I ask the questions:

a) Is the astronomical cost of establishing each of these towers justifiable? The answer (in my opinion) is a resounding no! The general public will ultimately have to pay for them but the final cost of establishing these monstrosities will never be known by the general public!

b) Are the benefits so profusely bandied about by businesspeople and politicians factual or it is just spin? The answer: Given today’s political and commerce climate then one must lean very strongly towards the latter!

c) Is the sacrifice of the visual and landscape environment, under the premise that it provides jobs for many people, justifiable? The answer: “Sacrifice” is the leading word and I believe that we don’t have the right to sacrifice the environment in such a devastating way just to provide a couple of hundred jobs (sure the security is nice for those workers but it comes at a huge environmental cost)! We then must look at the upkeep and maintenance of these monstrosities spread so widely over nature’s ranges, rolling ranges that were once beautiful in their own right. We must look at the possible life span of wind towers, nothing lives or works forever. At the most extreme of wild imagination, allow them a life span of 50 years. Then what happens? Are they to be just abandoned and left in place? Or will they be dismantled and the environment returned to its natural state? Here’s a thought, if it costs (conservatively) $7 million to establish a wind tower today, then in 50 years it would cost (conservatively $50 million to remove it. So what would you think the answer to this last question be?

As a species we have wreaked havoc on the environment, wrongly thinking that it was ours to do as we liked. Surely in this enlightened age we know better, surely we have learned by now and realise that once we plunder and wreck this planet there is nowhere else to go! Today’s wind towers are tomorrow’s junk! There has to be a better way!