Julian Cope presents Head Heritage

The issue of wind turbines was raised on TMA several years ago (in connection with those proposed for Lewis I think) and although they might seem like a good idea it was argued back then (and the same arguments still apply) that they might not be as environmentally friendly as first appears. Hazards to wildlife aside the turbines might appear innocuous but they require large, sturdy platforms to support them and those involve the transportation of considerable amounts of concrete and other materials, roads to transport those materials (and maintain the turbines) stations to relay the power they generate and cables from source to user to achieve that.

My gut feeling is that they’re the easy option (again) – they’re relatively cheap to produce and maintain (compared to nuclear power stations) so that’s what Joe Public is getting. The fact that they consume large amounts of construction material, are noisy, spoil the landscape and are a hazard to wildlife is conveniently brushed under the carpet.

There are better alternatives - a solar panel on every new house or building (mandatory) would go a long way towards generating (or at least supplementing) enough energy for domestic use. Energy saving measures also need to be more vigorously implemented. All night street lighting for example is a complete nonsense (take a look at a night view of any UK town or city then multiply that by a factor of thousands for every town or city on earth) when all you need are motion or infrared sensors to trigger the light when a person or vehicle approaches (that simple technology is used by millions of people already in their gardens and driveways, it just needs a top down mandatory order to implement it on a national scale).

Apologies, but on a personal note my heart goes out to the people of Japan – a country with no natural energy resources other than wood and coal, a country forced to import every drop of oil or gas it uses, the only country to have suffered two atomic devastations and is now possibly faced with a nuclear third.