Stay strong to fight wind power – it doesn’t work!
Todmorden News, www.todmordennews.co.uk 26 March 2012
Todmorden News, www.todmordennews.co.uk 26 March 2012
I was so sad to read your front page article on the proposal for even more industrial sized wind turbines above Todmorden.
So many local residents fought so hard, from 2006 to 2011, to keep turbines off the peat moorland at Crook Hill, Reaps Moss and Todmorden Moor. We failed. There is already permission for up to 20 turbines on the tops from Walsden to Cornholme.
And now the powerful wind industry has spotted a gap in the run of turbines that they can exploit.
Inchfield moor, between Crook Hill and Reaps Moss may be filled with seven more 125m high turbines.
Yorkshire Water land above Gorpley reservoir, which until a few years ago we thought secure from development because of the need for good clean water, is now to provide a power company with big subsidies from our electricity bills.
This would be a guaranteed subsidy for years into the future, just for providing a very few wind generated megawatts to the grid.
Public opposition failed last time because it was, and remains, Government policy to encourage wind power wherever possible.
This policy was established, and is now held in place, by a very powerful coalition of the wind power industry and the climate change “green” lobby.
Over the years, these two groups have made wind power into a “holy” symbol of a greener future that no one can challenge, because to do so is to risk being branded as a “climate change denier”.
But policies do change. The company planning to subsidy-farm on Inchfield will have noticed that, on February 29th during Prime Minister’s Questions, David Cameron said that “on-shore turbines are over subsidised and a waste of public money”.
The Daily Telegraph seems to have been the only paper to report this astonishing statement.
The PM was admitting that the subsidies currently provided to the wind power companies year after year are achieving nothing of value.
Has the Government at last seen past the industrial/green lobby to arrive at some common sense? We must hope so.
There is no space in your letters pages to go through all the reasons why wind turbines on peat moorland do terrible damage and are without value in the climate change equation.
Probably most people in Todmorden know the facts already.
I would however like to ask people to oppose this useless subsidy-farming when it goes to Planning, and as soon as possible write to or email our MP Craig Whittaker, and Ed Davey the new Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change.
Tell them to remain strong against the industrial/green lobby because those lobbyists are wrong. Wind power doesn’t work, and we don’t want public money to be continually wasted.
Instead Government support should go to renewable technologies based on good science rather then wishful thinking; technologies that can make a proper contribution to a reduction in fossil fuel burning.
Sarah Pennie
Project Officer
Todmorden Moor Restoration Trust
URL to article: https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2012/03/26/stay-strong-to-fight-wind-power-it-doesnt-work/