Pylons and the Green movement

[pozorvlak]

[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

Comments

Interesting Links for 31-5-2011

[pingback_bot]

User andrewducker referenced to your post from Interesting Links for 31-5-2011 saying: [...] Pylons and the Green movement (George Monbiot is...odd) [...]

[elvum]

How about underground wind farms, too?

[pozorvlak]

Your ideas intrigue me, and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

[half_of_monty]

There's an underground hydroelectric (pumped storage) plant under Snowdonia somewhere. Incidentally.

[pozorvlak]

Yep, Dinorwig. You can see it from the top of Y Garn or Elidir Fawr.

[gareth_rees]

This kind of conflict within the green movement is going to come up more frequently, as global goals (climate change, sea-level rise, energy sustainability, feeding people) conflict with local goals (saving species, preserving historical use and appearance of the countryside).

[pozorvlak]

Excellent point.

[ciphergoth]

The thing that bugs me about it is that if pylons were to turn out to be a great mistake, we could tear them up and relatively little damage would be done. I'd like to think that the modern green movement could be about preventing mistakes that would be harder to reverse than that.

[pozorvlak]

I think the mainstream green movement mostly is, but "environmentalism" is ill-defined and many people can claim to be environmentalists without having much of an overview of the real problems.

[half_of_monty]

Yeah, it is about tactics, rather than content. And I very much admire his attempts to get hold of the actual numbers on the p/kWh that this would actually add to the cost. I'd like to know the answer to that before I attempt to give any opinion on the question