A Line in the Green Sand
Last week the government published a shortlist of five schemes for
harnessing the tidal power of the river Severn, to provide renewable
electricity. It is no secret which is favoured in Whitehall - the
biggest one, as ever: a 10-mile mega-barrage that would cost PS14bn, and
could generate 5% of Britain's power.
Last week the government published a shortlist of five schemes for
harnessing the tidal power of the river Severn, to provide renewable
electricity. It is no secret which is favoured in Whitehall - the
biggest one, as ever: a 10-mile mega-barrage that would cost PS14bn, and
could generate 5% of Britain's power.
This may sound the kind of
thing environmentalists ought to be unanimously keen on. Yet many say
that the damage done by this mammoth piece of technology - destroying
mudflats and bird habitats, and weakening the famous tidal wave known
as the Severn bore - would outweigh the benefits. A battle is being
joined over the fate of Britain's longest river, and it is highlighting
an uncomfortable truth which environmentalists don't much like dwelling
on: some green technologies can have distinctly un-green impacts.
Britain
is a small, overcrowded and overdeveloped country in which wild places
are at a premium. On moors and glens, on tidal rivers and empty
beaches, humanity's impact can be escaped, at least for a time. A
mountain is an example of what the American poet Robinson Jeffers
called "the transhuman magnificence": a place that rises above the
detritus of civilisation, where we may go to experience the reality of
nature and the reality of ourselves. I have had such experiences on
mountains, and they helped lead me to become an environmentalist.
When
I climb a mountain, then, and find that the detritus of civilisation
has followed me, in the form of giant wind turbines, my reaction is not
to jump for joy because it is zero-carbon detritus. My reaction is to
wonder how anyone could miss the point so spectacularly. And when I
hear other environmentalists responding to my concerns with aggressive
dismissal - particularly if they have never visited the mountain in
question - I get really quite depressed.
Fifteen or so years ago,
as an excitable young road protester, I tried to prevent the
destruction of beautiful places. To me, building a motorway through
ancient downland, or a bypass through a watermeadow, was a desecration.
To me today, a windfarm on a mountain is a similar desecration. A tidal
barrage that turns a great river into a glorified mill stream is a
desecration. Carpeting the Sahara with giant solar panels would be a
desecration. The motivation may be different, but the destruction of
the wild and the wonderful is the same.
It is de rigueur among
greens to respond to such heresy by explaining that we have less than
100 months to get to grips with global warming; a few turbines on the
odd hillside is a small price for preventing the apocalypse that would
result from our failure.
Well, maybe. But while renewable energy
is a good thing in principle, if schemes end up, like their
conventional forbears, as centralised mega-projects that override local
feeling and destroy wild landscapes, then they become precisely the
kind of projects that people like me cut their teeth trying to stop.
If
you don't understand what makes Helvellyn awe-inspiring, or the Severn
bore magnificent, or the Lewis peat moors evocative, in some deep - and
possibly inexplicable - sense, then you will have no idea what I'm
talking about. These places will seem not to be places at all, but
"resources", ripe for exploitation; and your response to them will be
about not breathing space or spiritual nourishment, but kilowatt hours
and energy security.
Environmentalism is surely inspired by a
sense of wonder at the richness of the natural world. Without that
inspiration, it becomes the kind of bleached, technocratic,
office-bound variety so common today, which pushes for the taming of
rivers, mountains and wildlands in the name of making the
ever-expanding human economy more "sustainable". Desperate to seem
grown up, serious and economically literate, many greens seem to have
become terrified of talking about the things that motivated them in the
first place. Beauty. Wildness. A connection to the non-human, the
remote, the untamed.
Human impact on the world is now so enormous
that the civilisation we have built is feeling the shudders. If the
world's governments, with the collusion of some environmentalists, want
to pretend that the need to question that civilisation's values can be
staved off with wave machines and wind turbines, it is up to them. But
we should understand that, whether we dig up coal or carpet the
wildlands with barrages and turbines, we are making a statement: this
is our world, and we will exploit every inch of it. We want - no, need
- more energy for our TVs, cars and planes. It is our right. There is
no alternative.
