While I am in favour of Wind Farms and renewable energy production, this proposed farm was simply a bad idea. While the visual impact upon a beautiful landscape would have been great, that is not the reasons why I objected to this one.
The geology of Lewis, one of the islands in the Hebrides, means that the Ecology of the peat-land is a fragile environment. As well as being important to a number of species, peat is an endangered habitat already. Further, these west coast islands are important migration routes for many millions of birds, and as has occurred with other poorly located turbines, birds would have been killed by the blades.
However, in relation to Climate Change, erecting any structure on peat bogs releases large volumes of CO2 from the land, that all adds to the carbon cost of building the wind farm in the first place.
There is no point in taking action on reducing CO2 emissions if we are damaging other parts of the environment in the process. Had the geology or the ecosystem been different then I would not have objected myself, but as is often the case profit blinds people to the real cost.
Photo of Ruined Church courtesy of Morris R. MacIver
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