Extract from Revolution by Todd Westbrook

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18 revolution: a short sharp history of scottish wind power our individual carbon footprint is the result of false logic, and perhaps immoral (if you want to have that philosophical argument with the person sitting next to you on the airplane); time is nigh and all that. uk advisory body the Committee on Climate Change (ccc) stressed that very point in its 2019 Progress Report to the Scottish Parliament, in which it spelled out the need for ‘urgent action’ if net zero is to be achieved on schedule in 2045. ‘Every sector of the economy must contribute fully,’ it said. Policies must be embedded across all levels of government with strong leadership and coordination at the centre, the ccc added, with the public engaged in the challenge and all actions designed with people at the heart: ‘Policy should provide a clear and stable direction and a simply investable set of rules and incentives that leave room for businesses to innovate and find the most effective means of switching to low-carbon solutions.’ And the focus needs to be in the 2020s and 2030s, rather than farther down the line. Electric vehicles, green buildings, emission-lite agriculture, tree planting and peatland restoration, low-carbon heat, decarbonisation infrastructure (co2 transport and storage, hydrogen clusters, renewable electricity support), lifestyle changes: all according to the ccc are needed today. They are not alone in the call to arms or in taking up an increasingly common refrain: in the crisis facing all of us there is no longer such a thing as too many solutions. We no longer have the luxury of choice when it comes to decarbonisation, we are going to need to full complement of human endeavour and ingenuity to salvage the planet that we have fucked up – that we continue to fuck up. Which makes it both odd and disconcerting that Scotland is not talking more about the easy win already spinning on horizons around the country, even if wind power makes some segments of the population uncomfortable in terms of knee-jerk opposition. Edinburgh artist and poet Alec Finlay has long been intrigued by the interface between people, landscape and
introduction technological change, including renewable energy, and is not alone in believing the current crisis radically changes the baseline of the debates ahead, and the choices to be made as a result. ‘We are so far beyond arguments about whether or not people like wind,’ he said. ‘Do people like having a washing machine, do they like driving a car? That’s the way they need to start thinking about it. Those are the sort of choices you have to make in a war, and climate is now a war.’ Anyone involved in even a tangential way with the wind industry will have some experience of the atmosphere created after being asked ‘And what do you do?’ at a dinner party, wedding reception or in fact any social gathering where diverse groups of people gather around a single table. The entirely innocent question, when answered by those designing, developing, building or supplying the most visible of renewable energy technologies, inevitably results in misunderstandings from some around the table, awkward avoidance from others and outright hostility from a few. The revelation – and this holds true in the pub, on the bus or at the school gates – is capable of generating the sort of reception usually reserved for those involved in the arms industry, the taxman (or woman), traffic wardens and tabloid journalists. Occasionally heated conversations based on misinformation and hostility can follow, roping in money, politics and climate science (and/or denial) along the way. This does not extend to other renewables technologies to the same degree: solar power is generally better understood and more accepted, marine deployments of wave and tidal are seen as plucky, warm and fuzzy (like seals or puffins, but producing electricity), while bio-generators such as anaerobic digestion, co-firing and biomass tend to fly under the public perception radar. Traditional generators do catch their fair share of flak, of course: nuclear has long been capable of dividing the room, coal’s days are numbered, people can get very worked up 19
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Extract from Revolution by Todd Westbrook

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