There is only one place this attitude can lead:
to a collision between civilisation and the biosphere. I don't see any
number of barrages doing much to prevent that. And I would put a lot of
money on the winner.
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Last week the government published a shortlist of five schemes for
harnessing the tidal power of the river Severn, to provide renewable
electricity. It is no secret which is favoured in Whitehall - the
biggest one, as ever: a 10-mile mega-barrage that would cost PS14bn, and
could generate 5% of Britain's power.
This may sound the kind of
thing environmentalists ought to be unanimously keen on. Yet many say
that the damage done by this mammoth piece of technology - destroying
mudflats and bird habitats, and weakening the famous tidal wave known
as the Severn bore - would outweigh the benefits. A battle is being
joined over the fate of Britain's longest river, and it is highlighting
an uncomfortable truth which environmentalists don't much like dwelling
on: some green technologies can have distinctly un-green impacts.
Britain
is a small, overcrowded and overdeveloped country in which wild places
are at a premium. On moors and glens, on tidal rivers and empty
beaches, humanity's impact can be escaped, at least for a time. A
mountain is an example of what the American poet Robinson Jeffers
called "the transhuman magnificence": a place that rises above the
detritus of civilisation, where we may go to experience the reality of
nature and the reality of ourselves. I have had such experiences on
mountains, and they helped lead me to become an environmentalist.
When
I climb a mountain, then, and find that the detritus of civilisation
has followed me, in the form of giant wind turbines, my reaction is not
to jump for joy because it is zero-carbon detritus. My reaction is to
wonder how anyone could miss the point so spectacularly. And when I
hear other environmentalists responding to my concerns with aggressive
dismissal - particularly if they have never visited the mountain in
question - I get really quite depressed.
Fifteen or so years ago,
as an excitable young road protester, I tried to prevent the
destruction of beautiful places. To me, building a motorway through
ancient downland, or a bypass through a watermeadow, was a desecration.
To me today, a windfarm on a mountain is a similar desecration. A tidal
barrage that turns a great river into a glorified mill stream is a
desecration. Carpeting the Sahara with giant solar panels would be a
desecration. The motivation may be different, but the destruction of
the wild and the wonderful is the same.
It is de rigueur among
greens to respond to such heresy by explaining that we have less than
100 months to get to grips with global warming; a few turbines on the
odd hillside is a small price for preventing the apocalypse that would
result from our failure.
Well, maybe. But while renewable energy
is a good thing in principle, if schemes end up, like their
conventional forbears, as centralised mega-projects that override local
feeling and destroy wild landscapes, then they become precisely the
kind of projects that people like me cut their teeth trying to stop.
If
you don't understand what makes Helvellyn awe-inspiring, or the Severn
bore magnificent, or the Lewis peat moors evocative, in some deep - and
possibly inexplicable - sense, then you will have no idea what I'm
talking about. These places will seem not to be places at all, but
"resources", ripe for exploitation; and your response to them will be
about not breathing space or spiritual nourishment, but kilowatt hours
and energy security.
Environmentalism is surely inspired by a
sense of wonder at the richness of the natural world. Without that
inspiration, it becomes the kind of bleached, technocratic,
office-bound variety so common today, which pushes for the taming of
rivers, mountains and wildlands in the name of making the
ever-expanding human economy more "sustainable". Desperate to seem
grown up, serious and economically literate, many greens seem to have
become terrified of talking about the things that motivated them in the
first place. Beauty. Wildness. A connection to the non-human, the
remote, the untamed.
Human impact on the world is now so enormous
that the civilisation we have built is feeling the shudders. If the
world's governments, with the collusion of some environmentalists, want
to pretend that the need to question that civilisation's values can be
staved off with wave machines and wind turbines, it is up to them. But
we should understand that, whether we dig up coal or carpet the
wildlands with barrages and turbines, we are making a statement: this
is our world, and we will exploit every inch of it. We want - no, need
- more energy for our TVs, cars and planes. It is our right. There is
no alternative.
