Here's the problem: a tiny, unrepresentative, undemocratic minority of extremists are actively seeking to subvert Britain's energy policy, to overturn the vital, international drive towards sustainability (in the UK, at least), to see Britain falling behind the rest of the world in the growing green economy, to create more pollution, more greenhouse gas emissions, to force up energy bills and to deny our children the right to a clean environment and low-cost green energy. Why are they doing this?
Because they're fanatics.
Their current targets are those national organisations which have so far been, if not actively in favour of wind energy developments, at least relatively open-minded about them. So, keep an eye on the British Horse Society, which has been pretty sensible where windfarms are concerned. Idiots who haven't ridden a horse in years routinely object to windfarm proposals on the shabby grounds that they might scare the horses (how - if windfarms are as "noisy" as the nimbies like to make out? Do they really expect us to believe that these "noisy" windfarms deliberately go quiet when a horse is approaching, only to start making a noise and sending "shadow flicker" - a phenomenon that no nimby seems, or tries, to understand - just when the horse is at its most vulnerable? Is that what the numbskulls think?).
The British Horse Society has so far been pretty good at pointing out that many people ride horses near windfarms without courting disaster. The first real windfarm in Britain was built by a stud-farm, and those horses all survived. That particular windfarm in Cornwall has now been upgraded (the locals voted for larger new turbines to replace the existing ones). It would surely be more realistic of the horse brigade to worry more about things that pose a genuine threat to horses - like the Grand National - rather than making up a load of horse-sh*t about windfarms. But, sadly, the British Horse Society is coming under pressure, it would seem, from its more intolerant, aggressive, Daily Mail reader types, and might be forced by that vicious minority to start making stupid anti-windfarm statements before long.
That, certainly, is what has happened at CPRE (Campaign to Protect Rural England). Previously very sensible on the matter of windfarms - recognising, for example, that the real threat to the English countryside is posed by climate change - CPRE has had a collective fit and allowed the harrumphing brigade of mindless nimbies in its midst to run riot.
In a press release, CPRE demanded that the government publish a wind energy strategy, dictating precisely how many wind turbines there will be in England and where they will be built. The CPRE press release is a masterclass in nimby gibberish.
They have a "tranquillity map of England". Possibly, one of the silliest maps ever created. And, drawing an inference that no rational person could draw, CPRE are claiming that windfarms will jeopardise the "tranquillity" that CPRE has gone to the trouble of mapping (incidentally, has anyone got any idea how CPRE mapped England's "tranquillity"? Was there even a trace of science involved?)
Given the strict noise conditions imposed on windfarms, and the requirement of windfarm operators to ensure that their turbines barely exceed the level of ordinary background noise - and that at the nearest residential amenity to the windfarm - it is quite obvious that someone at CPRE has got their knickers in a twist over nothing, here. In fact, if you want to preserve the elusive "tranquillity" of the English countryside, you'd be best advised to support many more windfarms. Where a windfarm is built, you won't get a major housing development, for example (which would be considerably noisier than a windfarm).
As if to show that CPRE is talking out of its corporate bottom - and doing so in the strangulated tones of a nimby idiot - the press release bends over backwards to present wind turbines as an "industrial" thing. This is a favourite trick of the nimby Nazis. Imagine how they'd react if something genuinely industrial was proposed!! But by misusing language in order to promote the illusion that windfarms are "industrial" and a threat to the "tranquillity" of rural England, CPRE are letting their nimby slip show. Or, to put it another way, they have thrown objectivity, science, rationality and the national need out of the window. They decided to go down the deadend road of nimby nonsense by fantasising about an England in which every rural area is "tranquil" - no farming going on, we hope to God, 'cos it's bloody noisy and pretty filthy too - and all landscapes are "unspoilt" (yeah, as if) and renewable energy projects are "industrial".
You'd have to be bonkers to believe any of that. Nimbies do, because they're bonkers. But we have a right to expect better of CPRE. We also have a right to expect that those who claim to run such organisations should restrain the swivel-eyed nimby liars rather than pander to their looney-tunes ideas.
Here's where CPRE leap right off the deep end into nimby paranoia: "Communities feel increasingly powerless in the face of speculative applications from big, well-funded developers, and this risks undermining public support for the measures needed to tackle climate change."
Shall we number the idiocies in that brief statement? Yes, let's. So, working backwards:
1) Nimbies don't give a damn about climate change. These are the same nutters who complained about recycling and moaned about longlife, low-energy lightbulbs; the same boneheads who kicked up a stink about different coloured wheelie-bins. They will happily delude themselves into believing that climate change isn't happening, if it means they can avoid personally having to do anything about it. Most nimbies are right-wing nutters with a poor grasp of reality, and to them "climate change" is some vague socialist conspiracy. They couldn't care less about climate change or doing anything about it.
2) CPRE seem to be saying that, in order not to undermine public support for the measures to tackle climate change, we should avoid taking any measures to tackle climate change, such as approving windfarms. After all, it's easy to support something which we know will never happen and won't demand anything at all from us - any wild-eyed nimby whacko can do that! Besides which, the public - it has been shown time and time again - tend to approve of windfarms when they've got used to them, which happens pretty quickly when one has been built (the only exceptions being those hardened, sclerotic, myopic terrors who insist that they were right about wind turbines all along, even when everybody else has admitted that they're actually okay, or those poor fools duped by their nimby neighbours into believing that they can really hear a distant windfarm, when they can't). But CPRE seems to be saying that the best way to maintain public support for anti-climate change measures is not to implement any of those measures. Which is pretty mad.
3) How many windfarm developers go in for "speculative" planning applications? Does CPRE really think that windfarm developers treat it as some sort of game? It takes YEARS to process a planning application for a windfarm. There are dozens of hoops to be jumped through, all manner of surveys, studies, consultations. It's an expensive, time-consuming activity. CPRE has proven that it has stopped listening to common sense and is now only listening to the barking nimbies if it thinks that windfarm developers happily waste their time and everybody else's with "speculative" planning applications.
4) Not all windfarm developers are "big" and "well-funded". Many are relatively small, community-funded enterprises. CPRE presumably doesn't like these either. Why? Because CPRE has not thought things through. It has just leapt willy-nilly on the nimby bandwagon and will be contradicting itself for evermore, or until it wakes out of its nimby coma.
5) Considerably less than half of all windfarms proposed in England receive planning consent, and that often after a planning inquiry and various foolish legal manoeuvres by the cretins of Middle Earth (sorry, Middle England). The idea that "communities" are powerless in the face of windfarm developers is a nimby myth, pure and simple. Many, many cases have come to light of aggressive, dishonest and misinformed nimby campaigns causing havoc with the planning system and holding Britain back. The real people who are powerless in all this are the supporters of wind energy who refuse to stoop to the depths to which the nimbies are only too happy to stoop. The supporters of wind power get bullied and threatened and abused by the vicious nimby crew - the very nimbies who claim to feel "powerless". Sorry, but CPRE have completely lost the plot if they think that the seriously delusional, thuggish and mendacious types who drive nimby campaigns are "powerless" in any way; in fact, CPRE has fallen prey to the very self-serving propaganda issued by the nimbies themselves.
6) "Communities" are not the issue here. The problem tends to be newcomers to a rural area, and a handful of retired bigots, who band together to fight anything and everything. Sometimes, it happens to be a windfarm proposal that falls foul of these extremists. But it can be anything. These terrorists whip up as much frenzy, fear and loathing as they can, splitting and harming their communities in the process. If CPRE were honest, they'd leave "communities" out of this. But they've fallen for another of the nimby lies - that the "community" is against something (which it doesn't understand, and has been repeatedly lied to about by the hoodlums in their midst). In fact, the real community stands to gain - economically and environmentally - from having a windfarm nearby, and the community proper is usually not-all-that-bothered about having one. It is the crazed despots of the nimby movement, and them alone, who cause all the trouble, and they do not represent the real community, no matter how much they like to convince themselves that they do.
Here's some proof. A recent Ipsos Mori poll found that 68% of rural residents want more wind power. That's more than the city-dwellers, 66% of whom want more wind energy. It's close, but the difference is also telling. It shows that more than two-thirds of people living in rural England want to see more windfarms. So what the flock are CPRE on about, with their gibberish about "communities"? Most people living in the countryside support wind power. Only a demented few are actively opposed to it.
Does CPRE only represent the demented few, now? The newcomers, who moved to an "exclusive" rural area and won't allow anyone to do anything there, anymore, ever again? The Telegraph-reading twits and Daily Mail monsters? The sort who complain about sheep and church bells ruining their new-found rural "tranquillity"? The selfish, deluded, right-wing maniac brigade? Is that who CPRE now represents?
It comes to something when Charles, Prince of Wales, expresses support for wind power (in a new film, Harmony: A New Way of Looking at Our World, screened at the Sundance Film Festival), while a body like CPRE sides with a self-serving nutcase like Donald Trump. Prince Charles provided the narration for the film Harmony. He praises Germany for leading the way in wind energy technology and says:
I recently flew over the German countryside where ancient buildings and castles now merge into a new landscape dotted with solar panels and wind turbines. I certainly support the commitment to working with nature's freely-given forms and clean energy.
So, too, do the clear majority (9 out of 10, in the case of all renewables) of English people. The same proportion of English folk and Scots - roughly 7 out of 10 - support wind energy. They have realised that the "new landscape" described by Prince Charles in Germany is the landscape of the future. Ancient buildings and castles belong to it, too.
