Court rejects Northants wind farm plan

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Reacting to March 8, 2013's High Court ruling against plans to build a wind farm on farmland at Barnwell Manor in Sudborough, Northamptonshire, Friends of the Earth's Head of Campaigns Andrew Pendleton said: "It's understandable that changes to our much-loved green and pleasant land will often cause controversy, but the biggest threat by far - to people and nature - is climate change.

"It's time to stop tilting at windmills – there are some locations where turbines shouldn't be built, but if we want a clean and affordable energy future, we must find space for them in our landscape."

It might be good to check as to who paid the piper in this fight against the windmills. Don Qichote definitely was not involved.

Large turbines are not the general answer. Every building must become a power station with PVs and small wind. This has been proven in Germany in many places in that small solar and wind can produce more energy than over ten nuclear power stations, and even in Germany this is but a small amount of homes that thus far have been equipped in such a way, though more than in the UK and the USA combined.

Large wind installations in Germany also do not seem to be perceived in the same negative way as they are in Britain and one can see turbines all along the ridge of the Harz Mountains, for instance, on the line that once was the German-German border. They stretch as far as the eye can see but in nicely spaced intervals and thus do not become a blot on the landscape.

Small wind and roofs with PVs should become the norm rather than the exception everywhere making every building a power generating plant regardless as to whether it is a modern house or office building or a listed building.

It must become a rarity to see a building that does not have power generating arrays on them rather than the opposite, as it is now. Only in that way can we transition to a carbon free future and have energy security.

© 2013

Who pays the piper?

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Grassroots movements that are not very much grassroots

Time and again when a windfarm or similar, such as a methane digester, etc., is proposed in an area, as we found some years back in the English Home Counties, supposed grassroots groups appear on the scene vehemently opposed top such developments, giving a variety of reasons, from people's health, to danger to birds, etc.

But, how grassroots and spontaneous and just by local people are those objectors really?

In more than one case, just as in the one alluded to above, it has been found that the “fighting fund” that seems to pop up out of nowhere, and in that particular instance, as also in others, contained and contain millions of Pound Sterling, is facilitated by vested interest groups, such as the “conventional” power industry, oil, gas, coal, and nuclear.

When we see such movements appear we always must as the quo bono question and thus ask “who pays the piper?”.

The question as to “who benefits (quo bono)?” is, obviously, also one to be asked on many other occasions.

Too often what appears to be a spontaneous and grassroots opposition is nothing of the kind, especially when it comes to objections to windfarms, methane digesters, proper woodland and countryside management projects, and the like.

In the latter, that is to say objections to woodland and countryside management, case at times it is just misguided people who, indeed, care deeply about the environment and the Planet but have been, basically, brainwashed into believing that no tree must ever be cut down and woods and countryside in general do not need management of any kind. They firmly believe that Nature will do it all by Herself.

In other instances, however, such kind of people are being used by people and groups with a hidden agenda.

It is called a hidden agenda for a reason because this agenda is not worn like a badge on the sleeve or the lapel and we have to be ever vigilant as to whether there could be something hidden there and something else behind the actions.

We must always and at all times ask, especially when there seems to be a lot of noise and money, as to who is paying the piper though at time plumbing the depths of deceit is not an easy task.

© 2013