SIR, – So it is 50 years since man walked on the moon. A Cape Canaveral-type space station has now been proposed for Sutherland, a satellite space port proposed on North Uist and Shetland.

Yet no one seems to be questioning the environmental impact such initiatives will have.

And we are told that moorland and peat lands are vital for carbon storage. Hypocrisy, hypocrisy, hypocrisy – and Langholm Moor is now up for sale, where Buccleuch will no doubt take the highest bid, even though much of it has supposedly ‘protected’ status.

An article in a recent weekly, featured farmers from around Road Head and Bewcastle and their concerns that land which had been farmed for hundreds of years is to be blanket planted with commercial forestry, acidifying the land and water courses.

Greenfield sites are also being built upon as we are supposedly short of homes, but who questions the holiday let industry and second home syndrome. How many new housing estates actually host solar/pv panels or any other renewable energy?

At present, there are 40 active world conflicts and if the Trump regime and Iran kick off, who knows what that future will hold for us.

A great deal of our food appears to be imported and that will not be sustainable in the future. But if our land is gone, what and who is going to produce what we eat?

On imports, we have 10,000 lorries per day passing through Dover and 4000 per week day through Felixstowe, while 650 planes arrive at Heathrow each day, yet we are not to use our cars and ‘go’ electric to care for the environment.

No questions are asked about Grand Prix racing, motor rallying, speed trials, motorbike scrambles, off road tours and grid-locked roads in the tourist honey spots like Skye and the Lake District. In 2018, 15m tourists were recorded in Scotland, no doubt mostly travelling by road – and no worries about them either?

Shelter, clothing and above all food and water are the basics of survival, but if our land is thrown away to tourism and forestry, where will our food come from? According to a Channel 4 news article (Wednesday, July 10) we are to eat grubs as, as the likes of Chris Packham believes that sheep and cattle are an environmental disaster!

Archaeology done around Seathwaite Tarn, in Cumbria, found signs of pastoral living more than 2000 years BC, but all of a sudden their ancestors must go. Must all grazing animals be eliminated for the world to survive?

Again, it is all hypocrisy, hypocrisy, hypocrisy ...

Christine Hudson

Rowanburn,

Canonbie,

Dumfries-shire.