On Sunday, whilst I was battling the East Coast Mainline in an attempt to get to London to visit family, I missed the depressing report from the Guardian stating that “Worst ever carbon emissions leave climate on the brink”
Last year, a record 30.6 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide poured into the atmosphere, mainly from burning fossil fuel – a rise of 1.6Gt on 2009, according to estimates from the IEA regarded as the gold standard for emissions data.
“I am very worried. This is the worst news on emissions,” Birol told the Guardian. “It is becoming extremely challenging to remain below 2 degrees. The prospect is getting bleaker”
And yet, people have their head in the sand. Epic levels of NIMBYism exists, especially with regard to renewable power sources such as windfarms. The placement of wind farms is hugely controversial as can be seen if you watch BBC2′s Windfarm Wars.
As a keen walker, I follow a number of backpacking and mountaineering blogs; blogs that I respect and enjoy reading. But, without fail, they are anti-windfarm. To take one example, backpackinglight posted recently,
the possibility that shale gasmight provide the US and Europe with a significant new source of hydrocarbons. There does appear to be some controversy about the environmental impact. However, it might save our green and pleasant land from being covered in wind turbines.
That’s right, so against the rather elegant white wind mills are the backpacking community, that is it instead advocating the use of the dangerous and despoiling mining technique known as “fracking“. Presumably because there is no shale gas in the hills and mountains of the UK.
You only have have to travel a short distance in West Lothian to see the human effects on the landscape of mining. It is not pretty. The Bings are the waste product from shale oil mining, and clearly a blot on the landscape a hundred years later. If wind farms turn out to be non-productive, they can be removed and dismantled with very little impact on the countryside. And, “fracking” potentially causes serious damage to the landscape, a drilling operation was suspended in Blackpool recently as it may have caused an Earthquake.
pozorvlak pointed yesterday to a George Monbiot article which “argues that the Green movement should throw its weight behind anti-pylon campaigns in Scotland and Wales”
Pylons are the other big controversy along with wind farms. Without pylons, and particularly the Beauly-Denny power line Scotland’s renewable energy cannot be taken from the remote unpopulated regions to the main areas of energy usage.
I could not put it better than pozorvlak :-
There isn’t a square centimetre of Scotland that hasn’t already been touched by human activity (or that of our domesticated animals). You can call it “wilderness”, but you’d be kidding yourself. I’m certainly not in favour of concreting the whole thing over, but nor am I bothered about a few pylons
I’m not sure what the lovers of the countryside actually want. If renewable energy is not going to be used, without going back to the dark ages when you won’t actually be able to get to the highlands unless you walk, the wilderness of Scotland will be despoiled by climate change. A recent report showed that claimed that “climate change would put “chronic pressure” on the state of public paths in upland and lowland Scotland”
Not to mention the huge impact of climate change across the world.
