BY any reckoning Live Earth was a terrific display of (mostly) youthful good intent - and energy(!) - best viewed at home on a must-have plasma tv (consuming thrice the electrical power of what we used to know, quaintly, as the "box").

Alternatively, cutting-edge folk, may have tuned in on their newly-purchased digital radios, having being brow-beaten into acquiring one by the oh so eco-aware BBC.

If so, reconcile yourselves to the fact that while you were using less power than a plasma tv, a digital radio consumes seven times the energy of an old "steam" radio.

That's progress?

T J HICKMAN, Bitterne Park, Southampton.