Letters / ‘Greed driven destruction’ of landscape
Every minute of every day somewhere on our wonderful planet mankind is raping, pillaging and destroying the natural environment, polluting and killing natural habitats, its biodiversity with the living things lost forever or increasingly facing extinction, all for profit and greed.
Shetland does not escape this greed driven destruction of its unspoilt natural landscape, as we see the return of the mechanical teeth of diggers ripping up and trampling down ancient peat, as the cable at Kergord is buried in readiness for the destructive and unnecessary industrialisation that is the Viking Energy wind farm.
Yes Shetland needs a less polluting energy source but this monstrous Viking Energy wind farm is not a solution and in reality just adds to the serious and disgraceful problem of energy misuse and energy waste.
Most developed countries around the world waste over half of all the energy they generate and buy in and until mankind deals with this misuse and waste of energy, there is no advantage and little point in destroying precious natural environments with more wind farms, as all they do is feed more energy into a system that wastes half of it.
I was in Sandwick in the 90s and experienced possibly Shetland’s worse ever landslides that demolished part of the Sandwick water treatment facility along with many other serious incidents costing thousands of pounds to remedy, not to mention the choking of the seabed and foreshore between Hoswick and Levenwick, buried with hundreds of tons of peat scouring out of the hills and washing down the burns into the open sea.
It is both stupid and very risky to cut multiple roads, tracks and drains in hill peat as the science on the effects of heavy rainfall after very dry conditions (the very conditions that caused the Sandwick peat slides) just isn’t there.
So on this alone both the SIC and the Scottish Government planners have seriously failed Shetland by not insisting on or imposing a planning condition, that required Viking Energy to put up a bond of several million pounds to cover all costs of any damage or loss as a result of peat slides within the development area, to also cover costs of the remedial work required to restore any damaged areas.
Once again the absent hedge funds, absent financial racketeers, greed and weak politicians win the day and the people most affected by all this, those that have to live with the destruction, the nuisance and potential disaster, are given two fingers.
Vic Thomas
Catfirth
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