I disagree with William Forbes of Strathnairn, that windfarms trash our
landscape (Topic of the week: The value of wilderness, Letters, June 21).
My wife and I live in the country and our almost next door neighbour is
Whitelees wind farm. Apart from the fact that these turbines are churning
away 70% of time they are also an elegant addition to the landscape. The
whole wind farm has been turned into a park used by lots of dog walkers and
mountain bikers and while I am not an expert ornithologist, any time I
visit I see plenty of birds flying around the turbines. In fact my resident
buzzard must include the windfarm in his wanderings, and his ability to
capture a shrew from within a couple of feet of a fence suggests that he
might be able to negotiate the blades of a turbine.
Whitelees turbines also make an important contribution to the local
economy. Surely William Forbes does not want to deny such benefits to
remote Highland communities.
The Highlands of Scotland are not a natural wilderness. They are a man-made
wilderness. The beauty of our countryside can only be enhanced by
households representing a lived-in community. Currently, much of our
Highlands are blighted by rusting fencing, unattractive road signs and
neglected, un-lived-in buildings.
I don’t want to see the whole country covered by wind farms but we could
support many more than we have today. Unfortunately our idiotic
austerity-driven Tory Government want to end subsidies to wind farms and
grid connections from the Highlands to main population centres, and pour a
billion pounds per year into another old-fashioned nuclear power station,
which will stand like a concrete monolith for 35 years – a monument to
Britain’s failure to make the right decisions on energy policy.
George Leslie
Fenwick
I share William Forbes’ sense of loss for many of Scotland’s finest
landscapes that are now blighted by wind farms. Every time I run up the
hill at the back of Dunblane I admire the stunning view over the Vale of
Menteith: farmland and small settlements in the near distance, Ben Lomond
and Stuc a’ Chroin in the background. Then my eyes fall on the Braes o’
Doune wind farm: intrusive, alien, out of place. And I wonder at those who
could have been so foolish as to approve it.
With a few exceptions, political anoraks don’t have much interest in the
great outdoors, and it’s those anoraks who tend to end up as our political
masters these days. They have a lot to answer for.
Doug Maughan
Dunblane
William Forbes asks, “what sort of legacy are we passing on to the next
generation”? It is a peculiar question given that the alternative legacy is
dangerous climate change if mankind fails to enthusiastically adopt the
renewables revolution, and soon. Consequently, it seems safe to presume
that future generations will be only too grateful to see that our
generation made a serious attempt to abandon and replace fossil fuels.
In any future battle against runaway warming, which is our future on
present consumption trends, the “great Earth bio-system” will likely fail
to overcome burgeoning carbon dioxide levels.
Alan J Sangster
Edinburgh
Correspondents who complain about wind farms rarely offer an alternative
way of generating renewable electricity. Every winter, somewhere in
Scotland, people will suffer a lengthy period of disruption to their
electricity supply. Some of them will have no other means of fuel and will
be left with no cooking, heating or lighting facilities and with freezers
whose contents will be rendered unfit to eat. TVs, radios, landline phones
and computers will have no power and their only means of communication will
be by mobile phone, if its battery is charged and they live in an area that
has a mobile phone signal. Life without electricity is bleak.
Marjory M Kirkwood
Uddingston
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