[R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] An Attack of the Bellamoids

[Bill Totten]

James Lovelock says the government's enthusiasm for wind farms
approaches fascism. What is he on about?

by George Monbiot

The Guardian (March 31 2009)


Renewable power is drifting away on the wind like thistledown. The
credit has gone; the price of fossil fuels has fallen; it is impossible
to work in a country whose people treat wind farms like the Black Death.
The investors have blown overseas or put their cash back into coal.

So James Lovelock's timing is, to say the least, eccentric. Just as
several major companies reveal that they are packing their bags, the
venerable father of Gaia theory, possessor of one of the world's
greatest minds, announces in Sunday's Observer that "intemperate
injunctions about green imperatives could make [environmentalism] as
dangerous" as the ideology of the Axis Powers {1}. He told the Guardian
that a new planning regime for wind farms is "an erosion of our freedom
[that] draws near to what I see as fascism". {2} His grounds? The energy
secretary Ed Miliband had mused that it should be "socially unacceptable
to be against wind turbines in your area - like not wearing your
seatbelt or driving past a zebra crossing". {3}

I have great respect for Professor Lovelock. He has done more to advance
our understanding of the planet's response to climate change than any
other living person. But he appears to be suffering from an acute case
of bellamoids*. He is old enough to know what fascism looks like. It
embraces a wide and contradictory set of movements, but its common
feature is violence in the pursuit of political aims. If Professor
Lovelock knows of people who have been killed as a result of their
opposition to wind farms, he should tell us.

Fascism also has a reputation for being ruthlessly efficient in
implementing its chosen schemes - building autobahns, mobilizing panzer
divisions, making the trains run on time. This is not a charge that
could be laid at the door of Mr Miliband's department. His statement was
in fact an expression of utter impotence: a hand-wringing entreaty to
the public after all else has failed.

The government, as far as I can tell, has not yet formally renounced the
target it set in 2000: that ten per cent of our electricity supply
should come from renewables by 2010 {4}. So far it has managed 4.9% {5,
6}, and it has nine months in which to make up the difference. Its
objective for 2020 is beginning to look almost as unrealistic. Despite
the fact that the UK has richer ambient energy resources than any other
country in Europe, the government managed to beat its target for
renewable power down to fifteen per cent of total energy supply, rather
than the twenty per cent adopted across the Union. Even so, this means
that by 2020 35% of our electricity must be produced by wind, hydro,
wave, tidal, solar or biomass generators {7}. The technology that could
be most widely deployed is wind power, but investment is melting away
faster than an Andean glacier.

Shell has pulled out completely {8}. Centrica, E.On and BT are reviewing
their plans. Sun Microsystems has suspended its projects {9}. The
Spanish company Iberdrola is cutting its investment in the UK by forty
per cent {10}. Scores of smaller firms are going bust. Can you hear the
jackboots yet?

Such is the state's failure that even Lord Browne, the former chief
executive of BP, who worshipped at the alter of the free market as
fervently as any, now calls for "a new strategic direction and a new
framework of rules, laid down by government". {11} As it happens, the
government is prepared to be ruthlessly interventionist in pursuit of
other energy aims. To promote its policy of "maximising the UK's
existing oil and gas reserves" {12}, it confiscates the licences of any
company which fails to make full use of them. In 2007, it seized 32
blocks and parts of forty others {13}. It calls this approach "forcing
unworked blocks back into play" {14}. But the state dares not be so
dirigiste when dealing with renewables. It allows people of Professor
Lovelock's persuasion to trample all over the industry.

I understand their concerns. I don't believe that wind farms should be
built anywhere and everywhere. (Now that I live among them, however, I
like them much more than I used to.) But the battle against wind power
has grown out of all proportion to the threat it presents. The Campaign
to Protect Rural England and its equivalent in Wales, the CPRW, appear
to be obsessed; the CPRW should be renamed the Campaign to Publicly
Rubbish Wind. Local authorities are supposed to deal with planning
applications within sixteen weeks. They process seventy per cent of
other major developments - supermarkets, airport extensions, housing
estates and the rest - in this period. They manage to work through just
five per cent of windfarms in the same amount of time: such is the
public outcry {15}.

