While Alan Taylor’s column displays its usual merits of readability and
quirky topicality, I feel that it poses a rather false dichotomy by linking
the adoption of wind farm technology on Scotland’s hills and glens, to the
preservation of our wild places, even if it is assumed that wilderness
exists any more (“I detest way wind farms besmirch landscape”, The Herald,
October 1).
The more honest choice to be placed before readers is between accepting
wind farms for environmental reasons and losing some wild places, or no
longer having these places at all, as we know them, in an overheated
planet. The latest climate change science indicates that our planetary
weather could become so stormy, so drowned or so arid, that few sentient
creatures will survive to enjoy “wild places”.
If continuing global warming results in an average planetary temperature of
2ºC or more, as it surely will if we do not end our addiction to fossil
fuels, and fail to move our energy production and consumption entirely
towards renewables sources including wind, then on current greenhouse gas
growth trends Earth could be entering a hot epoch toward the end of this
century.
The eventual outcome is that the planet could become one of billions
inimical to advanced forms of life.
While wind farms could be dismantled once we are confident climate change
has been arrested, a hot epoch for Earth could be, on a human timescale, a
permanent state.
Alan J Sangster,
37 Craigmount Terrace,
Edinburgh.
I was interested to read Alastair Davis’s Agenda article on wind farm
benefits.(“Wind farm benefits that are blowing nothing but good”, The
Herald, October 2). There is a proposal to build a large wind farm on the
hill above the town of Dunoon. It will comprise 15 to 20 very large
turbines each taller than the London Eye and dominate the skyline of this
part of the Firth of Clyde.
It will be a very large blot on a beautiful landscape. No-one here objects
to wind farms in the right location. What is upsetting about this
particular project is, that far from being a community wind farm it is
being developed by a European company with the involvement of the Forestry
Commission. Any subsidies and profits will go to company shareholders with
a few crumbs thrown to small local interest groups to buy there support.
What is worse is that the size of the project means that the company can go
over the heads of Argyll and Bute Council, who have already throw out two
smaller wind farm projects and go straight to the Scottish Government for
planning permission. It is ironic that a very large number of trees will be
cut down and peat dug up to make way for this development.
Michael Kent,
Bullwood Road,
Dunoon.
0 Comments