Re Simon Jenkins’ article (Ed Miliband would let a turbine farm destroy Brontë country. We need net zero, but at what cost?, 14 July), there might be good reasons for opposing a windfarm on the Yorkshire moors, but Emily Brontë isn’t one of them. Nor is the “turbulent romance” of Wuthering Heights an appropriate filter through which to view the Pennines. The Brontës’ local landscape would have changed considerably in their lifetime. They would have seen the rapid industrialisation of nearby towns such as Bradford and Halifax, and the mills that sprang up along the river in Haworth.

They would have recognised the benefits of the expansion of the railways despite the impact on the countryside (their brother, Branwell, worked as a railway clerk). The “historic Brontë village of Haworth” where they grew up was not a rural idyll, but a breeding ground for cholera and typhoid. The Brontë sisters must have applauded the campaign by their father, Patrick, for improved sanitation there, leading to the creation of a local reservoir that doubtless affected the countryside but also saved lives.

We cannot afford to cordon off parts of the UK as a nostalgic theme park (“Brontë country”). Nor should we romanticise the lives of a family who grew up in an unimaginably unhealthy environment and died young as a result. The clean energy produced by windfarms is vastly preferable to the polluted environment that Emily Brontë endured, and it is likely that she of all people would have understood why a clean environment should be our first priority.
Jane Middleton
Bath

Some of what Simon Jenkins writes about windfarms in beauty spots, on the necessity to protect the scientific importance of such areas, is unlikely to ruffle many feathers, but much of it sounds more like the Miliband neighbours he references. Only a day tripper wanting to see the moors and dropped off for 20 minutes on a pleasant spring day “strolls” on the Pennine Way.

If you haven’t walked to Top Withens on a raw winter day, with sleet biting your cheeks, the wind wuthering, and water being blown uphill instead of flowing down, you cannot understand why the Pennines is such a great place for a windfarm. My great-grandchildren will still be able to walk the Pennine Way, with or without turbines.
Heather Bodden
Wakefield, West Yorkshire

Simon Jenkins misunderstands what net zero is when he labels it “a political ambition rather than a plausible target”. The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says clearly: “From a physical science perspective, limiting human-caused global warming to a specific level requires limiting cumulative CO₂ emissions, reaching at least net zero CO₂ emissions”. And both the IPCC and the UK’s Climate Change Committee are clear that it is not just plausible but achievable, with the latter’s recent seventh carbon budget providing “an ambitious, deliverable pathway for the UK to reach net zero by 2050”.

So net zero is a scientific concept that is required to stop climate change. Indeed, net zero not only can but must be met if we are to avoid ever more dangerous impacts long into the future.
Gareth Redmond-King
Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit

Simon Jenkins asks what landscapes we will lose in the bid to achieve net zero. He ought, rather, to ponder what will be left of them if we don’t achieve this goal.
Jane Caplan
Oxford