I would like to respond to Tom Mangan's attack on the Green Party and its politics in government (Letters, September 29).
Mr Mangan sensationally describes carbon taxes as potentially condemning our elderly citizens to freeze to death when, in fact, home-heating oil is cheaper than it was two years ago, even with the carbon tax.
And carbon taxes do not apply to coal and briquettes.
He also describes legitimate attempts at the reorientation of an unsustainable society and the clean-up of corrupt politics and a degraded environment, as "the ridiculous policies of an unrepresentative lunatic fringe party".
The massive uptake of the warmer homes scheme clearly offsets the tax impact and reduces the dependency on finite energy sources for all citizens.
He is also of the opinion that the Greens are out to create some sort of "over the rainbow" Utopia, based on unrealistic fantasies and ideas, when the opposite is true.
Green policy and actions are based on preventing the horrific "Dystopia" we are all facing, arising from pollution, climate chaos, human exploitation, and the inevitable resource and energy depletion that are being shaped and implemented by conventional "grey" politics.
The Greens, or those who promote sustainable lifestyles, seem to be the scapegoats for those angered by the present economic collapse and the loss of our short-term version of Shangri-La.
Their deflected anger is focused on the wrong target.
The architects of our economic collapse and those who ran the country into the ground are still around and in power.
John Fitzgerald
Kilmacow, Co Kilkenny
Irish Independent