carelessness. Scotland has been leading the way in renewable energy – while the UK Government has been cutting the funding. We must all work together to save our planet, protect our wildlife and our children in poverty.

Yet the news today is full of a foolhardy Brexit – which is about saving our out-dated, not-fit-for-purpose, broken UK political system.

In the big scheme of things, what is really important for the future for our children and grandchildren – sustaining health and life as we know it, or saving the British Tory party?

P Keightley
Glasgow

GEORGE Orwell’s books read as a child are even more appropriate now not only because of the parallels with Brexit etc (1984), but also how remote the decision making process is from society’s real needs.

The decision to close Honda was taken by managers half a world away.

It was not because our abuse of the environment, which needs many more extreme but technically possible measures before it’s too late.

It depended on their view that profits (from electric cars) could be made by appearing, coincidentally, to care for the environment.

They never considered the immediate financial concerns of a few thousand Swindon workers and associated trades or businesses.

However useful electric vehicles might seem, it will be more relevant measures such as free mass/public transport like buses, trains and ferries that begin to tempt many people from unnecessary private cars etc.

There will be plenty of useful, well-paid, eco jobs, including many requiring systematic retraining in new skills as well as transfer of others.

Norman Lockhart Innerleithen SOME of your readers will remember that more than fifty years ago, in urban areas at least, electric floats delivered milk with other dairy products and eggs.

French scientists, mechanics and engineers developed electric vehicles for transport in the late eighteenth century!

The oil and car industries saw this as a threat to potential profits and managed to stifle such a useful (not so environmentally damaging) product for another hundred years.

No doubt they’ll be a wee bit cheaper soon so some more people can buy them if there’s any truth in economic theories about competition and Honda et al stick to it?

Norman Lockhart
Innerleithen