We, as a country, have decided to make tackling climate change much more expensive. This is the logical consequence of today’s news that onshore wind, the cheapest form of low carbon power, is to suffer much heavier restrictions on where it can be built. Given that the need to tackle climate change has not gone away, the options left to us to reduce the impact of our need for electricity are much more expensive.
But there’s a bigger problem than this, and that’s the message it sends about our future as a country. The new restrictions on wind turbines will make it more difficult to build them in areas where wind turbines already exist, on flatter land and near old buildings. But the key change is this statement by Eric Pickles:
“the need for renewable energy does not automatically override environmental protections and the planning concerns of local communities”
While this sounds reasonable, ‘environmental protections’ does not refer to the natural world, but rather to views. How opponents of wind power have got away with conflating the natural world and the views of people who’ve retired to the countryside is baffling, and a failing on the part of its advocates. Previously, while aesthetic impact was taken into account, it only resulted in a refused planning application when there was an impact on genuinely astonishing views, like national parks or Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Now it seems likely that rather than permitting national needs to occasionally override the concerns of people who’ve bought houses in the countryside, much more of our country will be locked in stasis.
People tend not to like change, and people especially don’t like change if they’ve retired to the countryside. The majority of objections to wind farms come from retirees and incomers to communities, rather than lifelong countryside dwellers. Eric Pickles’ statement realigns the UK to serve this interest group. While people of course deserve their retirement, turning the countryside into a care home is not the way to run an economy.
We have a proud heritage, and we could have a proud future. But changes like this, which place more power in the hands of people with little interest in the future, make it more likely that that future will be as a museum for Chinese tourists. This is not the legacy the Coalition should leave.
Decline of the Logos 