Unless you're the daffy old CPRE, which has had a collective breakdown and thinks that the only things allowed in the landscape are ancient buildings and castles. You know - the very sort of thing yer average nimby thinks. Once they've built their own monstrosity in the midst of the "unspoilt" countryside, that is.
Wednesday, 2 May 2012
Sunday, 29 April 2012
LANDSCAPE vs ENVIRONMENT
The nimbies have struck again.
Near Drymen, in West Stirlingshire, there are plans for a ten-turbine windfarm. Some of these will go on land that has been farmed by the same family for fifty years. Sadly, this just means that the family have come under fire from some neighbours who - how shall we put this? - haven't been there quite so long.
The farm in question has an area of land which is effectively unfarmable. That land can be put to good use by siting wind turbines on it. It's not as if wind turbines are a rare sight in central Scotland - the locals have had ample opportunity to see that they do not have a negative impact on lives (unless, of course, you decide that they are going to impact on your life, regardless of empirical reality). And yet, as letters to the local paper have shown, some of the selfish nitwits in the region reckon that visits to windfarms have only convinced them that their lives will "change completely" if the windfarm goes ahead. How hysterical can you get?
Yes, unbelievably, the nasty nimbies of West Stirlingshire are STILL capable of coming out with all the disproven, discredited and unrealistic hogwash about "noise nuisance" and "light flicker". You really would think that they live in a turbine-free area, the way they routinely spout the familiar nonsensical nimby lies. But they don't. There are plenty of working windfarms in the area. So we can't put the atrocious claptrap published by members of EVAG (Endrick Valley Action Group) down to ignorance. Intolerance, yes. The vaulting hypocrisy of the nimby, yes. But not ignorance.
Some locals have set out to make the lives of the farmer, his wife and their young children a misery. Mostly in the form of snide insinuations and vicious comments in the local press and on Facebook. The unpleasant nimbies of the area don't have the decency or the balls to take up their issues with the windfarm developers, Banks Renewables. No. Being typical nasty nimby types, they go straight for the family. The family that has been there for five decades, when many of the nimbies have only just turned up.
Incredibly, the local hoodlums have accused the farming family of having "no conscience" and of not caring for the environment.
We'll give that one a moment to sink in.
It's true. The recent arrivals who have taken arms against this perfectly legitimate clean energy development have accused the farmer and his family, on whose land some of the turbines will be sited, of having "no conscience". A different matter, no doubt, from being unprincipled and unethical enough to attack a genuinely local family for doing the right thing. And, worse maybe, these knuckleheads have claimed that the farmer does not care for the environment.
Anyone who knows anything about wind turbines know that they are an environment protection measure, as well as being an effective and efficient way of generating cheap electricity with the minimum of environmental harm. But the delusional fools of EVAG and its sister covens don't actually know the first thing about wind turbines. If they did, they wouldn't bore the readers of the local paper with wildly inaccurate and silly letters making all the usual stupid nimby claims (e.g., that the wind turbines would be "completely inefficient" - a sure sign that this is an out-and-out nimby writing, and not an intelligent member of the human race).
Once again, the nimby nutters are making the fundamental mistake. They are confusing the landscape with the environment. It's an easy mistake to make, if you are basically selfish and anti-social. The environment belongs to us all. The landscape, these people like to think, belongs only to those who can afford it.
In reality, the landscape is merely the visible form of the environment. And without renewables - windfarms very much included - then we can just kiss goodbye to the environment. And the superficial aspect of the environment, which we call the landscape.
The sad fact is that many of the thugs who oppose perfectly sensible and beneficial wind energy developments don't need to care very much about environmental issues, because they won't be around for much longer. They are happy to leave future generations to suffer the consequences of their insanely selfish lifestyles.
But here we have a farming family, very much a part of the local landscape, who have proven their commitment to the environment. And they have some land which cannot be farmed. It's a very good place to site some turbines, and they'll make some income from it. It's news, of course, to the morons who've just moved to the area that farmers need to make an income (not an easy thing, in this day and age). The kind of self-centred fool who moves to a rural area and then campaigns against everything genuinely rural will only tolerate farms as long as they are "picturesque". That is, as long as they serve the narrow-minded notion of the landscape that these cretins import with them when they move there.
Forget the simple fact that farming is an environmental matter, more than merely a matter of aesthetics for the retired and the terminally selfish. The fools of EVAG just don't want to admit this. It's all about them, them, them, and what they think the landscape ought to be: a picture postcard they can look at occasionally from their armchairs.
And for that reason, the sad, sad people of EVAG have set out to make the lives of this local farming family a misery.
So EVAG joins the ever-growing list of climate traitors, anti-social monsters, self-deluding propagandists and aggressive idiots - or nimbies, for short. They think it's their view that they are defending. But they're not. They are simply obstructing progress, opposing sustainability, ruining the lives of good people and threatening the future for our children and grandchildren.
Why? Because they moved into the area. And now no one else is allowed to do anything. Oh, and they just love quoting that barefaced liar Donald Trump. Which goes to show what low forms of amoeboid life they are.
Near Drymen, in West Stirlingshire, there are plans for a ten-turbine windfarm. Some of these will go on land that has been farmed by the same family for fifty years. Sadly, this just means that the family have come under fire from some neighbours who - how shall we put this? - haven't been there quite so long.
The farm in question has an area of land which is effectively unfarmable. That land can be put to good use by siting wind turbines on it. It's not as if wind turbines are a rare sight in central Scotland - the locals have had ample opportunity to see that they do not have a negative impact on lives (unless, of course, you decide that they are going to impact on your life, regardless of empirical reality). And yet, as letters to the local paper have shown, some of the selfish nitwits in the region reckon that visits to windfarms have only convinced them that their lives will "change completely" if the windfarm goes ahead. How hysterical can you get?
Yes, unbelievably, the nasty nimbies of West Stirlingshire are STILL capable of coming out with all the disproven, discredited and unrealistic hogwash about "noise nuisance" and "light flicker". You really would think that they live in a turbine-free area, the way they routinely spout the familiar nonsensical nimby lies. But they don't. There are plenty of working windfarms in the area. So we can't put the atrocious claptrap published by members of EVAG (Endrick Valley Action Group) down to ignorance. Intolerance, yes. The vaulting hypocrisy of the nimby, yes. But not ignorance.
Some locals have set out to make the lives of the farmer, his wife and their young children a misery. Mostly in the form of snide insinuations and vicious comments in the local press and on Facebook. The unpleasant nimbies of the area don't have the decency or the balls to take up their issues with the windfarm developers, Banks Renewables. No. Being typical nasty nimby types, they go straight for the family. The family that has been there for five decades, when many of the nimbies have only just turned up.
Incredibly, the local hoodlums have accused the farming family of having "no conscience" and of not caring for the environment.
We'll give that one a moment to sink in.
It's true. The recent arrivals who have taken arms against this perfectly legitimate clean energy development have accused the farmer and his family, on whose land some of the turbines will be sited, of having "no conscience". A different matter, no doubt, from being unprincipled and unethical enough to attack a genuinely local family for doing the right thing. And, worse maybe, these knuckleheads have claimed that the farmer does not care for the environment.
Anyone who knows anything about wind turbines know that they are an environment protection measure, as well as being an effective and efficient way of generating cheap electricity with the minimum of environmental harm. But the delusional fools of EVAG and its sister covens don't actually know the first thing about wind turbines. If they did, they wouldn't bore the readers of the local paper with wildly inaccurate and silly letters making all the usual stupid nimby claims (e.g., that the wind turbines would be "completely inefficient" - a sure sign that this is an out-and-out nimby writing, and not an intelligent member of the human race).
Once again, the nimby nutters are making the fundamental mistake. They are confusing the landscape with the environment. It's an easy mistake to make, if you are basically selfish and anti-social. The environment belongs to us all. The landscape, these people like to think, belongs only to those who can afford it.
In reality, the landscape is merely the visible form of the environment. And without renewables - windfarms very much included - then we can just kiss goodbye to the environment. And the superficial aspect of the environment, which we call the landscape.
The sad fact is that many of the thugs who oppose perfectly sensible and beneficial wind energy developments don't need to care very much about environmental issues, because they won't be around for much longer. They are happy to leave future generations to suffer the consequences of their insanely selfish lifestyles.
But here we have a farming family, very much a part of the local landscape, who have proven their commitment to the environment. And they have some land which cannot be farmed. It's a very good place to site some turbines, and they'll make some income from it. It's news, of course, to the morons who've just moved to the area that farmers need to make an income (not an easy thing, in this day and age). The kind of self-centred fool who moves to a rural area and then campaigns against everything genuinely rural will only tolerate farms as long as they are "picturesque". That is, as long as they serve the narrow-minded notion of the landscape that these cretins import with them when they move there.
Forget the simple fact that farming is an environmental matter, more than merely a matter of aesthetics for the retired and the terminally selfish. The fools of EVAG just don't want to admit this. It's all about them, them, them, and what they think the landscape ought to be: a picture postcard they can look at occasionally from their armchairs.
And for that reason, the sad, sad people of EVAG have set out to make the lives of this local farming family a misery.
So EVAG joins the ever-growing list of climate traitors, anti-social monsters, self-deluding propagandists and aggressive idiots - or nimbies, for short. They think it's their view that they are defending. But they're not. They are simply obstructing progress, opposing sustainability, ruining the lives of good people and threatening the future for our children and grandchildren.
Why? Because they moved into the area. And now no one else is allowed to do anything. Oh, and they just love quoting that barefaced liar Donald Trump. Which goes to show what low forms of amoeboid life they are.
