I'm sure few reading here would disagree with Rab about the terrible threat posed by climate change. But although wind power and other renewables sound like a good idea, the reality is that they are bound to have little impact. For a start, there is no way we can reduce CO2 emissions simply using supply-side mechanisms – a key component is obviously reducing demand. However, the power businesses building the new infrastructure have no incentive whatsoever to do anything serious about the latter – their continuing profitability is built on encouraging more and more consumption. Even if consensus was reached on demand, renewables are simply not a sensible or practical method of meeting it. For instance, using figures from the renewable industry itself, even if every nation in the world decided that, say, just a sixth of future energy generation should be produced from wind sources by 2035, and there was world agreement on stabilising annual energy usage at 30 Terrawatts globally in the future (which would require most developed countries to considerably reduce demand but allow developing countries a modest increase), it would still require a full-sized 3MW turbine to be built every three minutes starting right now for 25 years. About 2% of the entire land surface of the world would end up being covered with wind turbines. And yet that would still leave over 80% of our energy needs to be filled, most likely by old-fashioned fossil fuels and nuclear. Which makes the current turbine developments utterly redundant. Instead, they are simply making a few very wealthy people even richer, and causing serious damage to biodiversity and landscape. Opposing large-scale renewable development is entirely compatible with wanting to combat climate change. If you actually care about the environment and ecology you can’t rationally do anything other than oppose this pointless industrialisation of the countryside.