Solar panel debate puzzles as bear games herald World Cup hijinks
MICHAEL Portillo has the best job in the world. Up there with Rick Stein, the chef from Cornwall who travels around eating stuff in cool cities. Travel is good for the soul. The happenstance exchanges with strangers, the sudden rush of foreign cultures upon the cerebral cortex, the joyous assault on the senses of a new city, its strange ways, its new rhythms.
My job has taken me to five star European hotels, to the great courtrooms of the land. But, in truth, these great adventures happened, as if in another life, and lately I have not ventured anywhere exciting.
On a rare sunny April evening recently I took a spin to a village hall meeting in a local parish where the red hot subject matter of solar panels was being debated.
No Indian palace for me, but a rusty roofed community hall dating back to the 1800s.
It quickly became apparent that the speaker was no solar panel worshipper. Lately renewable energy has become a hot topic across the country as companies hoping to develop wind farms and solar energy farms have emerged, offering wads of cash to farmers for the option to use their land.
The going price seems to be €1,000 an acre. Considering the amount of water in our fields at present, it probably didn’t seem a parsimonious offer for many!
The meeting was pretty much a dissertation in why solar panels are bad, m’kay. Wind farms coming a close second in the worst things to ever be invented since mouldy sliced pans.
The language turned sci-fi in its portentiousness. The speaker outlining disastrous, life threatening health side effects from chemicals ‘ released’ by the solar panels due to salty sea air cracking their glass casings after a certain period, (30 years, who’s counting). Like the guy selling the idea of a mono rail in The Simpsons, this man’s patter was insistent, like the shower rain pounding the corrugated roof above, it came fast and furious and was loud.
Few questions were asked of the speaker, as he held forth on how solar farms cause property prices to plummet in anyone unlucky enough to live in the hinterland. Tax implications, inheritance tax, every excuse under the sun was trotted out against solar energy.
Sadly the company planning to build the farm had no representative present to contest the negative arguments being made.
I reported the story in the following edition of our newspaper and then read an article by Paul Krugman, the respected economist, in the New York Times, which spelled out, in layman’s terms, the positive arguments for solar and wind energy. Among these were 1) saving the planet and 2) saving money. Of course it’s easy for a townie like me to listen to these arguments, which include how the infrastructure and cost of providing reneweable energy is no longer prohibitive and is, in fact, competitive to fossil fuels. There is the fear of the unknown factor, which should not be underestimated. One thing’s for sure barristers and solicitors will make a small fortune out of contested cases in the High Court as planning applications ping from department to department.
Meanwhile a bear was used to start a soccer match in Russia. With the World Cup upon us in less than two months, one wonders what kind of a spectacle Putin & Co will be putting on for the world. One fears a circus, and an ugly one at that.