Letter: Green swindle

Carbon billionaire Al Gore was rightly accused in Congress of a conflict of interest when he campaigned for huge subsidies for his own green-energy technologies.

L Ron Hubbard advocated starting your own religion as a sure way of making money and certainly Gore's "carbon trading credits" look like green Papal indulgences.

Prince Charles, our Royal renewable-energy hustler, is behind the expansion of offshore wind farms - though he refuses the onshore variety on any of his vast estates.

Is it an act of lse majest to note that the Crown Estate owns the seabed of our territorial waters and he will earn tens of millions from the planned 8,000 offshore turbines?

(DR) John Cameron

Howard Place

St Andrews, Fife

A 70 million investment fund to provide infrastructure for the renewable energy industry has been unveiled by the Scottish Government to help support the offshore wind industry over the next four years.

It is intended to improve ports and aid companies involved in the turbines industry. The sum involved, initially earmarked for other "important priorities'', has seemingly been pilfered from the coffers of Scottish Enterprise and Highlands and Islands Enterprise.

No doubt Denmark, Germany and Spain, as key manufacturers and suppliers of wind turbines, will be delighted by this further smoothing of their way into this country.

We repeatedly hear about the "potential'' of renewables. Would that be potential to bankrupt the nation and leave us all bereft and in the dark, while others prosper at our expense?

Neil McKinnon

Tulchan Garden

Glenalmond, Perth

Your editorial (2 November) rightly welcomes the recent Friends of the Earth Scotland report highlighting the health and economic benefits associated with reducing our climate emissions.

However, your editorial questions proposals to abandon major transport infrastructure projects, which would increase emissions, on the grounds that these projects are important for our economic recovery.

There are a number of areas where investments would deliver substantially greater economic benefits than road building while also yielding health benefits and helping to reduce our climate emissions. The 2.5 billion price tag to build both the new Forth Road Bridge and Aberdeen bypass could be used far more effectively to bring existing homes in Scotland up to a high standard of energy efficiency. Such an investment would deliver unrivalled job opportunities, eradicate fuel poverty and cut fuel bills.

A home retrofit programme could secure 10,000 jobs per year for the next decade and every 1 invested in tackling fuel poverty saves the NHS 42p.

(Dr) Dan Barlow

WWF Scotland

Little Dunkeld

Dunkeld, Perthshire