Friday, 27 April 2012
HOW SICK ARE THESE PEOPLE?
Okay, so it makes a change from telling lies about windfarms. But even though they shifted the focus of their protest a bit, Montgomeryshire Against Pylons (MAP) have proved that they are as dangerously delirious, as nasty-minded and as criminally evil as yer typical anti-windfarm nutjob.
MAP's campaign "literature" - to grant it a status it doesn't deserve - was reported to the independent Advertising Standards Authority. Eight complaints were made, of which seven were upheld.
Here's what the crazed fanatics of Montgomeryshire Against Pylons were stuffing down people's throats:
STOP, they shrieked. Pylons are coming.
Yep - it's like War of the Worlds. And why are those pylons "coming"? Because of clean, green wind energy. Welsh windfarms, in other words, which, with the tiresomely repetitive dishonesty we have come to expect from the anti-wind loons, MAP says are "inefficient".
Oh, yes. These extraterrestrial pylons will, if you believe the frothy-mouthed weirdos of MAP, lead to -
Destruction of our beautiful countryside, properties and homes forever (very VVASP, that level of hysteria - and how, exactly, are the pylons going to destroy our "properties and homes forever"???)
Real threat of increased childhood leukemia (we'll come back to this, but for now will note only that the MAP morons are using American spellcheck and don't know how we spell "leukaemia" here in the UK)
Property values crashing up to 40% (awkward grammar, this, and difficult to square with the claim that properties will be destroyed "forever": will that be after the 40% crash, or before?)
Oh, and there will also be "road alterations, closures and chaos for around six years" while the pylons and - the real issue at stake here - wind turbines are built.
You think that was all a bit mad? Just see where MAP went next:
Other communities in Britain have stopped pylons being built. We must act now to STOP the abomination the Welsh Assembly are dumping right on top of us.
Yes: it's as apocalyptic as that. How awful that nobody outside of Montgomeryshire has ever experienced the full horror of a few pylons ... oh, hang on. They have. We all have. We've been relying on them for decades. Everywhere.
Maybe the real problem isn't the pylons at all. Maybe it's the windfarms that these demented fools are really up in arms about.
Anyway, back to the ASA complaints. The ASA was asked to adjudicate on whether the following claims, printed in the ghastly "literature" of MAP, were permissible:
"Electricity prices could rise by 60% in 2012" (true - they could. We could also be eaten by giant rats in 2012. Or the sky could fall in)
"Property values crashing up to 40%" (nonsense)
"Pylons will devalue your home by 20-40% and possibly more" (is that on top of the 40% crash?)
"Power lines are linked with childhood leukemia [sic] and other cancers"
"Farmers will lose valuable fertile land - power lines are associated with lower milk yield and abortions in animals"
In addition to all this gibberish, the MAP maniacs had reproduced a disturbing image of a child, just to ram home their moronic claims about "leukemia", and had created an image of what the pylons might look like in situ, very close to people's homes, which was a bit naughty because the actual locations of the pylons had not yet been decided.
MAP were asked by the ASA to produce the evidence to support their wild, atrocious claims. The evidence produced by MAP to support the first claim ("Electricity prices could rise by 60% in 2012") made no mention of electricity prices rising by 60% in 2012 - and the articles presented by MAP had been published after the pylon-nimbies ("pymbies"?) made their ludicrous and groundless claim. Besides which, as we all know, the huge hike in energy bills last year was down to gas, not renewables. So MAP's claim was especially stupid and misleading.
The evidence provided by MAP to support their assertions about pylons impacting on house prices were either entirely anecdotal, "a man in the pub told me" type stuff, or a couple of editorials from the usual-suspect right-wing newspapers. So, no evidence at all, then.
The "evidence" for the claims about childhood leukaemias and abortions in cattle came from a conspiracy theory website and an American report which made no connection between power lines and these diseases. No actual evidence there, then, either.
To put it simply, MAP - in the oh-so familiar manner of the nasty anti-wind nimby brigade - had simply thrown together a bunch of hysterical claptrap with the sole intention of frightening and misleading people.
The similarities between MAP's mindlessly irresponsible behaviour and that of the typical anti-wind nimby group should be obvious to all. The usual brainless health scares, the usual unsubstantiated claims about house prices, the well-known gibberish about "our beautiful countryside" and some weird, unprecedented level of permanent destruction. Nothing new or even remotely imaginative there.
But where they really scraped the bottom of the barrel was in trying to put the frighteners onto local residents by forging a non-existent link between the proposed pylons and increased levels of childhood leukaemia, a disease which they couldn't even spell right.
That was sick. Sick and evil. Evil and wrong. The vicious, crazy, out-of-control cretins who published MAP's disgraceful "literature" should be locked up for what they tried to do. Indeed - for what they did. Just like the nimby fascists who set out to convince all and sundry that a windfarm in the neighbourhood will cause all manner of random diseases (bundled together under the fraudulent and discredited title of "Wind Turbine Syndrome"), these selfish cowards in Montgomeryshire were sinking about as low as a supposedly normal person can go. Their thinking was quite simple (as, indeed, was only fitting for such a campaign of kneejerk intolerance and wilful deception). If they couldn't spread fear and alarm by making up lies about house prices, they'd get you somewhere else - by going for your children.
No one - repeat: no one - who supports wind energy, renewables in general, and the transformation of our infrastructure which will see an energy revolution over the next few decades, is opposed to the idea of us all having a proper, free and open debate about green energy and sustainability. No one.
We all accept that pylons and wind turbines might not be everybody's cup of tea. If you find them "ugly", that's up to you. It's your opinion, and you're entitled to it.
But groups like MAP just keep on proving that there is no hope at all for a grown-up, intelligent and informed debate in this country about our energy future and the transition to a low-carbon economy. Just because they don't fancy the idea of a few pylons some distance from their homes, or they have the all-too-common middle-class brainblock over windfarms, they immediately hit the nuclear button and publish mounds of vile, outrageous, preposterous, unsubstantiated, misleading, scare-mongering lies. That's not grown-up. That's not intelligent. That's not informed. It's insane.
Forget about pylons and "leukemia". The real cancer in our society is the vicious, lying, threatening, bullying nimby. And, once again, the ASA has looked at the evidence and forbidden them from publishing their filthy lies again.
Will it stop, them? Will it heckers like. But at least we all now know just how depraved, how dishonest, how deranged the anti-everything minority can be.
MAP's campaign "literature" - to grant it a status it doesn't deserve - was reported to the independent Advertising Standards Authority. Eight complaints were made, of which seven were upheld.
Here's what the crazed fanatics of Montgomeryshire Against Pylons were stuffing down people's throats:
STOP, they shrieked. Pylons are coming.
Yep - it's like War of the Worlds. And why are those pylons "coming"? Because of clean, green wind energy. Welsh windfarms, in other words, which, with the tiresomely repetitive dishonesty we have come to expect from the anti-wind loons, MAP says are "inefficient".
Oh, yes. These extraterrestrial pylons will, if you believe the frothy-mouthed weirdos of MAP, lead to -
Destruction of our beautiful countryside, properties and homes forever (very VVASP, that level of hysteria - and how, exactly, are the pylons going to destroy our "properties and homes forever"???)
Real threat of increased childhood leukemia (we'll come back to this, but for now will note only that the MAP morons are using American spellcheck and don't know how we spell "leukaemia" here in the UK)
Property values crashing up to 40% (awkward grammar, this, and difficult to square with the claim that properties will be destroyed "forever": will that be after the 40% crash, or before?)
Oh, and there will also be "road alterations, closures and chaos for around six years" while the pylons and - the real issue at stake here - wind turbines are built.
You think that was all a bit mad? Just see where MAP went next:
Other communities in Britain have stopped pylons being built. We must act now to STOP the abomination the Welsh Assembly are dumping right on top of us.
Yes: it's as apocalyptic as that. How awful that nobody outside of Montgomeryshire has ever experienced the full horror of a few pylons ... oh, hang on. They have. We all have. We've been relying on them for decades. Everywhere.
Maybe the real problem isn't the pylons at all. Maybe it's the windfarms that these demented fools are really up in arms about.
Anyway, back to the ASA complaints. The ASA was asked to adjudicate on whether the following claims, printed in the ghastly "literature" of MAP, were permissible:
"Electricity prices could rise by 60% in 2012" (true - they could. We could also be eaten by giant rats in 2012. Or the sky could fall in)
"Property values crashing up to 40%" (nonsense)
"Pylons will devalue your home by 20-40% and possibly more" (is that on top of the 40% crash?)
"Power lines are linked with childhood leukemia [sic] and other cancers"
"Farmers will lose valuable fertile land - power lines are associated with lower milk yield and abortions in animals"
In addition to all this gibberish, the MAP maniacs had reproduced a disturbing image of a child, just to ram home their moronic claims about "leukemia", and had created an image of what the pylons might look like in situ, very close to people's homes, which was a bit naughty because the actual locations of the pylons had not yet been decided.
MAP were asked by the ASA to produce the evidence to support their wild, atrocious claims. The evidence produced by MAP to support the first claim ("Electricity prices could rise by 60% in 2012") made no mention of electricity prices rising by 60% in 2012 - and the articles presented by MAP had been published after the pylon-nimbies ("pymbies"?) made their ludicrous and groundless claim. Besides which, as we all know, the huge hike in energy bills last year was down to gas, not renewables. So MAP's claim was especially stupid and misleading.
