It was interesting to read in Wednesday’s Dorset Echo that the scheme to remove 22 pylons in the Dorset Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) was the first of its kind in the world.

There is a simple reason why it will not be repeated elsewhere- it was a colossal expensive mistake.

It is difficult to accept that the impact of the climate crisis on the Dorset AONB is going to be a thousand times worse than the visual impact of 22 pylons.

In 1998 the World Wildlife Fund said that climate change was equivalent to moving four miles south every year, which is twice as fast as plant species can adapt, for example through spreading seeds.

The situation has worsened since then. The World Meteorological Office recently reported the seven warmest years on record have all been since 2015.

Within the lifetime of a child born today the Dorset AONB may have no native trees or grass.

The removal of the 22 pylons in the AONB was part of a scheme launched by the conservative government in 2015 to remove 100 pylons to improve the landscape in half a dozen locations in England.

The total cost of £500 million is recuperated through our electricity bills. Not long afterwards the same government announced the end of the feed-in tariff for householders to install solar panels on their roofs.

The justification was that continuing the feed-in tariff, which was already at a low rate, would add £1 per year to all household electricity bills, stated by the government to be excessively expensive.

The £500 million spent on removing 100 pylons would have covered the cost of continuing the feed-in tariff for another 20 years, with millions more households being able to benefit from low-cost solar power. Instead, we now have £1000 per year added to our electricity bills due to continuing reliance on fossil fuels, plus the ever-increasing climate crisis. We must do better than this!

Pete West Weymouth