LIKE everyone who has some contact with modern life, I hear and read and see in the media the relentless conflicting and varied noise around climate change, and sometimes it just makes me feel tired.

There are numerous well respected, independent scientific bodies throughout the world whose evidence-based information we largely trust enough to take into account when making decisions in many areas of our life including public health and disease, weather forecasting, technology and horticulture. There may be some scepticism or questioning of detail. But largely, if the evidence is compelling, we act on it.

So with something that has such huge implications for us humans as dangerously rising CO2 levels due to our own and our ancestors' activity (some areas of the world proportionately much more so than others), why is there so much reactive noise that seems to me to go way beyond scepticism into aggression, derision and general hostility? Nothing wrong with healthy scepticism, but this seems to be something else.

I am aware that, just by putting my thoughts into the public arena some people will be labelling me and mentally relegating me into a (crowded) box called “environmental extremist” or “green zealot”.

I am also aware that I find it easy to fall into the same trap and conveniently file away those who claim that the scientists have “got it wrong” or even that those scientists are part of some sort of global leftie elite conspiracy – how does that work? – into a homogenous mass.

As we all know deep down, that is lazy thinking and actually deflects from any meaningful debate – and of course we need debate – about how to reduce CO2 emissions.

In trying to do this, we are stepping into untrodden territory – we have to create a vision of what that might look like in a modern world – and the detail of the way net zero is achieved is debated even within the mainstream who accept that we have to act.

And it also seems to me that some, if not many, of the “sceptics” paint a consistently dismal picture of what they see as the consequences of pursuing a net zero policy.

When I heard on BBC News that the government want to bring in legislation that obliges new homes to be routinely built with solar panels, my own immediate thought was “about time too”. The news report suggested that representatives of the building industry are largely positive about this plan too, as long as it doesn't involve them in delays in getting on with projects due to new red tape.

This is one small example of the many potential benefits of joined-up thinking around net zero. I think that anyone in this country who is struggling with poverty and having to sit in cold rooms because they can't afford to pay their electric bill, would be only too happy to have solar panels on their roof to take some of the load off what they have to buy from the grid.

In my nearest city, the council have nearly completed a systematic retrofit of all their social housing stock. I have a friend who has been a tenant in one of these houses for 30 years. Last summer, their street was “done”.

She now has new, up-to-date cavity wall insulation (which she says made a massive difference to the warmth of the house last winter) and solar panels on every aspect of her roof that gets the sun at some time during the day. She is very pleased. I suspect that most people in her position would be, even if they think climate change is a scam.

This is just one small but obvious example of the positive benefits – for each of us – of changes to how we live our lives with the aim of reducing emissions.

It's not rocket science, so why all the hostility?

Penny King

Lapford