The evidence provided by MAP to support their assertions about pylons impacting on house prices were either entirely anecdotal, "a man in the pub told me" type stuff, or a couple of editorials from the usual-suspect right-wing newspapers. So, no evidence at all, then.
The "evidence" for the claims about childhood leukaemias and abortions in cattle came from a conspiracy theory website and an American report which made no connection between power lines and these diseases. No actual evidence there, then, either.
To put it simply, MAP - in the oh-so familiar manner of the nasty anti-wind nimby brigade - had simply thrown together a bunch of hysterical claptrap with the sole intention of frightening and misleading people.
The similarities between MAP's mindlessly irresponsible behaviour and that of the typical anti-wind nimby group should be obvious to all. The usual brainless health scares, the usual unsubstantiated claims about house prices, the well-known gibberish about "our beautiful countryside" and some weird, unprecedented level of permanent destruction. Nothing new or even remotely imaginative there.
But where they really scraped the bottom of the barrel was in trying to put the frighteners onto local residents by forging a non-existent link between the proposed pylons and increased levels of childhood leukaemia, a disease which they couldn't even spell right.
That was sick. Sick and evil. Evil and wrong. The vicious, crazy, out-of-control cretins who published MAP's disgraceful "literature" should be locked up for what they tried to do. Indeed - for what they did. Just like the nimby fascists who set out to convince all and sundry that a windfarm in the neighbourhood will cause all manner of random diseases (bundled together under the fraudulent and discredited title of "Wind Turbine Syndrome"), these selfish cowards in Montgomeryshire were sinking about as low as a supposedly normal person can go. Their thinking was quite simple (as, indeed, was only fitting for such a campaign of kneejerk intolerance and wilful deception). If they couldn't spread fear and alarm by making up lies about house prices, they'd get you somewhere else - by going for your children.
No one - repeat: no one - who supports wind energy, renewables in general, and the transformation of our infrastructure which will see an energy revolution over the next few decades, is opposed to the idea of us all having a proper, free and open debate about green energy and sustainability. No one.
We all accept that pylons and wind turbines might not be everybody's cup of tea. If you find them "ugly", that's up to you. It's your opinion, and you're entitled to it.
But groups like MAP just keep on proving that there is no hope at all for a grown-up, intelligent and informed debate in this country about our energy future and the transition to a low-carbon economy. Just because they don't fancy the idea of a few pylons some distance from their homes, or they have the all-too-common middle-class brainblock over windfarms, they immediately hit the nuclear button and publish mounds of vile, outrageous, preposterous, unsubstantiated, misleading, scare-mongering lies. That's not grown-up. That's not intelligent. That's not informed. It's insane.
Forget about pylons and "leukemia". The real cancer in our society is the vicious, lying, threatening, bullying nimby. And, once again, the ASA has looked at the evidence and forbidden them from publishing their filthy lies again.
Will it stop, them? Will it heckers like. But at least we all now know just how depraved, how dishonest, how deranged the anti-everything minority can be.
Thursday, 26 April 2012
PRIORITIES
Nimby campaigns tend to be quagmires of gobbledegook. Though there's almost always a nod in the direction of "greenwash", along the lines of "We in Stop-Everything-That-We-Might-Be-Able-To-See are pro-renewables". And then they reveal that they are completely anti-renewables. Wind power especially. What they really like is nuclear. They have suddenly discovered what a wonderful, clean, safe, cheap, reliable and - ahem - "renewable" - thing nuclear power is. It would be a different matter if someone decided to build a nuclear reactor a mile from their homes, of course. But the nimbies can't see that. They can't see much at the best of times. And because they've got it in for renewables - windfarms especially - they will say all sorts of stupid things about them and pretend that nuclear is the answer.
The nimby nutters have now been joined in their madness by some of our heritage agencies, who are proving to be as short-sighted and muddled in their thinking as the loopiest of anti-wind activists.
The National Trust and English Heritage have announced that they will mount a legal appeal against the planning inspector's decision in favour of a four-turbine windfarm near a Grade 1 listed garden at Lyveden New Bield.
Now, the proposed windfarm will be a kilometre away from the garden and will do no physical harm whatsoever to the National Trust property (a house which has remained unfinished since 1605). That is an important point to make. It will do no physical, material harm whatsoever to the house or garden. None at all.
But, as the National Trust has been telling members who have contacted the organisation to express their outrage at this retrograde and foolish step by the heritage charity, they "support all forms of renewable energy", but ...
Yep - it's that same old nimby refrain: "we are all in favour of renewables, but we think nuclear is better". Not cheaper, certainly, with various companies pulling out of the plans for the UK's new fleet of reactors on the grounds that the figures don't add up, and with the outgoing CEO of America's biggest nuclear power provider admitting that nuclear is not economically viable. And not greener, because nuclear relies on an awful lot of concrete and a fossil fuel for its power source. And not safer, because no windfarm has or will achieve what Three Mile Island, Chernobyl or Fukushima Dai-ichi achieved. And not even more reliable - not when Britain's newest nuclear power station, Hinkley B, could spend upwards of seven months producing absolutely no electricity at all while the UK's growing fleet of wind turbines did exactly what they were designed to do. No. Not cheaper, greener, safer or more reliable. But better, because by and large the nimbies can't see them.
English Heritage certainly doesn't seem to have a problem with nuclear power stations. If they did, they might have registered an objection to EDF's plans to strip away 400 acres of top soil and vegetation from the proposed site of the Hinkley C power station in Somerset. English Heritage felt some qualms about the loss of archaeological sites - burial mounds, etc. - and a significant stretch of historic green lane at the Hinkley C site. Those losses are permanent. As English Heritage acknowledged, there would be "major impacts" as a consequence of EDF carrying out preparatory work on a site for which it didn't even have planning permission. Still, English Heritage did not object.
So English Heritage does not object to the permanent damage done to heritage sites in the case of a nuclear power station. It does, however, object to the perceived, short-term "damage" done by windfarms.
In other words, if you're a nuclear power operator who wants to tear up many acres of soil, and various archaeological sites, when you don't yet have planning permission for a nuclear power station, English Heritage probably won't stand in your way. But if you're a wind energy developer who has no intention whatsoever of tearing up many acres of soil or damaging any archaeological sites, English Heritage will fight you all the way.
The problem here is very simple. It's a problem that goes to the heart of the nimby madness which is plaguing this country of ours. It's the inability to understand the difference between the objective and the subjective.
English Heritage (like their nimby friends) clearly don't have a problem with material, physical damage to the environment. But they don't like perceived, imaginary damage to the "landscape".
Windfarms are an integral part of the solution to a pressing crisis. Climate change will alter the landscape. If we want to protect and perserve our environment, we need to do something. Wind energy is a very big part of the answer.
But there are some boodies who think that windfarms spoil the view. The view is not a material thing - it is a subjective response to an objective reality - and it is debatable whether windfarms really do damage the view. Many places, such as Ardrossan in Ayrshire, insist that their local windfarm has enhanced the landscape. So, even if you're a foul-minded, anti-social, mindless nimby you cannot actually say that a windfarm would spoil the view: you can only say that, in your opinion, the windfarm will affect the view in an adverse way for a certain period of time.
It is not about the view, though. The landscape isn't the view. It's more than that. It's the physical environment, which is under threat from something much more worrying and invasive than windfarms.
If you want to preserve the landscape, you have to protect the environment. English Heritage and the National Trust are making the same fundamental mistake as the selfish and stupid nimbies. They're confusing the environment with the view.
Neither the house nor the garden at Lyveden New Bield, remember, will be affected in any material way by the windfarm. Only the rather airy-fairy, define it how you will, subjective notion that is the view will be sort-of affected. Where a nuclear power company did decide to rape the earth at Hinkley Point, English Heritage let them get away with it. Evidently, English Heritage don't care about the real, physical environment. They're too busy worrying about the "environment" that doesn't really exist - the so-called "unspoilt" view.
That is insane. Utterly insane. Anyone who claims to be "all in favour of renewables" and then fights them on specious and fallacious grounds because they might "spoil" the view is, without doubt, barking mad.
It's not the view that matters. It's the earth, the rich and varied ecology of the physical environment. If you care about the view more than you do about that - as English Heritage clearly do - then you really have got your priorities completely muddled.
The nimby nutters have now been joined in their madness by some of our heritage agencies, who are proving to be as short-sighted and muddled in their thinking as the loopiest of anti-wind activists.
The National Trust and English Heritage have announced that they will mount a legal appeal against the planning inspector's decision in favour of a four-turbine windfarm near a Grade 1 listed garden at Lyveden New Bield.
Now, the proposed windfarm will be a kilometre away from the garden and will do no physical harm whatsoever to the National Trust property (a house which has remained unfinished since 1605). That is an important point to make. It will do no physical, material harm whatsoever to the house or garden. None at all.
But, as the National Trust has been telling members who have contacted the organisation to express their outrage at this retrograde and foolish step by the heritage charity, they "support all forms of renewable energy", but ...
Yep - it's that same old nimby refrain: "we are all in favour of renewables, but we think nuclear is better". Not cheaper, certainly, with various companies pulling out of the plans for the UK's new fleet of reactors on the grounds that the figures don't add up, and with the outgoing CEO of America's biggest nuclear power provider admitting that nuclear is not economically viable. And not greener, because nuclear relies on an awful lot of concrete and a fossil fuel for its power source. And not safer, because no windfarm has or will achieve what Three Mile Island, Chernobyl or Fukushima Dai-ichi achieved. And not even more reliable - not when Britain's newest nuclear power station, Hinkley B, could spend upwards of seven months producing absolutely no electricity at all while the UK's growing fleet of wind turbines did exactly what they were designed to do. No. Not cheaper, greener, safer or more reliable. But better, because by and large the nimbies can't see them.
