I am happy to support the assertions made by Mary White, TD, that the Green Party has delivered radical changes towards climate change in their 15 months in office.

Something radical too has happened to the attitude of the Greens. It seems they have forgotten what it is like to need to dry the clothes and bedding of small children, or that the present-day crèche-goers need a warm house and hot food when they are returned home by their exhausted hardworking mothers after some 10 hours away from home.

Blithe advice on energy-efficient new homes may be lost on people who live in homes which may need solar panels, insulation and retro fittings. Not all of the population has even half the income of TDs.

As a schoolchild during the 'emergency', I recall the fastidious saving of paper and twine and the truck which came monthly to collect newspapers in our small village. Glass jars and bottles were recycled and many will remember that admission to some cinemas was on payment by jam jar. People also grew their own vegetables.

It was also a time when tuberculosis was a scourge and, in my own experience, seven fellow primary schoolchildren died during that period.

They came from cold, damp, unheated homes for the most part. The Green movement has for some time advocated the use of washable diapers instead of disposable ones.

There were no cars on the roads for six years either in Ireland or England from 1940 to 1946, yet we had extremes of weather and a big, big freeze in 1947.

Up-to-date observations in the journal Science are that "some of the very large predictions of sea level rise are unlikely because there is simply no way to move ice or water into the ocean that fast from the melting glaciers". I quote Ted Pfeffer of the University of Colorado at Boulder and Professor Joel Harper of the University of Montana.

In its most recent assessment – 2007 – the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change suggested a sea level rise of 16 to 80cm by 2100. The most likely figure is 1mm to 2mm per annum.

It seems to me that gloom and doom are now the order of the day with the multitude of alarmist opinions. One would almost feel that as under Cromwell's regime Christmas may soon be banned.

Catherine Cavendish,

Prospect Terrace,

Marine Drive,

Sandymount, Dublin 4.