There is only one place this attitude can lead:
to a collision between civilisation and the biosphere. I don't see any
number of barrages doing much to prevent that. And I would put a lot of
money on the winner.
Last week the government published a shortlist of five schemes for
harnessing the tidal power of the river Severn, to provide renewable
electricity. It is no secret which is favoured in Whitehall - the
biggest one, as ever: a 10-mile mega-barrage that would cost PS14bn, and
could generate 5% of Britain's power.
This may sound the kind of
thing environmentalists ought to be unanimously keen on. Yet many say
that the damage done by this mammoth piece of technology - destroying
mudflats and bird habitats, and weakening the famous tidal wave known
as the Severn bore - would outweigh the benefits. A battle is being
joined over the fate of Britain's longest river, and it is highlighting
an uncomfortable truth which environmentalists don't much like dwelling
on: some green technologies can have distinctly un-green impacts.
Britain
is a small, overcrowded and overdeveloped country in which wild places
are at a premium. On moors and glens, on tidal rivers and empty
beaches, humanity's impact can be escaped, at least for a time. A
mountain is an example of what the American poet Robinson Jeffers
called "the transhuman magnificence": a place that rises above the
detritus of civilisation, where we may go to experience the reality of
nature and the reality of ourselves. I have had such experiences on
mountains, and they helped lead me to become an environmentalist.
When
I climb a mountain, then, and find that the detritus of civilisation
has followed me, in the form of giant wind turbines, my reaction is not
to jump for joy because it is zero-carbon detritus. My reaction is to
wonder how anyone could miss the point so spectacularly. And when I
hear other environmentalists responding to my concerns with aggressive
dismissal - particularly if they have never visited the mountain in
question - I get really quite depressed.
Fifteen or so years ago,
as an excitable young road protester, I tried to prevent the
destruction of beautiful places. To me, building a motorway through
ancient downland, or a bypass through a watermeadow, was a desecration.
To me today, a windfarm on a mountain is a similar desecration. A tidal
barrage that turns a great river into a glorified mill stream is a
desecration. Carpeting the Sahara with giant solar panels would be a
desecration. The motivation may be different, but the destruction of
the wild and the wonderful is the same.
It is de rigueur among
greens to respond to such heresy by explaining that we have less than
100 months to get to grips with global warming; a few turbines on the
odd hillside is a small price for preventing the apocalypse that would
result from our failure.
Well, maybe. But while renewable energy
is a good thing in principle, if schemes end up, like their
conventional forbears, as centralised mega-projects that override local
feeling and destroy wild landscapes, then they become precisely the
kind of projects that people like me cut their teeth trying to stop.
If
you don't understand what makes Helvellyn awe-inspiring, or the Severn
bore magnificent, or the Lewis peat moors evocative, in some deep - and
possibly inexplicable - sense, then you will have no idea what I'm
talking about. These places will seem not to be places at all, but
"resources", ripe for exploitation; and your response to them will be
about not breathing space or spiritual nourishment, but kilowatt hours
and energy security.
Environmentalism is surely inspired by a
sense of wonder at the richness of the natural world. Without that
inspiration, it becomes the kind of bleached, technocratic,
office-bound variety so common today, which pushes for the taming of
rivers, mountains and wildlands in the name of making the
ever-expanding human economy more "sustainable". Desperate to seem
grown up, serious and economically literate, many greens seem to have
become terrified of talking about the things that motivated them in the
first place. Beauty. Wildness. A connection to the non-human, the
remote, the untamed.
Human impact on the world is now so enormous
that the civilisation we have built is feeling the shudders. If the
world's governments, with the collusion of some environmentalists, want
to pretend that the need to question that civilisation's values can be
staved off with wave machines and wind turbines, it is up to them. But
we should understand that, whether we dig up coal or carpet the
wildlands with barrages and turbines, we are making a statement: this
is our world, and we will exploit every inch of it. We want - no, need
- more energy for our TVs, cars and planes. It is our right. There is
no alternative.
There is only one place this attitude can lead:
to a collision between civilisation and the biosphere. I don't see any
number of barrages doing much to prevent that. And I would put a lot of
money on the winner.