Wind farms will devastate tourism

IF THE Scottish Executive have their way there will be few places in Scotland from which one will not be able to enjoy views of wind farms.

This mass industrialisation of the countryside will result in an unreliable and expensive source of electricity, which will have no appreciable effect on carbon emissions or climate change. It will seriously affect the economy by an overall loss of jobs due to a fall in tourism, and higher electricity bills will be bad news for both industry and the domestic consumer.

As a result of this policy the citizens of this land can say goodbye to our well-loved landscape, quiet and unspoilt natural beauty, goodbye to our stunning, unadulterated sunsets, because the evening sky will be illuminated by flashing red lights atop the turbines, goodbye to our abundant wildlife and our thriving tourist industry upon which the economy of Scotland depends.

This appalling situation will lead to already economically fragile local communities losing the prosperity brought by tourism. People trapped by circumstances beyond their control, unable to move house due to devalued property prices, as purchasers do not wish to move to blighted areas.

The majority of MSPs, with a notable few exceptions, local councillors and, surprisingly, the Churches, are silent about the greatest threat to Highland life since The Clearances.

Judith Hodgson, Skye

SIR Donald Miller (Letters, February 6) and your correspondents fail to weigh the costs of subsidies to renewable energy development against the costs to the economy of pollution by fossil-fuel burning for power generation.

The annual costs to Scottish consumers of wind power - "the startling figure of 55 per head" - must be set against the costs to consumers, taxpayers and industry of, inter alia, clearing slag heaps, land decontamination, mine-site restoration, rehabilitation of acidified lakes and adaptation to climate change. Somebody does pay for clearing up the mess left by fossil-fuel burning and I venture it is you and me in the end.

Any subsidy to renewable energy development which reduces or avoids these costs might therefore be very good business for the rest of us, even if those in the conventional energy sector perceive a threat to their vested interests.

The threat of wind farms to ecosystems needs to be similarly set in context. I find it very difficult to believe that the threat to biological systems posed by wind farms is anything like the degradation of aquatic, marine and terrestrial ecosystems wrought by fossil fuel extraction, shipment and burning.

Impacts of wind farms on ecosystems have tight boundaries in space and time and, surely, are readily managed, not least by selecting sites which minimise trade-offs with conservation and landscape values.

I have seen little evidence in your ‘Wind Farm Watch’ series of objective analysis which considers the full costs and benefits of wind power to the Scottish economy or to ecosystems.

Dr Mark Smith, East Kilbride