The Scottish Government adopts a “we who must be obeyed” approach to any local planning authorities whom it deems to be resisting its target-driven developer-led renewable energy policy. Wall-to-wall industrial turbine development in parts of the Scottish Borders, Dumfries and Galloway, South Ayrshire and Aberdeen and Moray have led local planners to try to moderate the attack by sensible protection but to no avail.
Don’t blame the unfortunate Scottish Government planner Mr Pallant! He is only following orders from Planning Minister Derek “More Turbines Please” Mackay, who together with his boss Alex Salmond and colleagues John Swinney and Fergus Ewing are lobbied by developers till their eyes water.
This cabal of four ministers are the drivers of a policy which is wrecking Scotland’s landscape, its greatest natural and national asset, as well as the lives of thousands who live in it. And all for what? An unbalanced, unsustainable, unaffordable, unreliable electricity generation system which enriches vast foreign corporations, landowners and investors on the backs of UK consumers. Demand reduction will come not just because of escalating prices but because there just will not be enough electricity when it is needed, and smart meters will regulate our lives.
Secretary of State Owen Paterson has urged the SNP to follow the Coalition’s example by making it policy that “local landscape, local topography, local environment and local heritage questions can now be used as grounds for overriding national renewable energy targets”, and that proposals for wind farms can be vetoed by local communities. I imagine he would have been laughed out of Holyrood for that outrageously democratic suggestion.
Graham Lang
Scotland Against Spin
URL to article: https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2013/06/14/unreliable-unaffordable-unsustainable/