Wind farm objectors are NIMBYs

Science fact is that last week for the first time in at least three million years, and long before humans were around, carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere reached four hundred parts per million.

The UK significance is that last year, flooding was recorded on one in five days and drought on one in four days, with rivers such as the Ouse in East Sussex going from their record lowest flows to record highest in four months.

It would seem that to many, including most Rye councillors, rising energy costs and increasingly erratic weather patterns will forever remain unknowable mysteries.

The dots are there, all you need to do is join them up.

The argument against wind farms such as the one proposed at Snave is in essence a prissy and outdated aesthetic one, with precious little to do with the wider environment.

A lot of cod science is reeled out, including a claim of irreversible damage to flora and fauna and devastation of prime agricultural land.

Where’s the dossier of evidence for this in relation to Little Cheyne then, which has been up and running for five years?

Like it or not, the local harvesting of wind energy is far, far preferable to the unsustainable burning of, increasingly imported, fossil fuels.

In fifty years time, will I need to be telling my grandchild that, yes, we could have done so much more, but, you see, dog walkers didn’t like the way the turbines looked, and they sounded like waves washing on to the shingle. We didn’t want that. We wanted the energy, but it all had to be out of sight, out of mind.

Dominic Manning

Love Lane

Rye