Solar farms might not be pretty but we can’t keep objecting to them being built - Yorkshire Post Letters

I live not far from a small solar farm and it is not the prettiest of sights; I would much rather be looking at the green fields that were once there. But in the fifty years I have lived in the area I have seen livestock being grazed or hay or silage being cut being taken, on a handful of occasions.

This land was more ornamental than useful. I can see no objection to covering it with solar panels if that is what is required to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide being put into the atmosphere from power stations every day.

The mechanism by which additional carbon dioxide and other so-called ‘greenhouse gases’, like methane and nitrous oxide, lead to rising global temperatures is well understood. No one can predict exactly what the consequences will be, but what can be said is that higher average global temperatures mean more energy in the oceans and atmosphere, which together form the climate system.

A more energetic climate system means that weather extremes in the form of prolonged heat waves, cold spells, wet spells and droughts, increased storminess in both frequency and intensity, and rising sea levels, are the most likely outcomes.

Politicians who want to ignore this on the basis that to do something to halt it will be too costly, are simply transferring the costs of counteracting its effects onto future generations.

Politicians who want to extract the last bit of oil and gas from the North Sea to burn in power stations are ignoring the fact that they are much too valuable as raw materials for making useful things, than as something to burn.

What do they think the raw material is for the synthetic yarn for the clothes we wear and for all the plastics we have in our homes? When it’s gone, it’s gone for good.

If you object to solar farms or wind turbines because they ‘spoil the landscape’ then ask yourself what you are willing to give up to reduce the number which have to be built, your big cars? Your transcontinental holidays?

If you are someone who will hand their vote at the next election to a politician who is peddling the snake oil of a ‘business as usual’ scenario for energy production, please consider this: I won’t be round to suffer the consequences which will flow from a much more energetic climate system, but my grandchildren will, and so will yours.