RE: The pupils’ strike over the environment. For a start, this was not a strike, which is a withdrawal of labour. They were skipping lessons, which is illegal as the signatories, who I suspect are educators of one sort or another, well know.

Further, most children have too little knowledge of real life to grasp the details of a subject such as climate change (limitations are acknowledged by the age limit on voting rights) and they are largely recycling views of their teachers.

Instead of praising this mass truancy, perhaps the signatories would do well to examine their own carbon footprints. Do they drive big cars over long distances, go on long-haul holidays, overheat their homes, etc?

READ > Protest outside Blackburn Town Hall over climate change

Man-made climate change is scarcely in doubt. The world population is rising fast and these people will exert a massive drain on resources.

At the same time, we, in the developed world, are becoming vastly more profligate: cars are bigger, shops pump overheated air on to the street, street lights blaze all night when they are scarcely wanted and vast amounts of meat are consumed by the approximately 20 million dogs and cats of this country, at a time when we are told we should all be vegans because livestock is ruining the planet.

Do the “striking” schoolkids realise what sacrifices they must make to halt global warming? Are they willing to reduce their carbon footprint rather than lambast politicians who would rapidly be voted out of office should they elect to return to the energy levels of the last or even the 19th century?

Kent Brooks