Letters: Britain’s net-zero ambition problem

Zero ambition

Sir: How extraordinary that Ross Clark (‘Carbon fixation’, 20 May) can look at the cut-throat competition to capture the economic gains of the future and conclude that Britain’s problem is an excess of ambition.

The USA stands alone as the only G7 nation not to have a net-zero target in law, but is nonetheless spending billions to achieve it. The country’s Inflation Reduction Act has proved so popular with the market that it is leveraging trillions more of private investment than previously expected, the majority in Republican-led states. Likewise China may lack a legally binding target, but enjoys a comfortable lead in core technologies following decades of investment. Meanwhile the EU, whose net-zero target covers its 27 member states, is racing to catch up, while UK business urges the government to get into the game.

Surely the opportunity of a post-Brexit Britain is to rise to the challenge of building the industries of the future, not to shrink from it?

Professor Thomas Hale
Blavatnik School of Government
University of Oxford

Lessons from Taiwan

Sir: Kate Andrews notes in her ‘Letter from Taiwan’ (20 May) that the government runs a surplus, and returns cash to residents. It is not alone. Hong Kong did that in 2011 (more than £1,000 each) and continues similar schemes to the present day. It does this with no VAT, a salary tax at 16 per cent and no taxation on investment income or gains. The state provides the same services as the UK, only better. Its health system, for example, delivers superior outcomes at a lower cost. Trying to understand how, the only thing I can conclude is that it shows what can be done with a well-functioning civil service.

Michael Bracken
Gerrards Cross, Buckinghamshire

Exorcise the British way

Sir: I thoroughly enjoyed Andrew Watts’s piece on Anglican exorcists (‘Who you gonna call?’, 13 May), which probably answers a question I have been researching (with a friend, Matthew Hartley) for some time: why, in Protestant-majority America, have Catholics cornered the Hollywood exorcism market? Only Catholicism’s muscular form of Christianity seems up to the job of facing down demons.