Tilting at windmills: nation split over energy eyesores
Written by The Observer
Sunday, 22 May 2005
Hundreds of turbines
will be switched on this year, and the volume of protest is rising.
Mark Townsend reports on the issue that will overtake hunting as a
cause of rural unrest.
The clue lies in the
grass, pummelled and then flattened by a force the area is famous for.
Whinash is all about wind, and it is a resource which has put the
Lakeland beauty spot at the heart of Britain's debate about the
country's insatiable need for energy.
The
site - amid the classic Cumbrian vista of rolling fells criss-crossed
with dry stone walls and the shuffling specks of sheep - is to be home
to England's largest wind farm. If the plans ever get the go-ahead.
This week, the public
inquiry to site 27 turbines, each almost the height of St Paul's
Cathedral, on the ridge of Whinash enters its most potentially
explosive phase. Two of Cumbria's favourite sons, the broadcaster
Melvyn Bragg and the mountaineer Sir Chris Bonington, are scheduled to
give evidence in the squat Garden Room of the remote Shap Wells Hotel.
There can be no place for 21st-century windmills in a wilderness
largely unaltered for centuries, they will argue.
Almost
200 miles north in Aberdeen, Malcolm Wicks will mark his entrance as
the new energy minister by stressing the crucial role of wind power in
the crusade against climate change. Only weeks into his new brief,
Wicks appreciates that wind farms are already eclipsing farming and
foxhunting as the most likely source of rural unrest during Labour's
third term.
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Complete article The Observer
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