Why doesn't the government pass regulations limiting the proportion of lights left on in business premises at night? Why not tax high-energy light bulbs to make buying low-energy ones a better buy? Why not regulate all new buildings to have a proportion of their roof areas as solar panels? Increased sales would cause prices to drop.
Do we really want an industrial landscape to be all we have in the UK?
Ike Gibson
Ullapool, Ross-shire
It was disappointing to see Mariella Frostrup peddling the same old excuses as to why we should avoid action to reverse climate change. Yes, wind power is not the complete solution, but it does have a part to play.
I did agree with her on one point. She was, indeed, not being a Nimby, she was being a Nimhby - 'Not in My Holiday Back Yard'. Perhaps the wind farm will cause Ms Frostrup to sell her bothy to a local Scot who has been priced out of the area by the advancing plague of holiday-homers.
Jeremy Cooper
London E11
Mariella Frostrup ignores the appalling consequences that second homes inflict upon local communities, and the 'energy-guzzling assault' implicit in owning unnecessary property. She clearly has little understanding of the 'pristine countryside' upon which most wind farms are built. Such sites across Scotland bear no resemblance to their natural state, having been deforested for sheep farming and industry.
Well-planned wind farm developments actually serve to provide investment in such landscapes , with rich habitats at ground level which would otherwise not exist. In addition, as a result of recent land ownership legislation passed by the Scottish parliament, many of the landowners to whom she refers benefiting from wind farms may actually be local communities, and not absentee property owners such as herself.
There is much of 'what's left of the environment' that is worth protecting; in many cases, it already is. She may not like it, but Mariella's own backyard, in its already 'industrialised' state, is ideal for producing safe, reliable and cheap power.
Ian Parnell
Edinburgh
Mariella Frostrup's article on wind turbines calls them 'unsightly structures', but the accompanying photograph shows plainly that they are, in fact, ravishingly beautiful modern abstract sculpture.
Sheenagh Pugh
Cardiff
