Naive condemnation of solar panels

JOANNE Bell might assert, perhaps might even believe, she is taking a moral stance in her condemnation of solar panels on the grounds that their production in China ostensibly involves forced labour, but this is either naive or disingenuous.

All sources of energy have, historically, and continue to involve human suffering. Thousands died in Britain’s coal mines over the centuries; thousands continue to die in the mines of other countries. Wars for oil have killed millions and in our own lifetimes ushered in an era of Islamic terrorism for which Britain is as much to blame as anyone, and arguably more than most. Nuclear power has devastated communities with cancers and left large areas uninhabitable; the elements which fuel reactors are mined in countries controlled by some of the world’s least attractive regimes.

Set against this toxic legacy, renewable energy seems positively benign, but power is a valuable commodity and valuable things breed greed, explotation and conflict.

Only when power becomes ubiquitous and therefore cheap will this cycle be broken, and only renewable energy offers this hope.

As regards covering productive farmland with solar panels, if no one wants, or can afford, to grow food on that land, and instead chooses to sell it for a solar array, what is Joanne Bell’s alternative? Is she proposing to buy it and farm it herself?

Joanne Bell has, I believe, fought a long battle against residential development of the former power station site at Yelland, so she must presumably have some regard for the environment; this makes it all the more ironic that, while keen to preserve her own little patch of Devon, she seems more than happy to watch the rest of the planet go to hell in a handcart.

Jackie Challis-Peake

Cornwall