DAVE Haskell (letters September 30) implies that people who take the threat of climate change caused by man-made greenhouse gas emissions seriously are all lunatics.

Presumably, he was intending to use the description “lunatic”

pejoratively.

However, the original Lunatics who formed the Lunar Society in the late 18th century were the visionaries of their time, the scientists and engineers and Natural Philosophers who laid the foundations of our modern world: James Watt, Matthew Boulton, Josiah Wedgwood, Joseph Priestley.

And, aside from meeting in Birmingham at the times of full moon when it was safer to travel at night, they corresponded with a wide circle of luminaries both in Britain and abroad: John Smeaton, Joseph Banks, William Herschel, Benjamin Franklin.

So Friends of the Earth Pembrokeshire are very glad to be described as “lunatics”

in the proper and original sense: practically-minded forward thinkers living who have the interests of our precious planet in the forefront of their minds when they call for urgent and unswerving action to counteract the potentially disastrous effects of unconstrained fossil fuel consumption.

Eleanor Clegg

Pembrokeshire Friends of the Earth