Professor disputes use of 'spinning windmills'
ONE of country's leading environmentalists, who is based in North Devon, has described wind turbines as "monuments of a failed civilisation".
Professor James Lovelock has written a letter of objection to Torridge District Council against a planning application for an 84-metre wind turbine at Witherdon Wood, Broadwoodwidger.
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NO TO WIND: Professor James Lovelock.
The professor, who is now in his 90s, has become known in recent years for controversially being an advocate of nuclear power and a staunch opponent of wind energy.
In his letter he says: "We need to take care that the spinning windmills do not become like the statues on Easter Island, monuments of a failed civilisation."
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Professor Lovelock invented the Gaia theory, which explains the Earth as a self-regulating entity that ensures the surface environment is always fit for life.
In his letter he states: "I am an environmentalist and founder member of the Greens but I bow my head in shame at the thought that our original good intentions should have been so misunderstood.
"We never intended a fundamentalist Green movement that rejected all energy sources other than renewable, nor did we expect the Greens to cast aside our priceless ecological heritage because of their failure to understand that the needs of the Earth are not separable from human needs."
Ricky Knight, a spokesman for the North Devon branch of the Green Party, has defended the party's role in promoting wind energy.
Mr Knight said: "Professor Lovelock remains one of the most respected ecologists of our time. It would be preposterous for grass-roots activists to query his assertions, when they are clearly motivated by his concern for the survival of the planet. However, it is defensible to query his focus.
"To isolate wind turbines as the scourge of our man-made landscape and to suggest that it is the antithesis of all that Lovelock believes in is certainly specious. The 1,000 year-old statues on Easter Island are still standing.
Comments
by Vindpust
Friday, February 01 2013, 3:12AM
“What is 'controversial' about "being an advocate of nuclear power and a staunch opponent of wind energy"?
Any number of leading power engineers, economists, physicists and even a few leading environmentalists support the view that we need low carbon base load power generation, i.e. nuclear, and recognise that wind has done, and will do, little to address the problem.
Three years ago four of the country's leading environmentalists, including a former head of Greenpeace, joined forces to warn that Britain had to embrace nuclear power if it was to meet its commitments on climate change. They admitted that populist anti-nuclearism, to which they formerly subscribed, had actually hampered effective action. See: 'Nuclear power? Yes please...', the Independent, 23 February 2009:
http://tinyurl.com/asy7ex
The public might not have noticed, but the last Labour Government actually performed a U-turn on energy policy, abandoning the policy set out in the wind rush white paper of 2003. Everyone except the loony wing of the Lib Dems (who unfortunately were given the Energy portfolio as part of the coalition deal) and the Greens now recognises that need to build a lot of new nuclear and even more new gas-fuelled capacity over the coming years in order to keep the lights on.
Even the Guardian's George Monbiot has seen the error of his ways on wind!”