JANE Milner-Barry’s letter ‘A Waste Of Energy’ contains true and fair points regarding the energy requirements of an indoor snow centre.

I have two further points to think on however. Firstly indoor snow centres do not have to be wasteful of energy - in fact to stay profitable they have to be very efficient.

They can also be 100 per cent (or more, actually exporting power to the grid) energy self sufficient if their operators make an effort - as is the case of a giant 600m long slope in Germany where the roof is lined with solar panels.

Second, there is still the issue of the CO2 created by people attending the snow centres though and that comes down to good public transport to reduce CO2.

That question also opens up the question of whether we decide we shouldn’t build big attractions of any kind people want to come to in order to reduce CO2 emissions.

It is not fair to just pick on an indoor snow centre, if that’s your argument you should really be arguing against big hospitals, big schools, cathedrals, sports grounds, malls - anything big that attracts people from a greater distance, and arguing its better to build multiple smaller versions locally in a kind of reverse of how we’ve been moving for the past few centuries.

It would involve rethinking how we run our society and putting the environment ahead of human nature and our economic system. So you need to do much more than just not build an indoor snow centre.

PATRICK THORNE Kiltarlity Invernes