You might imagine that the objectors are in the majority. They are not.
In a survey by the department for business, 64% of respondents agreed
that they would be happy to live within five kilometres of a wind
development; eighteen per cent disagreed {16}. But a very powerful
middle-class constituency drives all before it, often using falsehoods
to make its case. Even Professor Lovelock is not above using such
tactics. In the Observer he used German figures to make his point about
the UK: "the turbines are only seventeen per cent efficient". All the
authoritative sources I have seen report a capacity factor for onshore
wind in the UK of between 25 and forty per cent, and around 35% for
offshore wind {17, 18, 19}.

The objectors assert that the new Planning Act will force communities to
accept wind farms. It's true that the infrastructure planning
commission, rather than local authorities, will decide on projects
bigger than fifty megawatts. But just seven per cent of the 7,000
megawatts of onshore applications stuck in the planning process in
England and Wales cross this threshold {20}. Councils will have no
discretion over new coal-burning power stations, roads and airports, but
they will be able to settle the great majority of wind power proposals.
There is plenty to object to in the pernicious new act, but it's hard to
see why wind farms should be singled out.

The windbags have now driven most proposals offshore. But here, though
the turbines can be bigger, the costs of establishment are much higher,
not least because developers have to pay for their own connections to
the national grid, which means laying down a long undersea cable. When
you throw in the collapse of the carbon market, the reduction in the
price of gas and coal, the shrivelling of credit lines and the
devaluation of the pound, it's hardly surprising that investors have
found something better to do.

As wind was the primary means by which the government was hoping to
replace fossil fuels, the great pull-out appears to destroy any
remaining likelihood that this country can meet its obligations under
either the European directive or the UK's climate change act. This is
grim news for all but one of the earth's people. Professor Lovelock
might not be around when it happens, but at least he will have the
equivocal satisfaction of knowing that his prophecy - the total collapse
of human society - is more likely to come true.

www.monbiot.com

* An unexpected attack of irrationality first noted in David Bellamy.

References:

1. http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/mar/29/lovelock-wind-farms

2. http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/mar/29/lovelock-wind

3.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/mar/24/wind-farms-opposition-ed-miliband

4. This target is still posted on the website of the new energy and
climate change department:
http://www.decc.gov.uk/en/content/cms/what_we_do/uk_supply/energy_mix/renewable/renewable.aspx

5. See Table 5.2 here:
http://www.berr.gov.uk/energy/statistics/source/electricity/page18527.html

6. and Table 7.4 here:
http://www.berr.gov.uk/energy/statistics/source/renewables/page18513.html

7.
http://renewableconsultation.berr.gov.uk/consultation/consultation_summary

8. http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/mar/17/royaldutchshell-energy

9. http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/mar/21/renewable-energy1

10.
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/natural_resources/article5977714.ece

11. http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/mar/25/clean-energy-uk-browne

12. Department of Trade and Industry, 19th December 2006. West of
Shetland task force forge ahead into new year.
http://www.gnn.gov.uk/environment/fullDetail.asp?ReleaseID=251607&NewsAreaID=2&NavigatedFromDepartment=False

13. BERR, 20th February 2008. Search for oil and gas continues as Hutton
announces 25th Offshore Oil and Gas Licensing Round.
http://nds.coi.gov.uk/environment/fullDetail.asp?ReleaseID=354046&NewsAreaID=2&NavigatedFromDepartment=True

14. Department of Trade and Industry, 1st February 2007. Oil is well
under the North Sea.
http://www.gnn.gov.uk/environment/fullDetail.asp?ReleaseID=261127&NewsAreaID=2&NavigatedFromDepartment=False

15. http://www.bwea.com/pdf/2010/0709%20Progress%20to%202010.pdf

16. DBERR, 2008. UK Renewable Energy Consultation. Chapter 3, Figure 3.5.
http://renewableconsultation.berr.gov.uk/consultation/chapter-3a/executive-summary/

17. http://www.planningrenewables.org.uk/cgi-bin/page.cgi?1006

18. Godfrey Boyle {Editor}, 2004. Renewable Energy, page 279. OUP, Oxford.

19. David JC MacKay, 2009. Sustainable Energy - without the hot air,
page 267. UIT, Cambridge.

20. The British Wind Energy Association tells me that this applies to
247 megawatts in England and 254 megawatts in Wales.

Copyright (c) 2006 Monbiot.com

http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2009/03/31/an-attack-of-the-bellamoids/


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