When will we wake up to the reality of windfarms as alternative energy?
The Herald, www.heraldscotland.com 9 April 2011The Herald, www.heraldscotland.com 9 April 2011
The Herald, www.heraldscotland.com 9 April 2011The Herald, www.heraldscotland.com 9 April 2011
In February 2008, The Herald printed a letter from Michael Robson of the Isle of Lewis with reference to the, then, proposed windfarm on Barvas Moor.
So moving and eloquent was his letter that I copied it into my commonplace book and I read it frequently.
Celia Hobbs (Letters, April 7) writes that we are sleepwalking into a mechanised nightmare and that the economic damage to our tourist industry is being overlooked. I feel that the very soul of Scotland is being harmed. If not a single tourist ever came we still have no right to desecrate so lovely a country. But they do come and what do they increasingly find?
Mr Robson said: “I walked the great moor on Lewis for over 60 years, watching with wonder the light as it changed from season to season; hearing the birds; seeing the infinite sky and the ruined places of ancestral people.
“It is priceless, irreplaceable; not just a place but the soul of Lewis”.
He closed his letter by saying: “No undemocratic, industrial interest can possibly be encouraged to destroy such a thing.”
I lived on Skye for 30 years and was privileged to be surrounded by the same unparalled beauty as Mr Robson found on Lewis. Here, in the Borders, too, are such lovely places. But for how long, given the rate of encroachment of the massive machines of those wind factories?
We each bear a great responsibility for what we are allowing to take place. “Sleepwalking,” writes Celia Hobbs. Yes. But what will we do when we finally wake up to the reality of it all?
Thelma Edwards,
Old Comrades Hall,
Hume, Kelso.
The John Muir Trust is right to draw attention to the failure of windfarms to achieve the power generation originally claimed (“Green group in row over wind energy,” The Herald, April 7).
I would like to add a further observation about windfarms. To get the same amount of power as Scotland’s nuclear power stations produce, there would need to be 78,000 windfarms, and the power from them is far from reliable. In my opinion, prolonging the life of nuclear power stations is the best way forward until more effective ways of producing green energy are working. Tide and wave power look much better bets in the longer term.
Whichever party wins the Holyrood election must carry out a serious review of the energy question. Windfarms, however, are not a credible option and frankly they are a waste of money and a blot on the landscape.
Edward Archer,
18 Hope Street, Lanark.
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