In a shocking move, a founding father of the Green movement is fighting to stop a 275 foot wind turbine from being erected near his home in England.
Inventor of the “Gaia Theory” and original predictor of global warming, Professor James Lovelock is combating wind turbines and believes the original intentions of the Green movement are being misconstrued as a license to cast aside ecological heritage. Lovelock believes the original intentions of the movement have been misunderstood.
Lovelock likened wind turbines as statues on Easter Island, monuments of a failed civilization. He said that the Green movement never intended the rejection of all energy sources but renewable or that one day, in the quest to create renewable energy sources, ecology would be forgotten.
Professor Lovelock has often stated that the Earth is a single self-regulating organism – and therefore will adapt itself to see off threats to its ecosystem.
In a controversial move some years ago, Lovelock shocked his followers by stating that nuclear power may be the way to cut carbon emissions instead of renewable energy.
Despite the professor’s disapproval, the Green Party continues to promote wind energy. Although just a single turbine, Ecotricity, the developers, claim it would generate about 2.20 million units of electricity annually, which is the equivalent of about 529 homes powered through clean, renewable energy.
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"the Earth is a single self-regulating organism – and therefore will adapt itself to see off threats to its ecosystem…" perhaps by exterminating the cause of the problem?
I've just read Lovelock's The Revenge of Gaia. What struck me was how quickly scientific developments in renewable energy have moved on since he wrote it.
He has a particular bugbear for wind power because he thinks it's not worth investing in and he fears that wind turbines will spoil the beauty of the English countryside, which of course, to some extent they will. He argues for nuclear power, saying that our fear of it is irrational and he even offers to have nuclear waste buried under his house to prove it!
However, even if he's right, the fact is that irrational fears are some of the most difficult to dispel and no one wants a nuclear plant in their back garden, and in the West people can either stop nuclear plants being built or slow them down so much so that it's not worth the fighting for them.
