Although this essay is international in scope, it being written about a river in Britain, it gets at the heart of a tension among environmental issues coming to a head in so many localities all over the West – all over the world. Paul Kingsnorth hits the point in a way that many activists have been hoping to hit it for some time :
A Line in the Green Sand – The Guardian
When I climb a mountain, then, and find that the detritus of civilisation has followed me, in the form of giant wind turbines, my reaction is not to jump for joy because it is zero-carbon detritus. My reaction is to wonder how anyone could miss the point so spectacularly. And when I hear other environmentalists responding to my concerns with aggressive dismissal – particularly if they have never visited the mountain in question – I get really quite depressed
Fifteen or so years ago, as an excitable young road protester, I tried to prevent the destruction of beautiful places. To me, building a motorway through ancient downland, or a bypass through a watermeadow, was a desecration. To me today, a windfarm on a mountain is a similar desecration. A tidal barrage that turns a great river into a glorified mill stream is a desecration. Carpeting the Sahara with giant solar panels would be a desecration. The motivation may be different, but the destruction of the wild and the wonderful is the same. Read the rest of this entry »
The Wildlife News 