January 9, 2008
Letters, Wales

Oppose wind farms

It is customary to make resolutions at this time of the year.

Some people decide to lose weight, others to go to the gym, others to forego particular luxuries… like chocolate or drink.

This year I am giving up hope that the Welsh Assembly Government will see good sense and end its preoccupation with wind farms.

I’m giving up hope that the Forestry Commission will stop its madcap scheme to locate huge wind factories in some of the most beautiful Welsh forests.

I’m giving up hope that the coastline and countryside of this “sceptred isle” will not be forever blighted by ugly and inefficient power stations whose developers claim to be green.

This year I am also suspending my belief that the politicians in Cardiff will bow to pressure from communities whose environments will in future be overshadowed by hundreds of wind turbines.

I am also finally dispensing with the notion that history does not repeat itself.

It does.

Wales has been blighted by coal mines and its Valleys have been drowned so that others can benefit.

Now its landscape and coastline will be sacrificed so that foreign companies can make fat profits and politicians at the Senedd can satisfy their green conscience when they leave their lights and Sky boxes switched on.

So what is new? History repeats itself.

The only bright light on the horizon this year is the possibility that locally elected councillors in counties like Denbighshire will distance themselves from the politicians in Cardiff and send a message to the Senedd.

By opposing wind farms in Denbighshire and Conwy, elected members will at least be able to say “not in my name” when the communities they serve ask why their quality of life has been sacrificed.

IAN GARDNER
Gwynant, Waen, Nantglyn, Denbighshire

Western Mail

8 January 2008


URL to article:  https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2008/01/09/oppose-wind-farms/