Life is terrible, even unbearable. We know this because we are told this endlessly by experts, environmentalists and all the others who know what is best for us. But what we are being told is the outpouring by ill-informed people with an axe to grind. How else would a person act whose role and the source of their salary justify their existence only if they persuaded the rest of us that we are all doomed?

If life is so intolerable will the doom merchants explain how: Infant mortality has shrunk to negligible levels in a century?

Infectious diseases are virtually conquered?

Food production has increased so that more people in the word than ever are now fed?

Children no longer leave school to go down mines at age 11 or 12?

Cancer cures are routinely being discovered?

We have more time and disposable income to explore the world?

Adults now live 20 or more years than they did a century or two ago?

The list is endless. We should celebrate that we live in a time of unrivalled opportunity and plenty. Life is good. Of course there are problems to be dealt with, including HIV, Middle East conflict and terrorism but these need commonsense solutions by sincere, uncorrupt politicians.

The pessimists now have a new opportunity, a new bone to gnaw: Global warming. It is now beyond doubt that the climate is warming. It is also most likely that CO2 is contributing to this process. However, we also learn from the doom brigade that mankind is to "blame" for this and that we must go back to a peasant culture to escape the effects.

What terrifies me is the lack of rational, informed debate about climate change and what we should be doing about it. Is anyone asking if the measures we are being encouraged to take will actually have an effect? Will the cost of these measures be justified or is it better to put in place plans to protect us from the inevitable? Why should we disadvantage ourselves unless US, China and India make huge changes; unless they do, anything we do is meaningless?

I for one have no intention of giving up my annual trip, by low-cost airline, to Italy until I am confident that we are being given the correct advice.

And, on the subject of informed decision-making, no-one, but no-one, should be allowed to speak or write on the subject of the environment unless they have read Bjorn Lomborg's The Skeptical Environmentalist. - John Burgis, 20 Telford Gardens, Dingwall.