I was angered to read Malcolm Thomason's letter ‘protesters pollute’ (December 12).

Whenever a group of people speak out against climate change, the only response from those on the pro-polluting side is to attack their personal carbon consumption.

This is not only petty, but telling. They do this as they know they don’t have a leg to stand on.

Climate change is the most pressing issue of our time. We have to leave 80% of known fossil fuel reserves in the ground to stand a chance of curbing global warming at the two degree mark.

And this is without counting the reserves of unconventional oil and gas that this government and the oil and gas companies are determined to extract via the dangerous techniques of fracking, coal bed methane and underground coal gasification.

Do people understand what two degrees of warming means?

It means triggering 'tipping' points in the climate system, like the melting of the West Antarctic ice sheet or large-scale rainforest dieback, which lead to 'runaway' climate change.

It means droughts, floods, severe storms, food and water shortages and climate refugees.

Even more worrying is that the International Energy Agency says that we only have until 2017 to stop this from happening.

If, at that time, we have ‘locked in’ our energy system to fossil fuel extracting, CO2 producing technology, then two degrees of warming is guaranteed.

So we must resist fracking, and all other new fossil fuel extraction, and we must fight for a transition to a low carbon lifestyle powered by renewables.

The technologies exist, and work. We must do this to protect the planet, and everybody's, future. Then, if protestors needed to go anywhere (we wouldn't) we could travel by excellent public transport, electric vehicles, bikes, or our own two feet.

To say climate protesters are not willing to make personal lifestyle sacrifices in the name of the greater good of all humankind is wrong. We are.

To count it a 'victory' that a fossil fuel company is allowed to explore in your village, because you were upset by the disruption of some protesters, to me, seems petty to the extreme. You are celebrating the destruction of the planet, and leaving future generations in the lurch.

Claire Robertson

Goldstone Crescent, Hove