English Heritage certainly doesn't seem to have a problem with nuclear power stations. If they did, they might have registered an objection to EDF's plans to strip away 400 acres of top soil and vegetation from the proposed site of the Hinkley C power station in Somerset. English Heritage felt some qualms about the loss of archaeological sites - burial mounds, etc. - and a significant stretch of historic green lane at the Hinkley C site. Those losses are permanent. As English Heritage acknowledged, there would be "major impacts" as a consequence of EDF carrying out preparatory work on a site for which it didn't even have planning permission. Still, English Heritage did not object.
So English Heritage does not object to the permanent damage done to heritage sites in the case of a nuclear power station. It does, however, object to the perceived, short-term "damage" done by windfarms.
In other words, if you're a nuclear power operator who wants to tear up many acres of soil, and various archaeological sites, when you don't yet have planning permission for a nuclear power station, English Heritage probably won't stand in your way. But if you're a wind energy developer who has no intention whatsoever of tearing up many acres of soil or damaging any archaeological sites, English Heritage will fight you all the way.
The problem here is very simple. It's a problem that goes to the heart of the nimby madness which is plaguing this country of ours. It's the inability to understand the difference between the objective and the subjective.
English Heritage (like their nimby friends) clearly don't have a problem with material, physical damage to the environment. But they don't like perceived, imaginary damage to the "landscape".
Windfarms are an integral part of the solution to a pressing crisis. Climate change will alter the landscape. If we want to protect and perserve our environment, we need to do something. Wind energy is a very big part of the answer.
But there are some boodies who think that windfarms spoil the view. The view is not a material thing - it is a subjective response to an objective reality - and it is debatable whether windfarms really do damage the view. Many places, such as Ardrossan in Ayrshire, insist that their local windfarm has enhanced the landscape. So, even if you're a foul-minded, anti-social, mindless nimby you cannot actually say that a windfarm would spoil the view: you can only say that, in your opinion, the windfarm will affect the view in an adverse way for a certain period of time.
It is not about the view, though. The landscape isn't the view. It's more than that. It's the physical environment, which is under threat from something much more worrying and invasive than windfarms.
If you want to preserve the landscape, you have to protect the environment. English Heritage and the National Trust are making the same fundamental mistake as the selfish and stupid nimbies. They're confusing the environment with the view.
Neither the house nor the garden at Lyveden New Bield, remember, will be affected in any material way by the windfarm. Only the rather airy-fairy, define it how you will, subjective notion that is the view will be sort-of affected. Where a nuclear power company did decide to rape the earth at Hinkley Point, English Heritage let them get away with it. Evidently, English Heritage don't care about the real, physical environment. They're too busy worrying about the "environment" that doesn't really exist - the so-called "unspoilt" view.
That is insane. Utterly insane. Anyone who claims to be "all in favour of renewables" and then fights them on specious and fallacious grounds because they might "spoil" the view is, without doubt, barking mad.
It's not the view that matters. It's the earth, the rich and varied ecology of the physical environment. If you care about the view more than you do about that - as English Heritage clearly do - then you really have got your priorities completely muddled.
Wednesday, 25 April 2012
INSIDE THE NIMBY MINDSET
Sometimes, there's just so much news about wind power that we here at Wind of Change get a bit overwhelmed. Like this past week. So many studies and surveys published. We simply don't know where to start.
So perhaps it's better to take a global or holistic view of the insane, intransigent, argumentative, illogical, unreasonable, deeply divisive and dishonest nimby movement that is currently doing its utmost to wreck Britain's energy future and the planet as a whole.
You could say that there are two types of people in this world. One kind tends to keep an open mind, to seek out and weigh up the evidence, to make decisions based on careful consideration of the evidence and the overall need, and continually to monitor the basis of their decisions.
The other makes up its mind instantly on the basis of kneejerk prejudice, short-sighted self-interest and total ignorance of the facts. It then seeks out any "evidence" it can find which appears to support those prejudices and ruthlessly discounts, ignores or misrepresents any evidence which contradicts its blinkered stance.
(Don't let the nimbies fool you. If you've really examined the evidence, you won't go around telling stupid stories about windfarms that have already been shown to be untrue. Any nimby who claims to have been open-minded until they did some research into wind energy is lying, to themselves and to you. So tell them that.)
Into the first category fall those adults amongst us who are not particularly fond of wind turbines as such, but recognise that they are a valid and vital part of our urgent drive towards a low-carbon economy and a sustainable future. They are open minded enough to realise that it's not all about them. And yes, in an ideal world, maybe, there would be no need for wind turbines (or nuclear power stations, or coal-fired power stations, or gas pipelines, and so on, and so forth). But we need renewables, and maybe everybody has to make a sacrifice of sorts to help the UK in its economic and environmental progress. And here's the good news: these people tend to find out that having a windfarm nearby is actually a Jolly Good Thing.
The latter bunch are the monstrous misfits of the nimby fringe. They have never given a thought to wind energy until somebody mentioned the possibility of a windfarm or turbine somewhere in the vicinity. At which point, the shutters came down. These buffoons straightaway started looking for excuses to oppose a perfectly reasonable and indeed desirable development. They knew that just saying "I don't want it near me!" wasn't really going to cut it, so they went hell for leather in their desperate hunt for excuses. That's when they put together websites and placards and pamphlets which merely repeated the idiotic lies of other nimby groups. The stories they tell are shocking, startling ... and plain wrong.
The worst kind of nimby fraud is the one who tries to use science in an attempt to dismiss the efficacy of wind power. We saw it here in the Lenches and we're seeing it again now in the Borders, where the so-called Lauderdale Preservation Group has devoted an enormous amount of energy to trying to prove that wind turbines don't really do anything, only to blow it all by stating that the ones already operational in the Borders are doing a terrific job so they don't need any more. A real scientist would not fall into that sort of trap - presenting gibberish evidence which claims to prove one thing and then proving the very opposite as part of your next made-up argument against wind turbines. But, sadly, even people with a scientific background are capable of being betrayed by their own ideological prejudices and selfish pomposity into making idiots of themselves.
The bigger problem, however, is that there are some very dark forces in our world which are gladly providing these knuckleheads with the "evidence" to back up their demented, and wildly inaccurate, claims about wind power. Like the fools of Montgomeryshire Against Pylons (MAP), lately criticised by the Advertising Standards Authority for indulging in disgraceful terror tactics and spreading false information in a lunatic attempt at converting public opinion, the nimbies who routinely and thoughtlessly oppose windfarms are rather too ready to soak up and spew out any stupid gobbet of misinformation they can get. And much of it comes from lobby groups like the disreputable Renewable Energy Foundation and Nigel Lawson's propagandist Global Warming Policy Foundation (both of them fronts for the fossil fuel industries).
"Lord" Lawson repeatedly tells lies in order to pull the wool over people's eyes. As a committed capitalist, he refuses to believe that the insanity of over-reliance on fossil fuels is causing any kind of problem at all. Now, if he wants to believe something as cretinous as that, well, that's up to him. But he goes further, taking large amounts of money from shady sources (which he refuses to name) and spreading false information in a deliberate attempt to confuse the public about the realities of climate change (http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/oct/21/lord-lawson-global-warming-errors). If Planet Earth had a single enemy, it would probably be Lawson. Karma will decide what to do with him, and it won't be pleasant.
However, every tin-pot right-wing nutcase who decides that anything "green" is clearly some sort of EU/Socialist/New World Order conspiracy is only too happy to quote Lawson's egregious climate lies, or the equally mendacious gobbledegook promoted by REF. Take the latest group of climate traitors to lumber over the horizon - a national anti-windfarm campaign group calling themselves NOW. Not only are all their facts wrong (nothing unusual there - try finding an anti-wind nimby who actually knows anything about wind power, even though they like to give the impression that they know a lot) but they have made it their ambition to oppose every wind development in the UK. That, folks, is a betrayal of everything - our children's future, our climate commitments, our energy security, our right to the least expensive form of electricity available, as well as government policy, global agreements and the longterm health of the planet we call home. People like Lawson might be massively deluded and evil enough to try and delude everybody else, but the motives behind NOW are completely insane. It's a campaign based entirely on an complete absence of reliable evidence and scientific fact: a kind of supernimby group dedicated to undermining the United Kingdom. They should be locked up for their own good, let alone the good of everybody and everything else.
It's not just the perversion of scientific evidence, the presentation of false evidence, the cherry-picking of data and the willingness to misinterpret that data along profoundly unscientific lines (a la Lawson, and various other right-wing thinktanks) that gives the nimbies comfort. There's also the bare-faced egotism of the practised liar who seems to believe that he has a right to bully and browbeat everybody in sight into doing what he says. Plenty of those thuggish sorts in the nimby movement, for all their risible posturing as the "victims" of something or other. But they have anointed a new king who, just for now, finds it convenient to support the anti-wind lunatics, although that probably won't last. His name is Donald Trump.
There have been a slew of opinion polls, the results of which have been published in the last few days, and all indicate that the clear majority of Britons (over two-thirds) actively support wind power, do not think that windfarms are a blot on the landscape and feel that subsidies for wind power are the right thing to do (by way of contrast, less than 10% of Britons are actively opposed to wind energy). Other polls have shown that tourists are singularly unfazed by windfarms (thus demolishing the brainless nimby argument that a windfarm would destroy local tourism). Add to that the fact that the RSPB has recently published the results of a long-running study which shows that wind turbines are not the "bird blenders" that nimby idiots want you to think they are, and you begin to wonder whether anything a nimby has ever said in his or her life ever turned out to be true.
