Press Release Wednesday June 19 2013
"The Scottish Wild Land Group today published a special
issue of its magazine, Wild Land News, dedicated to the
issue of wind energy. The issue, ‘Wind farms gone wild: is
the environmental damage justified?’, calls into question
the Scottish Government’s focus on wind power as an
effective method of tackling climate change. It suggests
that far more needs to be done to protect Scotland’s
communities, environments and landscapes from
opportunistic development.
The magazine features contributions from respected
scientists, naturalists and artists; a powerful consensus
that wind energy policy has been inadequately justified
and comprehensively mishandled. Contributors identify
threats to Scotland’s internationally important wild land,
protected native species, cultural heritage, community
cohesion, and democratic processes, and argue that wind
farms make a vanishingly small contribution to the fight
against climate change at best, and may even prove to be
counter-productive.
The Group concludes that wind farms in Scotland will:
·
Destroy much of our wild land and peatland carbon sinks
along with numerous habitats and species;
·
Prevent the development of alternative energy sources and
investment in energy conservation;
·
Impose unacceptable financial demands on those who can
little afford them, especially the third of Scottish
households already in fuel poverty;
·
Divide communities located close to wind farms;
·
Distort our resource allocation systems by channelling
public money to large energy companies with subsidiaries
in tax havens, who arbitrarily pass a tiny fraction on to
a few communities;
·
Damage Scotland’s crucial tourist industry;
·
Risk our future energy security.
John Milne, Co-ordinator of the Scottish Wild Land
Group, said: “We are at one with the environmentalists who
believe climate change is the greatest threat facing
humanity but disagree with those who claim that wind
generation is even part of the answer. We believe that the
scramble for wind farms is doing great damage by deluding
the public into believing that a meaningful contribution
is being made to a reduction in CO2 emissions. Resources
and attention are being diverted away from real solutions
such as appropriate transport policies and energy
efficiency, conservation and alternative renewables.”
John Constable of the Renewable Energy Foundation,
writing in the magazine, said: “the general public now
realise that they are being asked to make economic and
environmental sacrifices that are not only pointless but
actually delay more constructive action. The mass
deployment of existing and inadequate technologies is
simply a dead end.”
Sharon Blackie, editor of EarthLines magazine, said:
“if the price of our current excessive level of
electricity consumption is the permanent non-renewable
loss of the pitifully little that is still wild and
natural in this country, then it’s too high a price to
pay.”
The Scottish Wild Land Group believes that energy
policy must be the subject of an urgent investigation by
an independent commission, and that a robust wild land
designation that respects the environmental, cultural and
economic importance of Scotland’s landscapes must be
introduced. It is supported in this by a number of other
organisations including the John Muir Trust."
For more information about how to purchase the magazine
go to:
http://www.swlg.org.uk/wind-farms.html
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