Windmill Dreams

Do the wind turbines atop our hills and mountains sing of hope for the future, or intone our past failures? When they watch us, ant-like from their Olympean heights, do they look down on us in pity, anger or compassion?

Wind turbines polarize views. Champions point out the free, clean, infinite energy source waiting to be tapped, which will free our air of fossil-fuel fumes, and allow our atmosphere to repair itself. They talk of the critical need to reduce carbon emissions, to mitigate as far as possible the potentially devastating effects of climate change, to which we as an island may be particularly vulnerable. They point out that the landscape we cherish is under threat, and if the alternative to its total loss or transformation is the erection of these white leviathans, then that is a price worth paying.

Opponents decry the loss of unspoiled vistas, landscapes virtually unchanged since Turner, Constable and Gainsborough captured them on canvas; the impact on bird populations who have little chance against the giant blades travelling at over 100mph; they claim that they are inefficient, expensive white elephants which cannot solve the problem of replacing fossil fuels.

And as the arguments rage around them, the turbines keep turning, and as they turn, they watch. They are both markers of our failure to grasp earlier the changes happening in our climate, and to act more quickly and decisively, and at the same time sentinels of a future hope that the worst impacts of those changes may be avoided. They may not provide the entire solution but over and above their individual contribution to our energy needs, they represent the results of what we can achieve when we steer our scientific and technological abilities in the right direction.

So when I look at that distant hill, crowned with grey-white turning statues, I do see hope. Tinged with regret that such major changes are becoming increasingly urgent and that it is already too late to entirely prevent the effects of climate change, but hope nevertheless, that we do have the ability to generate the energy we require to sate our greed from clean, renewable resources. 

And I also happen to think that if Messrs Constable, Turner and Gainsborough were around today, they would be reaching for their Titanium White with a certain relish.