Once again the "one-size-fits-all" carbon footprint demonology is trotted out in an attempt to make us all feel guilty about something that has little or no effect whatsoever in the greater scheme of things.

Dave Malham says, in his letter "Lamps are just a waste of gas" (May 21), in which he condemns the use of gas lamps outside York Minster, he is "surprised and disappointed" about an article condoning the "unnecessary burning of gas 24-hours-a-day, 365 days of the year and such an unwarranted addition to York's carbon footprint should be condemned, not celebrated, by anyone that actually cares about the world that our children and their children will have to live in".

Does this mean, therefore, that a couple of gas lamps burning outside York Minster is going to condemn future children to living in a Sahara-like desert where it used to stand?

The usual guff about "experts say" can be trotted out ad infinitum, but not one of these so-called experts has ever stated, unequivocally, that climate-change is being caused by man's continued addition of CO2, or any of the other so-called greenhouse gases, to the atmosphere. If collective governments genuinely thought CO2, produced by man, was damaging the atmosphere, then production of motor vehicles would be massively reduced, air travel would be largely banned, nuclear power stations would be built with all urgency and deforestation halted.

The sooner people wake-up to the simple fact that climate change is cyclical, has nothing to do with man's puny contributions and is being cynically manipulated by our Government (for one) as a cash cow to raise more and more revenue, the better.

Philip Roe, Roman Avenue South, Stamford Bridge.