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YOU'RE paying for reporters' flights to be carbon neutral? Surely the licence payer is doing that, at your instruction. I don't begrudge the licence fee at all, but it's worth bearing in mind where it comes from when making these grand statements. The concept of carbon neutrality itself is also somewhat spurious, but, no doubt, another correspondent will hammer that particular nail.

Past generations of politicians left us dependent on oil; hence the continuous turmoil in the Middle East that will continue until alternative sources of power have been developed.
The present generation of politicians will, almost certainly, leave our grandchildren with the consequences of burning that oil. I fear that our problems may well be trivial by comparison.

And people wonder why the US didn't submit to European pressure to adopt the Kyoto protocol.

Sorry, but Rod's throwaway comment at the end that he is paying to make the reporters' flights carbon-neutral just doesn't wash. Payment does nothing to stop the carbon being emitted in the first place. It only makes the payer feel better about it. Far better not to have gone on all those flights at all, but to have engaged local reporters to do the investigating. The proud boast 'Our reporters have travelled the world' doesn't sit very easily in today's world - maybe we should have a 'story miles' indicator on the screen to show how many miles were travelled in the gathering of the news story.

Tony Blair told us he'd turned down the temperature in Downing Street by one degree and enthused about the energy saving lightbulbs that Ming doesn't have… whilst clocking up more non-environmentally friendly air miles on his Caribbean holidays. But our listeners wondered why he is building more airport runways if he's so committed to the environment - and what about doing more to encourage green cars?

Did none of of your listeners complain about the PM being the biggest supporter of the world leader most opposed to the Kyoto treaty? Supporting wars that are huge causes of pollution? Being the British PM who has globe trotted by jet more than any other - he even flew all the way to New Zealand in order to address a conference on global warming by video link, which he presumably could have done from home! Or being the first UK PM to have felt a need to use a convoy of heavily bulletproof, gas guzzling, off-road vehicles to go anywhere, ranging from all the way down from his Sedgefield constituency back to Westminster last general election night, to the hundred yards from Downing Street to Parliament, seemingly every time.

He talks a good game but seems to do very little indeed - no decision on moving to nuclear electric instead of from carbon fuels, whilst having sold off the UKs nuclear generation construction industry to foreign buyers. Lots of "treaties" to reduce carbon emissions, but no sign of much effect until long after he leaves office. Like signing with China to supply carbon reduction technology whilst selling them petrol vehicle-engine plant that will probaly lead to millions of vehicles that could otherwise possible have been powered otherwise. And signing a similar-sounding treaty with California - a state that allowed the crushing of all electric cars after negating its law that they had to be a rapidly increasing proportion.

We did it all for journalistic reasons but we did a fair bit of polluting ourselves with all those fumes - travelling and flights. You can't win can you

Win? Surely its that all of us might lose less rapidly, perhaps have another year or so?

And yes, you could avoid those big mistakes. Did you even try to find reporters already on the spot out on those locations, or at least much nearer, to do them instead? You're radio, there isn't event he television problem of incompatible video equpment to worry about, and your reports can be beamed back in seconds!

Fully agree. What a complete waste of time and resources.

Shameful.