"So, um, with Rachel Reeves on the onshore wind ban, she was just, like, delete. There's the inhibition gone." Hahaha.
This was Starmer, the UK’s new Prime Minister, at the Metro-luvvie Mayors meeting today. Oh, how they laughed at such a funny joke.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/07/09/rachel-reeves-delete-onshore-wind-farm-ban-keir-starmer/
Credit to the guy in the background though; he didn’t seem so amused. Nor I suspect will be the thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, even millions of mainly English and Welsh people whose homes and lives will be blighted by these 800 foot monstrosities springing up in their back yards, even as they drive up their energy bills. Nor I suspect will the bats and birds due to be sliced and diced by the unregulated expansion of these wind turbines across the countryside and across pristine natural landscapes be mightily amused by Starmer’s crass wisecrack. Nor will the hundreds of thousands of trees which will need to be chopped down to accommodate these monsters (just as in Scotland), or the animals which make those forests their home.
Labour are going to find out what both nationally coordinated and hard-line local Nimbyism is all about. They’re going to find out what real environmental protests from real people genuinely concerned about the environment look like. Not your JSO soup and orange paint throwing, bridge climbing, road glueing wobblies. Onshore windfarms are going to be Starmer’s poll tax moment. This arrogant elitist prick has it coming.
I visited Southern California recently for a niece's wedding. She wanted to have it near Joshua Tree National Monument. We drove to Yucca Valley from Phoenix in 115 F heat. In San Bernadino County we passed a huge mountain valley completely studded with wind turbines. It's already some of the ugliest terrain on the face of the earth, so ugly even Phoenix people were muttering: I can't wait to get out of here. But the turbines! It's ugly-squared!
The fields covered with solar cells are equally bleak and I feel bad for the creatures who have them looming over them.
When I was still teaching physics at our local state university campus I would show my students videos of wind turbine fails for comic relief. YouTube has a number of these. Where I live, some have been taken down. They are a total joke.
There are also the power lines needed to connect them to the grid, which literally tear up the countryside