The Eco Island Supporters Group were disappointed but not despondent at the Planning Committee’s rejection of wind turbines last week. They were delighted by the three votes in favour of turbines and feel that was a very significant step forward in their campaign.

LESS GRIPE, MORE WIND THE CAMPAIGN GOES ON

The group is of course concerned about Climate Change, as we are an island community and are at risk of flooding, but there are several other driving forces behind their campaign.

Karena who spoke in support of turbines at the meeting says,

“Individuals can indeed put green power generation systems into their homes but every community has a need for electricity to run its schools and hospitals. We have a moral duty to produce some of that here on the island, rather than rely on it being channelled from the mainland. We should not expect other people to live next to polluting power stations so we can keep our lights on”

Security of our fuel supplies is also a major concern,

“We need to generate as much as possible in the UK as quickly as we can. We just don’t know when disruptions to these oil supplies will come or indeed how long they will even last. In the future there may be other cost effective alternatives such as tidal power but we don’t feel it’s prudent to wait the decade or so this may take”

We all agree on one thing: that our island is a beautiful place.

But we cannot maintain a pretty view in an AONB today at the expense of, the land the view sits on, tomorrow.  Wind Turbines have been placed in AONB’s in the UK already and the IOW cannot keep itself an exception forever.

In the same way we have accepted much larger structures on our skyline, such as the Chillerton TV Mast at over 200ms high, so turbines will become just another part of this green and pleasant land.