People like Trump, though, don't care. For them, it's all bluster. It's a matter of smearing your opponents, hiring lawyers to do your dirty work, and lying in public. During Trump's farcically egotistical appearance before the Scottish Parliament today, the folically-challenged one actually had the effrontery to answer questions about whether he could provide any evidence to back up his far-fetched claims with the words, "I am the evidence." One of his henchmen then told the MSPs that, just because they were democratically elected, that did not give them the right to carry out their policies. So, a rather strange notion of what democracy is and what it means in the Trump camp.
Or, rather, a strange notion of what counts as the truth. But it doesn't matter. People like Lord Lawson can manufacture false evidence, based on a skewed idea of what science is. People like Trump don't bother with that. They just make their ridiculous statements and assume that, because they made them, everybody will agree with them. Okay, so opinion polls and other surveys have shown that windfarms do not adversely affect tourism. But Trump thinks he knows better. After all, he is "the evidence".
Between them, Lawson and Trump represent the twin fists of the nimby knuckledraggers. They both tell lies. One, however, twists science in order to create illusions. The other just swaggers and bullies people. Spend any length of time near an anti-wind nimby group and you'll come across both character types - the Pseudo-Scientist and the Ugly Thug. Chances are, those two will be the mainstays of your local nimby campaign. One, at least, tries to make it look like they've got some evidence on their side, even it is absolute rubbish with no basis in reality. The other doesn't care: you'll either do what they say or they'll make you suffer for it.
Can we really afford to let these delusional right-wing extremists, these greedy egotistical monsters, these practised liars and their hired hoodlums dictate our energy policy for years to come?
Or shall we believe in democracy and science?
Put it this way. It's a lot cleaner and healthier outside the mind of a nimby. They'd like to pretend that it's windfarms that keep people awake at night. But with corrupted consciences like theirs, it's a wonder that they can ever sleep at all.
So perhaps it's better to take a global or holistic view of the insane, intransigent, argumentative, illogical, unreasonable, deeply divisive and dishonest nimby movement that is currently doing its utmost to wreck Britain's energy future and the planet as a whole.
You could say that there are two types of people in this world. One kind tends to keep an open mind, to seek out and weigh up the evidence, to make decisions based on careful consideration of the evidence and the overall need, and continually to monitor the basis of their decisions.
The other makes up its mind instantly on the basis of kneejerk prejudice, short-sighted self-interest and total ignorance of the facts. It then seeks out any "evidence" it can find which appears to support those prejudices and ruthlessly discounts, ignores or misrepresents any evidence which contradicts its blinkered stance.
(Don't let the nimbies fool you. If you've really examined the evidence, you won't go around telling stupid stories about windfarms that have already been shown to be untrue. Any nimby who claims to have been open-minded until they did some research into wind energy is lying, to themselves and to you. So tell them that.)
Into the first category fall those adults amongst us who are not particularly fond of wind turbines as such, but recognise that they are a valid and vital part of our urgent drive towards a low-carbon economy and a sustainable future. They are open minded enough to realise that it's not all about them. And yes, in an ideal world, maybe, there would be no need for wind turbines (or nuclear power stations, or coal-fired power stations, or gas pipelines, and so on, and so forth). But we need renewables, and maybe everybody has to make a sacrifice of sorts to help the UK in its economic and environmental progress. And here's the good news: these people tend to find out that having a windfarm nearby is actually a Jolly Good Thing.
The latter bunch are the monstrous misfits of the nimby fringe. They have never given a thought to wind energy until somebody mentioned the possibility of a windfarm or turbine somewhere in the vicinity. At which point, the shutters came down. These buffoons straightaway started looking for excuses to oppose a perfectly reasonable and indeed desirable development. They knew that just saying "I don't want it near me!" wasn't really going to cut it, so they went hell for leather in their desperate hunt for excuses. That's when they put together websites and placards and pamphlets which merely repeated the idiotic lies of other nimby groups. The stories they tell are shocking, startling ... and plain wrong.
The worst kind of nimby fraud is the one who tries to use science in an attempt to dismiss the efficacy of wind power. We saw it here in the Lenches and we're seeing it again now in the Borders, where the so-called Lauderdale Preservation Group has devoted an enormous amount of energy to trying to prove that wind turbines don't really do anything, only to blow it all by stating that the ones already operational in the Borders are doing a terrific job so they don't need any more. A real scientist would not fall into that sort of trap - presenting gibberish evidence which claims to prove one thing and then proving the very opposite as part of your next made-up argument against wind turbines. But, sadly, even people with a scientific background are capable of being betrayed by their own ideological prejudices and selfish pomposity into making idiots of themselves.
The bigger problem, however, is that there are some very dark forces in our world which are gladly providing these knuckleheads with the "evidence" to back up their demented, and wildly inaccurate, claims about wind power. Like the fools of Montgomeryshire Against Pylons (MAP), lately criticised by the Advertising Standards Authority for indulging in disgraceful terror tactics and spreading false information in a lunatic attempt at converting public opinion, the nimbies who routinely and thoughtlessly oppose windfarms are rather too ready to soak up and spew out any stupid gobbet of misinformation they can get. And much of it comes from lobby groups like the disreputable Renewable Energy Foundation and Nigel Lawson's propagandist Global Warming Policy Foundation (both of them fronts for the fossil fuel industries).
"Lord" Lawson repeatedly tells lies in order to pull the wool over people's eyes. As a committed capitalist, he refuses to believe that the insanity of over-reliance on fossil fuels is causing any kind of problem at all. Now, if he wants to believe something as cretinous as that, well, that's up to him. But he goes further, taking large amounts of money from shady sources (which he refuses to name) and spreading false information in a deliberate attempt to confuse the public about the realities of climate change (http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/oct/21/lord-lawson-global-warming-errors). If Planet Earth had a single enemy, it would probably be Lawson. Karma will decide what to do with him, and it won't be pleasant.
However, every tin-pot right-wing nutcase who decides that anything "green" is clearly some sort of EU/Socialist/New World Order conspiracy is only too happy to quote Lawson's egregious climate lies, or the equally mendacious gobbledegook promoted by REF. Take the latest group of climate traitors to lumber over the horizon - a national anti-windfarm campaign group calling themselves NOW. Not only are all their facts wrong (nothing unusual there - try finding an anti-wind nimby who actually knows anything about wind power, even though they like to give the impression that they know a lot) but they have made it their ambition to oppose every wind development in the UK. That, folks, is a betrayal of everything - our children's future, our climate commitments, our energy security, our right to the least expensive form of electricity available, as well as government policy, global agreements and the longterm health of the planet we call home. People like Lawson might be massively deluded and evil enough to try and delude everybody else, but the motives behind NOW are completely insane. It's a campaign based entirely on an complete absence of reliable evidence and scientific fact: a kind of supernimby group dedicated to undermining the United Kingdom. They should be locked up for their own good, let alone the good of everybody and everything else.
It's not just the perversion of scientific evidence, the presentation of false evidence, the cherry-picking of data and the willingness to misinterpret that data along profoundly unscientific lines (a la Lawson, and various other right-wing thinktanks) that gives the nimbies comfort. There's also the bare-faced egotism of the practised liar who seems to believe that he has a right to bully and browbeat everybody in sight into doing what he says. Plenty of those thuggish sorts in the nimby movement, for all their risible posturing as the "victims" of something or other. But they have anointed a new king who, just for now, finds it convenient to support the anti-wind lunatics, although that probably won't last. His name is Donald Trump.
There have been a slew of opinion polls, the results of which have been published in the last few days, and all indicate that the clear majority of Britons (over two-thirds) actively support wind power, do not think that windfarms are a blot on the landscape and feel that subsidies for wind power are the right thing to do (by way of contrast, less than 10% of Britons are actively opposed to wind energy). Other polls have shown that tourists are singularly unfazed by windfarms (thus demolishing the brainless nimby argument that a windfarm would destroy local tourism). Add to that the fact that the RSPB has recently published the results of a long-running study which shows that wind turbines are not the "bird blenders" that nimby idiots want you to think they are, and you begin to wonder whether anything a nimby has ever said in his or her life ever turned out to be true.
People like Trump, though, don't care. For them, it's all bluster. It's a matter of smearing your opponents, hiring lawyers to do your dirty work, and lying in public. During Trump's farcically egotistical appearance before the Scottish Parliament today, the folically-challenged one actually had the effrontery to answer questions about whether he could provide any evidence to back up his far-fetched claims with the words, "I am the evidence." One of his henchmen then told the MSPs that, just because they were democratically elected, that did not give them the right to carry out their policies. So, a rather strange notion of what democracy is and what it means in the Trump camp.
Or, rather, a strange notion of what counts as the truth. But it doesn't matter. People like Lord Lawson can manufacture false evidence, based on a skewed idea of what science is. People like Trump don't bother with that. They just make their ridiculous statements and assume that, because they made them, everybody will agree with them. Okay, so opinion polls and other surveys have shown that windfarms do not adversely affect tourism. But Trump thinks he knows better. After all, he is "the evidence".
