Scorched Earth: Suicidal Climate/Energy Policy Destroying Britain’s Landscape

The way we were: before the climate cult took action.

Climate alarmists are ready to destroy your environment in their unhinged efforts to ‘save’ it.

That their exhortations to ‘climate action’ result in the dystopian destruction of pristine wilderness, bucolic landscapes and vibrant communities is a sacrifice that they’re always willing to make. Although, as recent events have shown, there are limits; and even the greenest of the green screams blue murder when their patch of paradise is threatened by a few whirling wonders. Former leader of the Australian Greens, Bob Brown, once a vociferous champion for wind power, went ballistic when a few of these things were proposed for a desolate part of North-West Tasmania, Dr Bob’s home State.

Britain has just signed up to a net-zero carbon dioxide gas emissions target which will, of course, destroy its economy, jobs and prosperity and inevitably punish the poor; already struggling with crippling energy bills: Zero Sum Game: UK’s Economy Wrecking Zero CO2 Emissions Target Would Cost Brits £1.5 Trillion

Then there’s the broader aspect of so-called ‘climate action’ – which simply means massive and endless subsidies for chaotically intermittent wind and solar power – and what happens in Britain’s countryside, as an inevitable consequence.

Net Zero and the industrial ruination of the Countryside
Global Warming Policy Forum
Press Release
11 July 2019

The UK government’s ‘net zero’ agenda has committed the Britain to switching away from any form of using fossil fuels. Yet the deployment of renewable energy projects all over the UK are devastating our natural environment and wildlife.

Thousands of square miles of countryside are being industrialised by the deployment of huge solar and wind farms as well the rapid expansion of biofuel crops cultivation.

This short video gives a snapshot of the scale of both the planned transformation of the landscape, and the departure of green organisations from their founding purpose to protect Britain’s natural heritage – a cause which has been abandoned in favour of alignment with the government’s climate and energy policies.

Transcript

Narrator: As Britain’s economy, population and industry have grown, concerns for the future of our natural landscapes and wildlife have also grown. The Campaign to Protect Rural England, the CPRE, is one organisation that claims to represent such concerns.

CPRE: For a country like this, the Council for the Preservation of Rural England has been fighting a battle for many years, fighting to preserve such unspoiled beauty as this for instance from unsightly pylons. All over the country, their vigilance is helping to preserve nature’s gift.

Narrator: Established in 1926, and like other similar organisations, the CPRE promised supporters that it would protect natural landscapes from incautious and hasty development.

Teresa May: Net zero emissions by 2015, let’s do it.

Narrator: But as political momentum has gathered behind climate change policy green organisations have drifted from their founding purpose and the CPRE is no exception. The problem facing organisations like the CPRE is that green energy requires a lot of land. By contrast, the Hinkley Point C development site in Somerset has a footprint of around 1.5 square kilometres. A wind farm able to provide the same output would require an area nearly 1000 times larger. Solar power needs less space than wind but it would still take a solar farm twice the size of Birmingham to produce an output equivalent to Hinkley Point C.

When it is completed, Hinkley Point C will provide approximately 7% of the UK’s anticipated electricity demand. 14 plants the same size would have a combined footprint of just 21 square kilometres and could meet Britain’s entire electricity demand but a wind farm with that same footprint would provide only around 0.1% of the UK’s total energy supply and only on an intermittent basis. A wind farm with an output equivalent to Britain’s total energy demand would require an area greater than 20,000 square kilometres.

Since wind and solar are intermittent, a backup source of energy is required for when there is no sun and no wind. Green organisations claim that bioenergy crops or biomass can help keep the lights on. But bioenergy requires even more land than wind and solar farms to produce the same output. Equally the potential output of Hinkley Point C from bioenergy crops would require nearly 6,000 square kilometres of land to be used to grow coppice or nearly 10,000 square kilometres to grow miscanthus.

It is unlikely that new technology will be able to help reduce the impact of green energy on Britain’s natural landscapes. Bigger wind turbines have been developed but these larger installations need turbines to be spaced further apart to work efficiently. Thanks to new technological developments the cost of solar panels has fallen, but solar PV cells have not become more efficient, meaning that they will require just as much land which will become more expensive when an ever greater area is required to meet green policy targets.

The dash for renewable energy has already transformed much of Britain’s landscape. As the country heads towards meeting even more ambitious targets, the transformation will be all the more radical.

Over the past decade, the UK has decarbonized nearly 1/3 of its electricity supply. But electricity accounts for just 20% of energy use. Completely decarbonizing the UK economy over the next three decades in line with the government’s net zero policy will put increasing pressure on Britain’s natural environment. This pressure is exactly what organisations like the CPRE promised to protect against.

CPRE: The countryside is important for us all. It’s where we grow our food and experience the beauty of nature. It’s both a workplace and a home for many people.

Narrator: But the CPRE is now almost silent on the impact of industrial solar farms and wind turbines and bio crops and it has actively promoted them. The scale of the net zero agenda requires the transformation of an area many times larger than the combined footprint of all the roads and buildings in all of Britain’s cities, towns, and villages. According to the UK national infrastructure assessment, just 6% of the country is classified as built on and it is expansion of this kind that the CPRE has historically been most resistant to. But the CPRE now actively campaigns to increase the physical footprint of energy production in the UK. In their proposal to meet the earlier 80% 2050 emissions reduction target the CPRE suggested that 10,000 square kilometres of land should be used for producing bioenergy crops and 30,000 square kilometres should be turned into tree plantations.

This would require industrialising 1/6 of the UK’s entire land area. It is inconceivable that this intensification of land use will not result in the degradation of hedgerows, landscapes, areas of outstanding natural beauty, and other important habitat.

Moreover, this proposal required that energy demand is significantly reduced and that large amounts of energy are imported. If energy imports become too expensive or the emissions reduction target becomes a political liability, the impact will fall first on the very thing that the CPRE claims to protect, the natural environment.

Now that ambitions have been raised from 80% to 100%, the CPRE’s response has not been to make the argument for caution but to raise the ambition further to achieve net zero by 2045 rather than by 2050. Very far from its founding purpose, the CPRE now seems to exist to campaign for the English countryside to be sacrificed. To find out more, download the reports from the GWPF website.
Global Warming Policy Forum

For more on what unhinged ‘climate action’ can do for your environment:

• Green Killing Machines
• The Impact of Wind Energy on Wildlife and the Environment

What ‘climate action’ means for the broad, sunlit uplands.