Answers blowing in the wind? (From Bournemouth Echo)

Answers blowing in the wind?

9:00am Friday 20th February 2009 in

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WHOOSH! Suddenly we find out that government sneaky-beakies have been drawing up hush-hush plans to put 100 turbines, hundreds of feet high, on a wind farm off Poole Bay.

Why has it all been kept so quiet? Because they knew that as soon as the rest of us got wind of it we’d be huffing and puffing about the rights and wrongs of such a controversial project and kicking up a storm. And quite right too.

There may be a lot of hot air spoken by blustery windbags like me, both for and against such renewable energy, but that is what consultation is all about. And we should have been made aware of what was in the wind as soon the boffins first started whispering about targeting this part of the Channel.

But would an offshore wind farm be such a bad thing? These turbines, big beggars though they are, would be 10 miles out to sea. And that strikes me as being a lot better than sticking them on a Purbeck beauty spot, for example.

The trouble is we can blow hot and cold about global warming and reducing carbon footprints but at some point soon the winds of significant change must blow.

To me, the sight of the sun reflecting off the gently rotating white sails of a line of turbines is almost a thing of beauty. But I’ll want to know more before I make up my mind. What will be the effect on shipping, for a start? And the fishing industry? And wildlife? Where exactly will the turbines be and how visible from, say, Bournemouth or Old Harry? And will they produce enough energy to justify their impact?

We need more gen from these schemers.

Because all their secrecy has succeeded in doing is put the wind up the rest of us.