Between them, Lawson and Trump represent the twin fists of the nimby knuckledraggers. They both tell lies. One, however, twists science in order to create illusions. The other just swaggers and bullies people. Spend any length of time near an anti-wind nimby group and you'll come across both character types - the Pseudo-Scientist and the Ugly Thug. Chances are, those two will be the mainstays of your local nimby campaign. One, at least, tries to make it look like they've got some evidence on their side, even it is absolute rubbish with no basis in reality. The other doesn't care: you'll either do what they say or they'll make you suffer for it.
Can we really afford to let these delusional right-wing extremists, these greedy egotistical monsters, these practised liars and their hired hoodlums dictate our energy policy for years to come?
Or shall we believe in democracy and science?
Put it this way. It's a lot cleaner and healthier outside the mind of a nimby. They'd like to pretend that it's windfarms that keep people awake at night. But with corrupted consciences like theirs, it's a wonder that they can ever sleep at all.
Tuesday, 17 April 2012
MIXED MESSAGES
Quite a few emails have come in about the BBC's Countryfile programme on Sunday, which had a bit of a look at windfarms.
For those who don't know, Countryfile was, for many years, a Sunday morning programme dedicated to rural issues. A lot of what it looked at in years gone by involved farming. More recently, however, Countryfile decided that it wasn't all that interested in what people who live in rural areas actually do. The programme moved to a Sunday evening slot and turned into a sort of Blue Peter for adults. It is no longer (really) about rural issues and now tends to reflect what people who live in cities like to think that the countryside is: a vast playground with bits of heritage stuck in it.
Anyway, the first thing to say about Countryfile's piece about windfarms this week is that, by and large, it did the right thing. It stated, very very clearly, that Britain will be getting more onshore wind turbines. That is a certainty. Get used to it.
The UK government is committed to a 20% reduction in CO2 emissions, measured against 1990 standards, by 2020, and the Climate Change Minister has even hinted that we should be pushing for a legally-binding pan-European target of 30% reductions. Excellent. Windfarms have already proven that they can make a major contribution both to clean energy generation and reducing carbon emissions. There are roundabout 13 gigawatts of wind energy capacity either consented or going through the planning system. Assuming all of those gigawatts are installed, that should raise the contribution from wind to between 15 and 20% of our total electricity usage. Combined with greater energy efficiency measures and other low-carbon technologies, that should mean that we hit our targets for 2020.
So Countryfile was right to make the point that more turbines are coming. Successful windfarms that are already operating might well be extended. Other parts of the country, which have so far managed to see off the pretend "menace" of wind power, will get turbines. They are part of our national future. And so they should be. We have allowed crazed nimbies and Tea Party-esque right-wing ideologues to hold Britain back in this amazing new market.
In Denmark, the wind industry provides 60 billion in Danish kroner exports per year, a figure which is set to rise dramatically over the next few years as Denmark aims to get 50% of its electricity from wind power by 2020. Across Europe as a whole, the wind power industry is expected to triple its contribution to the EU's gross domestic product over the next decade. It's already proving to be a "recession-proof" industry, having increased its contribution to EU GDP by 33% between 2007 and 2010 and creating 30% more jobs during that period (at a time when almost every other industry was shrinking). Current forecasts suggest that the European wind industry will contribute 94.5 billion euros to EU GDP by 2020, up from 32 billion euros in 2010.
So much good news ... and with a detailed report recently proving that windfarms are not the bird-mincing machines the nimbies want you to think they are, the news just keeps getting better. There is now evidence aplenty that windfarms do not cause health problems, drive down the value of your property or adversely affect business and tourism. The nimbies are running out of lies to tell.
It was good that Countryfile gave out the message that more windfarms are on their way. People need to get used to the idea - and they really should stop reading idiot papers like the Sunday Times, which just showed what a travesty it has become by running a wildly inaccurate headline over the weekend. Misquoting the Climate Change Secretary, the Sunday Crimes shrieked that there would be "no more windfarms", leading the government to describe the Murdoch rag's braindead headline as "spurious".
However, even while Countryfile was explaining that there will soon be more windfarms in Britain, and indulging in a little Blue Peter golly gosh stuff by going right up into a turbine hub, in the pursuit of journalistic "balance" it tried to give the impression that wind turbines are a little bit unpopular.
There was, for example, a strange section in which the journalist tried to measure how "angry" he felt when confronted with a close-up photo of a wind turbine. Show him a picture of a landscape with nothing at all in it and he went "Ah!" Show him a picture of a wind turbine taken from a rather odd angle and he went "Agh!" No real surprises there, because Countryfile these days is skewed towards the sort of person who thinks that the countryside should have nothing in it - except maybe a few mountain bikes - and that farming only clutters up the landscape. Not so much a working landscape (as it's always been), then, as an away-day waiting to happen.
The journalist also spoke to someone who had tried to stop a windfarm happening. This person had a very nice house - most nimbies do - and burst into tears at the least provocation. The fact is that she and her nimby friends had failed to stop the windfarm, and that is what upset her. Unfortunately, the journalist tried to lead her into saying that it was the turbines themselves which "churned her up inside", when in reality it was her failure to preserve the view from her garden like a sepia-tinted photo that churned her so. The journalist was getting dangerously close to a favourite nimby manoeuvre: look at those wind turbines! - don't you feel really churned up inside when you see them? - in fact, wouldn't you go so far as to say that they make you feel ill?? - suffering from headaches, sleeplessness, nausea, migraines (delete as appropriate) yet? - don't worry, we'll keep on at you till you are.
Yes, the middle-class homeowner was upset that she had failed to prevent a healthy, beneficial, much-needed and harmless development from going ahead. But the turbines weren't making her ill. It was very irresponsible of the BBC to try and give the impression that they were (and, fair do's to the woman, she avoided falling into their trap of making out that the turbines were affecting her health in any way).
Here's the problem with mixed messages: the government, and the Countryfile reporter, have made it perfectly clear - more windfarms are coming. But then, they go and cock it up by allowing some right-wing fruitloops to claim that there are to be "no more windfarms", or once we've built the ones already planned we'll stop, or that any attempts to move the UK towards a low-carbon, clean-tech economy will be "bad for business", or that windfarms make people angry (many who are familiar with wind turbines find them peaceful, inspiring and reassuring devices). All the insane claims vomitted out by right-wing pundits are music to the ears of the nasty nimbies who don't give a fig about the economy or the environment or Britain's future or the rest of the world.
The message must be clear. There are going to be more windfarms in the UK. And that's that. If you think that's a Bad Thing, then you're a nimby idiot or a climate sceptic or both and you really do need to put down those comics you're reading and start looking at the facts.
There is nothing to fear from the renewable future. And anyway, it's coming, like it or not. So it'd be much better if you stopped telling silly stories about it and trying to get other people to feel "ill" about it and just learned to live with it.
Better still, why not like it? That would be the sensible thing to do.
For those who don't know, Countryfile was, for many years, a Sunday morning programme dedicated to rural issues. A lot of what it looked at in years gone by involved farming. More recently, however, Countryfile decided that it wasn't all that interested in what people who live in rural areas actually do. The programme moved to a Sunday evening slot and turned into a sort of Blue Peter for adults. It is no longer (really) about rural issues and now tends to reflect what people who live in cities like to think that the countryside is: a vast playground with bits of heritage stuck in it.
Anyway, the first thing to say about Countryfile's piece about windfarms this week is that, by and large, it did the right thing. It stated, very very clearly, that Britain will be getting more onshore wind turbines. That is a certainty. Get used to it.
The UK government is committed to a 20% reduction in CO2 emissions, measured against 1990 standards, by 2020, and the Climate Change Minister has even hinted that we should be pushing for a legally-binding pan-European target of 30% reductions. Excellent. Windfarms have already proven that they can make a major contribution both to clean energy generation and reducing carbon emissions. There are roundabout 13 gigawatts of wind energy capacity either consented or going through the planning system. Assuming all of those gigawatts are installed, that should raise the contribution from wind to between 15 and 20% of our total electricity usage. Combined with greater energy efficiency measures and other low-carbon technologies, that should mean that we hit our targets for 2020.
So Countryfile was right to make the point that more turbines are coming. Successful windfarms that are already operating might well be extended. Other parts of the country, which have so far managed to see off the pretend "menace" of wind power, will get turbines. They are part of our national future. And so they should be. We have allowed crazed nimbies and Tea Party-esque right-wing ideologues to hold Britain back in this amazing new market.
In Denmark, the wind industry provides 60 billion in Danish kroner exports per year, a figure which is set to rise dramatically over the next few years as Denmark aims to get 50% of its electricity from wind power by 2020. Across Europe as a whole, the wind power industry is expected to triple its contribution to the EU's gross domestic product over the next decade. It's already proving to be a "recession-proof" industry, having increased its contribution to EU GDP by 33% between 2007 and 2010 and creating 30% more jobs during that period (at a time when almost every other industry was shrinking). Current forecasts suggest that the European wind industry will contribute 94.5 billion euros to EU GDP by 2020, up from 32 billion euros in 2010.
So much good news ... and with a detailed report recently proving that windfarms are not the bird-mincing machines the nimbies want you to think they are, the news just keeps getting better. There is now evidence aplenty that windfarms do not cause health problems, drive down the value of your property or adversely affect business and tourism. The nimbies are running out of lies to tell.
It was good that Countryfile gave out the message that more windfarms are on their way. People need to get used to the idea - and they really should stop reading idiot papers like the Sunday Times, which just showed what a travesty it has become by running a wildly inaccurate headline over the weekend. Misquoting the Climate Change Secretary, the Sunday Crimes shrieked that there would be "no more windfarms", leading the government to describe the Murdoch rag's braindead headline as "spurious".
