Pylons and the Green movement
[All opinions stated herein are my own: I do not speak for SGP or any other environmental organisation.]
The journalist George Monbiot (whose work I have long admired) has caused a lot of spluttering among my Green friends this morning with this article, in which he argues that the Green movement should throw its weight behind anti-pylon campaigns in Scotland and Wales. Some background here: the best sites for onshore windfarms tend to be in remote, hilly areas, but electricity tends to be consumed in lowland, densely populated areas. Therefore if we're going to build windfarms we also need to build power lines through the countryside, and these tend to provoke opposition. The same is true for, e.g., Orcadian tidal power.
First off, he's dead wrong that nobody in the Green movement is aware of this problem. The Scottish Green Party has been arguing in cautious favour of the controversial Beauly-Denny power line upgrade for years, as a simple search of their website would have made clear. The Twitter arguments between SGPers and the anti-pylon John Muir Trust liven up many a dull afternoon. Did you talk to anyone at SGP, Mr Monbiot?
Monbiot caused particular ire with the line "If we are not against pylons marching over stunning countryside, what are we for?" - well, we're for promoting sustainable energy and limiting climate change. But I think this line is an anomaly in an article that's mostly saying something different: I think what he's saying is "we should campaign for underground cabling rather than pylons, or we'll be outflanked by anti-pylon campaigners in green clothing and then we won't get windfarms and then we'll get even worse climate change". Tactics rather than objectives. And countryside is pretty, but that's a relatively minor point - one sentence out of the whole article.
I think he's wrong, and here's why:
The journalist George Monbiot (whose work I have long admired) has caused a lot of spluttering among my Green friends this morning with this article, in which he argues that the Green movement should throw its weight behind anti-pylon campaigns in Scotland and Wales. Some background here: the best sites for onshore windfarms tend to be in remote, hilly areas, but electricity tends to be consumed in lowland, densely populated areas. Therefore if we're going to build windfarms we also need to build power lines through the countryside, and these tend to provoke opposition. The same is true for, e.g., Orcadian tidal power.
First off, he's dead wrong that nobody in the Green movement is aware of this problem. The Scottish Green Party has been arguing in cautious favour of the controversial Beauly-Denny power line upgrade for years, as a simple search of their website would have made clear. The Twitter arguments between SGPers and the anti-pylon John Muir Trust liven up many a dull afternoon. Did you talk to anyone at SGP, Mr Monbiot?
Monbiot caused particular ire with the line "If we are not against pylons marching over stunning countryside, what are we for?" - well, we're for promoting sustainable energy and limiting climate change. But I think this line is an anomaly in an article that's mostly saying something different: I think what he's saying is "we should campaign for underground cabling rather than pylons, or we'll be outflanked by anti-pylon campaigners in green clothing and then we won't get windfarms and then we'll get even worse climate change". Tactics rather than objectives. And countryside is pretty, but that's a relatively minor point - one sentence out of the whole article.
I think he's wrong, and here's why:
- People who object to pylons also object to windfarms, so appeasing them with underground cabling won't work.
- I'm worried about the ecological impact of digging dirty great trenches through the Scottish and Welsh countryside.
- Underground cabling is a nightmare to maintain - have you read this?
- 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 - and note, incidentally, that the Beauly-Denny line will mean a 100km net reduction of pylons in the Highlands and a 7km reduction in the Cairngorm National Park.