Neil Sinclair (Letters, 23 March) writes “more migrants means more … consumption of the planet’s resources and degradation of the environment” (my italics). This would only be true if migrants contributed to more consumption of environmentally damaging resources in the UK than they would have done if they had remained in their country of origin. In the case of immigration from eastern Europe, this is unlikely. In general, the former communist countries still depend on higher-carbon sources of energy than the UK, particularly for marginal supplies. This trend is likely to be exacerbated as they seek to reduce dependence on Russian supplies of natural gas. Winters are also substantially harsher throughout the region, resulting in higher energy consumption for domestic heating. In practice, the impact on the planet’s resources will depend on a number of factors, including the nature of work performed in the UK and the work displaced in the country of origin, distance travelled to work (and visits home), changes in patterns of consumption etc. The honest answer is we don’t really know the final impact – but it seems a little harsh to blame immigrants for environmental degradation in the absence of greater evidence.
Alan Smith
Professor emeritus, School of Slavonic and East European Studies, UCL