However, even while Countryfile was explaining that there will soon be more windfarms in Britain, and indulging in a little Blue Peter golly gosh stuff by going right up into a turbine hub, in the pursuit of journalistic "balance" it tried to give the impression that wind turbines are a little bit unpopular.
There was, for example, a strange section in which the journalist tried to measure how "angry" he felt when confronted with a close-up photo of a wind turbine. Show him a picture of a landscape with nothing at all in it and he went "Ah!" Show him a picture of a wind turbine taken from a rather odd angle and he went "Agh!" No real surprises there, because Countryfile these days is skewed towards the sort of person who thinks that the countryside should have nothing in it - except maybe a few mountain bikes - and that farming only clutters up the landscape. Not so much a working landscape (as it's always been), then, as an away-day waiting to happen.
The journalist also spoke to someone who had tried to stop a windfarm happening. This person had a very nice house - most nimbies do - and burst into tears at the least provocation. The fact is that she and her nimby friends had failed to stop the windfarm, and that is what upset her. Unfortunately, the journalist tried to lead her into saying that it was the turbines themselves which "churned her up inside", when in reality it was her failure to preserve the view from her garden like a sepia-tinted photo that churned her so. The journalist was getting dangerously close to a favourite nimby manoeuvre: look at those wind turbines! - don't you feel really churned up inside when you see them? - in fact, wouldn't you go so far as to say that they make you feel ill?? - suffering from headaches, sleeplessness, nausea, migraines (delete as appropriate) yet? - don't worry, we'll keep on at you till you are.
Yes, the middle-class homeowner was upset that she had failed to prevent a healthy, beneficial, much-needed and harmless development from going ahead. But the turbines weren't making her ill. It was very irresponsible of the BBC to try and give the impression that they were (and, fair do's to the woman, she avoided falling into their trap of making out that the turbines were affecting her health in any way).
Here's the problem with mixed messages: the government, and the Countryfile reporter, have made it perfectly clear - more windfarms are coming. But then, they go and cock it up by allowing some right-wing fruitloops to claim that there are to be "no more windfarms", or once we've built the ones already planned we'll stop, or that any attempts to move the UK towards a low-carbon, clean-tech economy will be "bad for business", or that windfarms make people angry (many who are familiar with wind turbines find them peaceful, inspiring and reassuring devices). All the insane claims vomitted out by right-wing pundits are music to the ears of the nasty nimbies who don't give a fig about the economy or the environment or Britain's future or the rest of the world.
The message must be clear. There are going to be more windfarms in the UK. And that's that. If you think that's a Bad Thing, then you're a nimby idiot or a climate sceptic or both and you really do need to put down those comics you're reading and start looking at the facts.
There is nothing to fear from the renewable future. And anyway, it's coming, like it or not. So it'd be much better if you stopped telling silly stories about it and trying to get other people to feel "ill" about it and just learned to live with it.
Better still, why not like it? That would be the sensible thing to do.
Saturday, 14 April 2012
NO-MEN BEHAVING BADLY
This is called "protecting an unspoilt landscape". Unfortunately, someone decided to spoil the landscape by building houses in it. That was a while ago, now. The building above is a tied cottage on land where there is a proposal for a windfarm in the Scottish Borders. So, in order to preserve their mythical "unspoilt" landscape - and yes, with the usual tiresome regularity, opponents of the development do keep using that grossly delusional word - the anti's have decided to commit acts of vandalism.It's not as if there aren't any windfarms in the area already. No, up in the Borders the protesters have moved onto Phase II of the nimby madness (much as "Save the Dales" are doing in Yorkshire). The first phase involves fighting aggressively and dishonestly against a wind energy development where there aren't any around for many miles. When that fails, the nimbies proceed to Phase II - stop any more windfarms happening.
They may not have the advantage of local ignorance - i.e., in places like the Lenches, where very few people had ever seen a windfarm, the evil nimbies of VVASP could spread all sorts of idiotic stories about wind power - but the Phase II nimbies are no less devious and misguided in their opposition. Their argument just shifts subtly from "we must never allow anything to mar our so-called unspoilt landscape" to "we mustn't allow any more of those things that we've already got to mar our still, apparently, unspoilt landscape".
One of the main problems up in the Borders region seems to be a body calling itself the Lauderdale Preservation Group. Now, preservation societies are all well and good - part of the checks and balances of a modern society. But they all too easily forget a very important fact: today's heritage was yesterday's "eyesore". Not many people liked Sir Christopher Wren's St Paul's Cathedral when it was first constructed. Guy de Maupassant was horrified and outraged by the Eiffel Tower when it first reared up above the unspoilt Parisian landscape.
And there's the problem with certain preservation groups. They are incapable of looking beyond their own narrow, selfish, short-term interests. They seem to believe that they are the last generation that will ever inhabit a particular area (which, for some unknown reason, they imagine is "unspoilt"), and so they appoint themselves guardians in perpetuity of a landscape which has changed many times in the past but must never change again!!! Why? Because these people now live in it - thereby proving that it is anything but unspoilt - and they are intolerant of progress, modern notions of sustainability and anything that will make them think of themselves as a bit less special.
The Lauderdale Preservation Group walks straight into the standard nimby trap. They are, they insist, "not opposed in principle to any renewable energy scheme, including wind power". Having established their forward-thinking green credentials, they then do their absolute best to rubbish wind power, especially where they might be able to see it.
Now, let's be honest. If we were to alter just one or two words of their argument (one repeated by self-serving and deluded nimbies up and down the country) it would run something like this:
We, the Nice People Living in Exclusive Rural Areas Committee, are all in favour of cultural diversity, including racial integration, where this is sympathetic to the local community and appropriate to the landscape and local environment. However, as recent articles published in the Mail and Telegraph newspapers prove, coloured people do not work, and in fact, integrating them into unspoilt places like ours actually does nothing at all to reach targets, imposed on us by Brussels, for racial tolerance and diversity. The organisations which seem determined to foist these ethnic eyesores on our communities have no interest whatsoever in cultural cohesion or ethnic diversity, but are motivated solely by profit and the gargantuan subsidies dished out for racial schemes which do nothing to protect our green and pleasant land from the menace of other people. Enough is enough.
Yep: the idiocy and dishonesty of the campaigns against windfarms are about as morally acceptable as that sort of thing. They sound just the same and stem from exactly the same blend of intolerance, bigotry and inflated self-centredness.
In the case of the Lauderdale Preservation Group, however, it's difficult to determine how many people are actually involved. As we have seen elsewhere - the Lenches being a case in point - occasionally an individual crops up who insists on repeatedly objecting to a reasonable proposal by acting as the "voice" of other groups, as many in fact as he can dream up. And, again as with the Lenches, this person intentionally uses their background as a scientist in order to twist the facts and mislead other people. Which is not what science is for. Such people are betraying their scientific training in order to force their own selfish obsessions down other people's throats.
Now, to reiterate: there are already windfarms established and successfully up-and-running in the Borders. And yet the landscape has contrived to remain "unspoilt", although a few more wind turbines anywhere nearby will naturally "destroy" it. All the usual false assumptions, utterly lacking in evidence, are cited (e.g. negative impact on tourism, yadda-yadda-yadda) and the familiar, and slightly racist, right-wing arguments are deployed in order to insist that we shouldn't bother doing anything about sustainability or low-carbon technologies because China is so big (it is also the global leader in wind energy, although the nimbies don't mention that).
But when you've got someone with a bit of a scientific background, and they're foolish enough to be "not opposed in principle" to renewables while steadfastly opposed to any visible form of renewable energy, they see their campaign as a marvellous opportunity to see how far they can turn scientific analysis into a great big bogus lie.
The individual who appears to be almost singlehandedly voicing the "opposition" of several preservation and conservation groups has made an extraordinary effort to try and prove that windfarms don't really work (and even if they do, what about China, eh? Eh??) He twists the data, not to mention his own thought-processes, into what he no doubt believes is a damning indictment of wind energy as something that can neither generate electricity nor reduce any of our carbon emissions (not to mention the Yellow Peril out there ... Did I mention, I'm not racist, but ...). And then he completely blows it.
Having put so much effort and energy into dishonestly "proving" that windfarms are a waste of time, the Borders nimbies let slip that "Electricity produced from wind farms in the Scottish Borders is enough to supply all of its households 9 times over, therefore this area exports 8 times as much electricity as its residents need."
Ooooh-kay ... so what they're saying is - "windfarms don't work - inefficient - don't work - load capacity - windfarms don't work - no CO2 reductions - China - windfarms don't work ... and the ones we've got here already produce 9 times as much as we need! They don't work, of course, but the main reason we don't want any more is because wind power is already generating enough electricity in the Borders to power all of our households 9 times over! So we've done our bit. It's somebody else's turn."
Does anyone see the insanity of their position? They don't want windfarms because they don't work, besides which the ones that are already there work so well that the region is "exporting" eight times as much wind-generated electricity as the area actually needs!
Which is evidently why the "unspoilt" landscape of the Borders, with its nine-times-more-efficient-than-we-need-them-to-be windfarms, must be forever pickled in aspic. Because one individual of advancing years is terrified that he might occasionally catch sight of a wind turbine or two. Which don't work. And they're already producing 9 times as much electricity as he and the rest of his region needs.
When you have an anti-windfarm campaign that's as mad as the one mounted by the Lauderdale Persecution Group and its several offshoots, it's hardly surprising that properties get vandalised (see photo above) - and all in the name of "preserving" an "unspoilt" landscape against the needs of the next generation and the heritage of the generation after that.
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