I MUCH welcome the importance new SWAT has placed on saving my great grandchildren from a fate worse than death, by not only adopting a comprehensive Climate Emergency motion so promptly, but also creating a special Executive Councillor, with backing organisational structure, to meet our existential climate chaos problem head-on.

What worries me, and hopefully many others, is that not enough is being said, nor planned, to both realise and answer the fundamental underlying causes of this threat to our continued very existence on planet Earth.

First and foremost is the tradition obsessed British establishment’s authoritarian fetish for the private individualised materialist greed of capitalism and all its extremes of obscene class-driven material inequality and its anti-democracy monarchy and lords-based government, with no written constitution to defend the rights of ordinary citizens either in parliament, at home, or at work, nor fair voting system where votes roughly match seats.

Secondly, is the way in which establishment religion works as an embedded partner to this oligarchic, undemocratic parliamentary government - Marx’s so-called “opium of the masses”- basing itself on the self-indulgent, self-destroying theory of white male humans being born in the image of a male god and heading for eternal life and heaven if they’re good subservient citizens. “Mother Nature” and all what remains of its undestroyed, unpolluted biodiversity - plus our life sustaining atmosphere - should be our god, if we needed one.

Thirdly, economic growth, prosperity, consumerism, materialism – plus their inherent demand for protection and militarism - must become subordinated in our whole lifestyle system to old basic ideas of frugality, sustainability, communal living and material ‘undevelopment’, coupled with co-operative housing and business.

Lastly, Prime Minister Johnson’s narcissistic, arrogant new promotion of hard-right Conservatist capitalism – as opposed to community based socialism – is about as crazy as his hair-ruffling hyperactive mental state and the words of the other new leader, Jo Swinson (“this man is not fit to be PM”) ring very appropriate when you consider the personal insults and relentless smear campaign of the hard-right against my old respected colleagues, Jeremy and John.

Please send waffling Johnson back to his Etonian classmates ASAP!

ALAN DEBENHAM
Taunton