I see the Environment Agency would like to hear from us as part of their consultation on the UKOG Arreton oil/ gas drilling plans which over 3,000 of us have already objected to.

“Significant risk to the environment or human health…can’t be considered”, says our Orwellian Environment Agency, continuing to contribute to our collective stupid suicidal existential environmental emergency.

l The one which ‘build back better’ Boris and the others pretended to be so bothered about during the latest costly disruptive and, probably pointless in the big scheme of things, G7 jolly in Cornwall

l The one which the UN chief just spoke about, saying that the post-pandemic world needs a green economy.

* The one which just resulted in the concerted call to governments from investors controlling about a third of the world’s managed assets to urgently cut support for fossil fuels and start doing better.

* The one which just caused the International Energy Agency to say that fossil fuel extraction must stop now.

* The one which two weeks ago caused the Dutch court order that Anglo-Dutch oil firm Shell must drastically cut it’s global carbon emissions.

* The one which UK banks are now being forced to reveal to the Bank of England their financial exposure to (delayed by a year because of our pandemic, which is also part of our self-inflicted predicament).

* The one which the world’s scientists have been warning us about for decades.

* The one that is already running out of control, increasingly causing droughts, heatwaves, floods, rising sea levels, more extreme weather more often, food and water insecurity, mass migration, misery, and death.

We know what we are doing wrong, we know what we should be doing instead, and we know that the sooner we do it the cheaper it will be in the long run.

The Island, the country, and the world generally can and should be more locally self-sufficient and resilient in food and energy.

The Island has big advantages, being fairly fertile, sunny, windy, and surrounded by moving water.

Whatever the greedy, disruptive, damaging UKOG drillers say, the Island doesn’t have a lot of easily obtainable fossil fuel below it, and we do know that whatever is there should stay there if we recognise the long overdue need to start acting sensibly.

Finally, for a fossil fuel-free footnote on the safer sort of thing that can be done surprisingly cheaply and quickly when a few concerned citizens, volunteers, and some contractors help cause it to happen despite all the obstacles – look up Reading Hydro.

We built it, it works, but coincidentally we are still waiting for permission to start using it from the Environment Agency and SSE. Worse still, when we do start using it, unless/ until our greenwash government changes some ridiculous restrictions, for the first 20 years we would actually be penalised for generating at full power, so will have to settle for half only.

What existential environmental emergency?