SIR – I have a horror of my grandson asking his father once it has become obvious that the world is in big trouble over climate change.

“If the scientists knew all this, why didn’t they say something?” His father replying: “Oh, they did, but people didn’t want to listen and less still do anything about it.”

Left to their own devices, utility companies would build natural gas-powered turbo-generation stations. They are the quickest, easiest and cheapest to build, and at current gas prices produce the cheaper electricity.

The drawbacks of this eggs-in-one-basket approach are that it still contributes to CO2 emissions, although rather less per unit of power than a coal-fired power station, and security of supply. Shale gas might address the latter. We would still, however, be hostages to the world price of gas.

Nuclear power stations and wind turbines are not great solutions to diversifying our power generation, but they are the ‘least worst’. And, like everything, they have to be paid for.

I would also council caution in believing that shale gas will ‘solve’ our energy needs. In slightly more than half my lifetime, the North Sea has gone from something that will make us energy and financially rich to decline. On energy, we are like the drug addict who can see no further than the next fix. What we have to do is tackle the addiction.

Ron Harding, Beck Houses, Bingley