Thursday 18 December 2008

Monbiot and CPRE and Bute Park

comment sent to me by Les Mills
In today's Guardian comments on George Monbiot's Interview with CPRE's head re wind farms and Open cast mining. Here

Fantastic interview - nail them George. It's people like that CPRE interviewee who masquerade as defenders of the English/British landscape but who are , in actual fact simply representing the views of a small elitist minority of foxhunting nimbys. What are they all going to do when the electricity runs out or when there's a nuclear accident - will they care about the landscape at the bottom of their gardens then?
No they'll probably all be rushing out to buy windmills for their own gardens.

As George pointed out, these people should concentrate their energies and resources, against monstrosities like open cast coal mines and projects everywhere like the current ill conceived plans of Cardiff City Council to introduce roadways for 40 ton articulated lorries into one of Europe's finest , most tranquil and precious inner city parks in the centre of Cardiff. This wonderful green space benefits everybody not just a privileged moneyed few. Like the CPRE vis a vis open cast mining, CADW and the Heritage Lottery Fund in Wales are not opposing these plans.
Keep it up George.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

absolute rubbish! worst blog I have ever read!

It shows a complete lack of intelligence to tie in all countryside campaigners with foxhunting!

Anonymous said...

May I draw attention to a few interesting points relative to this interview by Monbiot
"In seeking to work out how a 90% cut in carbon emissions could be achieved in the rich nations by 2030, I have made many surprising findings. But none has shocked me as much as the discovery that renewable micro generation has been grossly overhyped. Those who maintain that our own homes can produce all the renewable electricity and heat they need have harmed the campaign to stop climate chaos, by sowing complacency and misdirecting our efforts. A few months later Building for a Future magazine, which supports renewable energy, published an analysis of micro wind machines. At 4 metres per second – a high average wind speed for most parts of the UK - a 1.75 metre turbine produces about 5% of a households annual electricity To provide the 50% Bill Dunster advertises, you would need a machine 4 metres in diameter The lateral thrust it exerted would rip your house to bits............"
"A recent government report suggests there is a potential offshore wind resource off the coast of England and Wales of 3,200TWh(13). High voltage direct current cables, which lose much less electricity in transmission than an AC network, would allow us to make use of a larger area of the continental shelf than before. This means we can generate more electricity more reliably, avoid any visual impact from the land and keep out of the routes taken by migratory birds. Much bigger turbines would realise economies of scale hitherto unavailable.
The electricity system cannot be run on wind alone.
But surely its clear that building giant offshore windmills is a far better use of our time and money than putting mini-turbines in places where they will generate more anger than power."
The above is abstacted from an article by George Monbiot. Published in New Scientist, 3rd October 2006