Is Monbiot Right?

Speaking at the Hay Festival this weekend, environmental campaigner George Monbiot has criticised both onshore windfarms and a potential Severn barrage - key planks of Welsh Assembly Government environmental and energy policy.

Onshore wind "has reached saturation point" and future developments will "generate so much antagonism it'll turn people off dealing with climate change"; as for a hydroelectric barrage running from South Wales to England across the Bristol Channel, "It will cause too much environmental damage...there are far better ways of getting energy from the sea - tidal lagoon technology, for example."

I would agree with some of what he says here - that onshore wind has been disproportionately favored, through planning regulations such as the WAG's TAN 8 guidelines and grants from central government. Not enough emphasis has been placed on offshore wind and the smaller-scale sea-based technologies, and the fiasco over home microgeneration incentives for households and a determination to press forward with new nuclear shows that policy is all over the place and far from joined-up.

But antagonism? I think modern wind turbines are a symbol of the challenge that we will face through this next century and if they stand there as a visual reminder of climate change and how we've all got to learn to live differently I'm all for them. They're about capturing the free and clean energy blowing around us and a positive sign of what we can do for the planet!

There are no easy solutions on the supply side, and the vitrol directed at them by anti-windfarm campaigners often leads to a misbalanced and intimidating perspective of what the public really thinks. Granted, the way things currently work with large corporate conglomerates owning windfarms is not ideal and communities easily feel excluded and wind alone is far from a complete answer - but I do think that given time, we will readily get used to seeing them around.