{"id":68418,"date":"2025-07-16T23:41:09","date_gmt":"2025-07-16T23:41:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/68418\/"},"modified":"2025-07-16T23:41:09","modified_gmt":"2025-07-16T23:41:09","slug":"clean-energy-should-be-a-priority-not-wuthering-bronte-country-nostalgia-wind-power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/68418\/","title":{"rendered":"Clean energy should be a priority, not wuthering \u2018Bront\u00eb country\u2019 nostalgia | Wind power"},"content":{"rendered":"

Re Simon Jenkins\u2019 article (Ed Miliband would let a turbine farm destroy Bront\u00eb country. We need net zero, but at what cost?, 14 July<\/a>), there might be good reasons for opposing a windfarm on the Yorkshire moors, but Emily Bront\u00eb isn\u2019t one of them. Nor is the \u201cturbulent romance\u201d of Wuthering Heights an appropriate filter through which to view the Pennines. The Bront\u00ebs\u2019 local landscape would have changed considerably in their lifetime. They would have seen the rapid industrialisation of nearby towns such as Bradford and Halifax, and the mills that sprang up along the river in Haworth.<\/p>\n

They would have recognised the benefits of the expansion of the railways despite the impact on the countryside (their brother, Branwell, worked as a railway clerk). The \u201chistoric Bront\u00eb village of Haworth\u201d where they grew up was not a rural idyll, but a breeding ground for cholera and typhoid. The Bront\u00eb sisters must have applauded the campaign by their father, Patrick, for improved sanitation there, leading to the creation of a local reservoir that doubtless affected the countryside but also saved lives.<\/p>\n

We cannot afford to cordon off parts of the UK as a nostalgic theme park (\u201cBront\u00eb country\u201d). Nor should we romanticise the lives of a family who grew up in an unimaginably unhealthy environment and died young as a result. The clean energy produced by windfarms is vastly preferable to the polluted environment that Emily Bront\u00eb<\/a> endured, and it is likely that she of all\u00a0people would have understood why a clean environment should be\u00a0our first priority.
Jane Middleton<\/strong>
Bath<\/p>\n

Some of what Simon Jenkins writes about windfarms in beauty spots, on the necessity to protect the scientific importance of such areas, is unlikely to ruffle many feathers, but much of it sounds more like the Miliband neighbours he references. Only a day tripper wanting to see the moors and dropped off for 20 minutes on a pleasant spring day \u201cstrolls\u201d on the Pennine Way.<\/p>\n

If you haven\u2019t walked to Top Withens on a raw winter day, with sleet biting your cheeks, the wind wuthering, and water being blown uphill instead of flowing down, you cannot understand why the Pennines is such a great place for a windfarm. My great-grandchildren will still be able to walk the Pennine Way, with or without turbines.
Heather Bodden<\/strong>
Wakefield, West Yorkshire<\/p>\n

Simon Jenkins misunderstands what net zero is when he labels it \u201ca political ambition rather than a plausible target\u201d. The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change<\/a> says clearly: \u201cFrom a physical science perspective, limiting human-caused global warming to a specific level requires limiting cumulative CO2 emissions, reaching at least net zero CO2 emissions\u201d. And both the IPCC and the UK\u2019s Climate Change Committee are clear that it is not just plausible but achievable, with the latter\u2019s recent seventh carbon budget<\/a> providing \u201can ambitious, deliverable pathway for the UK to reach net zero by 2050\u201d.<\/p>\n

So net zero is a scientific concept that is required to stop climate change. Indeed, net zero not only can but must be met if we are to avoid ever more dangerous impacts\u00a0long into the future.
Gareth Redmond-King <\/strong>
Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit<\/p>\n

Simon Jenkins asks what landscapes we will lose in the bid to achieve net zero. He ought, rather, to ponder what will be left of them if we don\u2019t achieve this goal.
Jane Caplan<\/strong>
Oxford<\/p>\n

Have an opinion on anything you\u2019ve read in the Guardian today? Please <\/strong>email<\/strong><\/a> us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our <\/strong>letters<\/strong><\/a> section.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Re Simon Jenkins\u2019 article (Ed Miliband would let a turbine farm destroy Bront\u00eb country. We need net zero,…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":68419,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[746,159,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-68418","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-environment","9":"tag-science","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114865562268848736","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68418"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68418\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}