IF VOTERS find the current election campaign boring, perhaps it’s because there is clearly little to choose between the parties. The three main parties plus Ukip and the nationalists all subscribe to the view that no future is imaginable except one based on ever more economic growth.

This in turn necessitates, according to conventional wisdom, yet more road and rail building and more plundering of land and sea for the gas and oil required to fuel the so-called need for increased production. According to the best scientific evidence, at least half of existing known reserves of fossil fuels must be left in the ground if the world is to avoid dangerous global warming.

It follows then that there should be no further prospecting for shale gas and that,, starting with the rich countries, the world must greatly reduce its use of fossil fuels. In a rich country like the UK, there is no reason to believe that further economic growth will reduce poverty.

The world as a whole must reduce its consumption of irreplaceable resources, but this can only be made acceptable if inequality within and between countries is also reduced.

Clive Shakesheff, Secretary, Gwent Green Party