Carlucci argues, harnessing methane from disused mineshafts may reduce 'GLOBAL' warming but won't reduce 'LOCAL' pollution, stench of vehicle exhausts in nostrils...

Sir/Madam,

As so often, you - and most of the rest of the media - seem determined to believe that the problem of traffic pollution is all about CO2 and Global Warming - and nothing else.

Those of us who use the roads mostly for cycling, walking or running know only too well that using the methane from mineshafts will not reduce in the slightest the stench of vehicle exhausts that we have to breathe day-in day-out.

So many cardrivers, cocooned and protected as they are by air-filters, air-conditioning etc. seem completely oblivious to the fact that the very real problem out here in the street is NOT the relatively abstract (and of late, trendy, 'chattering-class') problem of CO2 and climate-change but the fact that non-cardrivers have to continually breathe a nauseous cocktail of benzene, xylene, toluene, nitrous oxide, sulphur dioxide....

As I say, cardrivers (and your 'methane reporter' ) are either oblivious to this fact or in a collective state of denial, indifference or sheer scorn towards those of us who get to inhale this all-pervading petrochemical drizzle.

Harnessing methane to produce electricity - all fine and dandy, but please don't 'salve' cardrivers' consciences still further and encourage this collective pollution-denial even more by implying that pedestrians, cyclists, joggers and pushchair-occupants will suddenly be able to 'breathe the difference' and smell/suffer the effects of a million or more fewer car-exhausts if we go ahead and convert waste mineshaft-methane to electricity.

Anyone who swaps their car-cocoon for a bike for a few months of exposed...er...'fresh-air' commuting will get the picture: you don't wear the mask to protect against global warming.....

PS. At what point (...this decade?) can we expect some long-overdue reporting on emission-free vehicles?? Or any media attention at all being directed at the health effects of vehicle exhaust - amid all the popular hysteria surrounding, for example, mobile phone radiation, BSE, or genetically-modified food??