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Pylons and the Green movement
[All opinions stated herein are my own: I do not speak for SGP or any other environmental organisation.]
The journalist George Monbiot (whose work I have long admired) has caused a lot of spluttering among my Green friends this morning with this article, in which he argues that the Green movement should throw its weight behind anti-pylon campaigns in Scotland and Wales. Some background here: the best sites for onshore windfarms tend to be in remote, hilly areas, but electricity tends to be consumed in lowland, densely populated areas. Therefore if we're going to build windfarms we also need to build power lines through the countryside, and these tend to provoke opposition. The same is true for, e.g., Orcadian tidal power.
First off, he's dead wrong that nobody in the Green movement is aware of this problem. The Scottish Green Party has been arguing in cautious favour of the controversial Beauly-Denny power line upgrade for years, as a simple search of their website would have made clear. The Twitter arguments between SGPers and the anti-pylon John Muir Trust liven up many a dull afternoon. Did you talk to anyone at SGP, Mr Monbiot?
Monbiot caused particular ire with the line "If we are not against pylons marching over stunning countryside, what are we for?" - well, we're for promoting sustainable energy and limiting climate change. But I think this line is an anomaly in an article that's mostly saying something different: I think what he's saying is "we should campaign for underground cabling rather than pylons, or we'll be outflanked by anti-pylon campaigners in green clothing and then we won't get windfarms and then we'll get even worse climate change". Tactics rather than objectives. And countryside is pretty, but that's a relatively minor point - one sentence out of the whole article.
I think he's wrong, and here's why:
The journalist George Monbiot (whose work I have long admired) has caused a lot of spluttering among my Green friends this morning with this article, in which he argues that the Green movement should throw its weight behind anti-pylon campaigns in Scotland and Wales. Some background here: the best sites for onshore windfarms tend to be in remote, hilly areas, but electricity tends to be consumed in lowland, densely populated areas. Therefore if we're going to build windfarms we also need to build power lines through the countryside, and these tend to provoke opposition. The same is true for, e.g., Orcadian tidal power.
First off, he's dead wrong that nobody in the Green movement is aware of this problem. The Scottish Green Party has been arguing in cautious favour of the controversial Beauly-Denny power line upgrade for years, as a simple search of their website would have made clear. The Twitter arguments between SGPers and the anti-pylon John Muir Trust liven up many a dull afternoon. Did you talk to anyone at SGP, Mr Monbiot?
Monbiot caused particular ire with the line "If we are not against pylons marching over stunning countryside, what are we for?" - well, we're for promoting sustainable energy and limiting climate change. But I think this line is an anomaly in an article that's mostly saying something different: I think what he's saying is "we should campaign for underground cabling rather than pylons, or we'll be outflanked by anti-pylon campaigners in green clothing and then we won't get windfarms and then we'll get even worse climate change". Tactics rather than objectives. And countryside is pretty, but that's a relatively minor point - one sentence out of the whole article.
I think he's wrong, and here's why:
- People who object to pylons also object to windfarms, so appeasing them with underground cabling won't work.
- I'm worried about the ecological impact of digging dirty great trenches through the Scottish and Welsh countryside.
- Underground cabling is a nightmare to maintain - have you read this?
- There isn't a square centimetre of Scotland that hasn't already been touched by human activity (or that of our domesticated animals). You can call it "wilderness", but you'd be kidding yourself. I'm certainly not in favour of concreting the whole thing over, but nor am I bothered about a few pylons - and note, incidentally, that the Beauly-Denny line will mean a 100km net reduction of pylons in the Highlands and a 7km reduction in the Cairngorm National Park.
Interesting Links for 31-5-2011
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(Except that, myself, I like wind farms, but find pylons ugly and disturbing -- for that hideous moment when you go past and they all match up all along. I just don't like things outdoors that go in straight lines. I find forests planted in straight lines deeply deeply disturbing too and wonder why the local conservation activists never march against those. Butanyway.)
But I am confused as to why this issue has found the green movement on the back foot (in general, even if the SGP are up to speed on it -- he's mostly talking about the London-based commentariat, no?). Back when I was little I had a picture book about a giant who helped the people build a power station and lay down the pylons. Then the giant confessed that he hated pylons and built a machine to dig them underground. Valuable lessons.
I've long said Monbiot is an asshat
(Anonymous) 2011-05-31 02:58 pm (UTC)(link)2. What about the impact of pouring the concrete bases for pylons every few hundred metres or so? Making and shipping all that steel to site and erecting it and so on. Not to mention the hideous visual impact. Oh god pylons are so hideous.
3. I have read that. But pylons aren't maintenance free either. I also think that perhaps the case in JWZ's article is perhaps specific to situations where space is limited for the cabling. If I were laying an underground cable, I'd duct that mother in such a way that I could send a fixit robot down the duct whenever I liked. Someone else is bound to have thought of that. You could even power the bot by induction..
4. Whacking great horrible steel pylons+cables are not in the same league as some field boundaries or whatever.
Still, Monbiot is conflating "I want things to look pretty in places I never go" with "lets do the best thing for the environment". If there's a strong, rational case for erecting pylons, then up the pylons should go. Also Monbiot's an asshat. He manages to piss off people like me, who are - broadly speaking - on his side, so goodness only knows how much he annoys people who's minds he needs to change. No movement needs someone like that on their side.
I sometimes wonder if some kind of above-ground cabling might work? Like an oil pipeline, but with a cable bundle inside the tube. Low visual impact, easy to maintain, etc.
-mat
Re: I've long said Monbiot is an asshat
This would take the cost of Buely Denny from an estimate of £350m to £7bn.
For the cost of the wiring for a couple of wind farms we could (if we thought it prudent) put 1 or 2 1.6GW nukes in the Central Belt
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More seriously, David MacKay makes it clear in "Without Hot Air" that the amount of energy required to run the UK without significant changes in everyone's lifestyle is so colossal that we cannot do it without either a) doing lots of nuclear b) importing colossal amounts of energy from overseas (say from solar panel farms in the Sahara Desert) or c) constructing so many wind farms, tidal barrages, power lines and so on that the landscape would be irrevocably altered.
Option d), of course, is that postulated in John Christopher's book "The Death of Grass" - the government drops nuclear bombs on all the major conurbations in order to reduce the population to one that the land can support. Can't see anyone arguing for that one.
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I've yet to meet anyone like that, though that doesn't mean they don't exist. I've met lots who advocate (and practice) community-owned gardens and the like, but growing your own vegetables is hardly a return to universal subsistence farming. In general, I see quite a lot of enthusiasm for technology among Greens. But my experience may be atypical.
I've only read some of "Without Hot Air", though I was (mostly) impressed by what I read. Finishing it is high on my to-do list. While we're on the subject, can you recommend a good book-length treatment of nuclear fission and its use in power generation, the various reactor designs, proliferation and disposal issues?
In general, I agree that the Green movement could and should be more rigorous about running the numbers on its proposals. Though that's true of every political movement, and I think most are worse than us! And it's very difficult if your budget and staffing levels are as low as that of most environmental groups.
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More seriously, there's definitely a split between the "conservation" movement, which would like to preserve the countryside as it is / was / might have been in an idealised version of the past, and what might be called "progressive environmentalism" - the idea that technological progress should be harnessed in such a way as to minimise its negative environmental impact, and replace older, more harmful technologies. The Cambridge area attracts a lot of "conservationists", it seems to me.
I can't recommend a nuclear text as such, though I would recommend looking up the Pebble Bed reactor as a reactor design that is intrinsically resistant to coolant failures and has low proliferation issues.