Hoping for poor turnout
www.therugbyobserver.co.uk 21 September 2011
NUON Renewables, the company building Swinford windfarm, have recently put a lot of money into publicising their Information Day. They hope we will go along to this Open Day and offer them ideas as to how the Community Fund they have pledged will be spent. I hope no-one turns up.
Their full-colour leaflet, posted to every house in the location, shows a picture of a primary classroom wall with a children’s Wind Farm project stuck all over it. The message is clear – “Your child has adopted wind farms, why can’t you?” Whatever is being taught in schools becomes most concerning if corporate elements are influencing the curriculum, and this seems at best to be odious, at worst downright malevolent.
The event Nuon are planning is designed to get people through the door and pledging to accept the wind farm. When we were asked if we were in favour of renewable energy, Nuon twisted these answers to imply support for their proposal. So if we tell them, as they have requested, what we’d like to see done with a Community Fund, all we are likely to get in return is a lot of publicity crowing about the huge number of people who now believe the windfarm is a good thing.
Knowing that wind turbines don’t produce energy efficiently and destroy the environments they are located in hasn’t yet stopped the government from subsidising them to absurd levels. We pay twice, through our taxes and our rising fuel bills. And while the likes of Nuon are bleating about how important their wind farms are in combatting climate change, the Brazilian government has given the go-ahead to those same energy companies to flood the Amazonian rainforest so they can build the biggest hydro-electric dam in the world. That will do a lot for climate change, for sure
Kathy Ratcliffe
via email
URL to article: https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2011/09/21/hoping-for-poor-turnout/