The turbines are a source of clean, non-polluting energy. We have to acknowledge that. They generate electricity without producing pollutants or greenhouse gases. On the face of it that’s all good but unfortunately the whole story isn’t nearly as positive as that.
Giant windmills, on every hill and spare piece of flat land, can only ever amount to expensive tokenism. They can never generate enough power to make a significant contribution to our power supply. They’re a tokenistic nod to the concept of green energy. Were they to make anything like enough electricity to make a real difference by replacing other power sources, we’d need so many of them we’d no longer have room for people.
Ah well, you might say, at least the government and the big energy companies are paying for these follies. Wrong! You’re paying for them through the price you pay for electricity. It’s actually another way of taking money from many to give to a fortunate few. And, as subsidies go to landowners, it’s like a regressive tax – a sort of Robin Hood in reverse.
A couple of years ago many of us didn’t mind a few tokenistic windmills on a few remote hillsides. At first we thought they weren’t too visually intrusive and in some cases even quite iconic of the modern age.
Read more: http://www.derryjournal.com/news/columnists/hamill-s-beat-1-7151185#ixzz3x7MRkYfd
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