The Age of Stupid

It was a strange sort of day for me yesterday, a morning Green Party meeting in Bolton. Early morning central Bolton was cold grey and surprisingly quite deserted for a weekend in the run up to Christmas.

Early evening I saw the film 'The Age of Stupid' attended by about 16 people. It was competing with 'Strictly come Dancing' not much of a contest although I suspect numbers would not have been significantly different if the film had been shown during an hours long TV political broadcast!

Straight after The Age of Stupid it was a late attendance at a 25th wedding anniversary. We arrived of course to find joviality and that innocent cheeky fun that's so precious that you can get at such events. The contrast of course was striking with the heavy mood I'd been left with following the viewing of the film.

The film suggests we have only 6 years to plan applying the breaks solidly to halt what could be a devastated world in the last half of this century. So every possible means of reducing our carbon emissions should be pursued to the hilt.

One of the facts the Age of Stupid highlights is that only 20% of the applications for wind farms in Britain had been given the go ahead in the last ten years. If this figure had been 100% we would now be producing 10% of our energy by sustainable means.

People argue that wind farms at sea are preferrable to those on land for various reasons - maybe. But I'd argue we don't have the time and given that all the environmental and technical planning requirements are met all wind farm developments should go ahead.

Locally we have the issue of a Wind Turbine facility on Frodsham hill. There is a fairly vociferous opposition group who are fighting this proposal and whatever their sincere objections are I consider that the serious nature of the situation we find ourselves in should have a weighty bearing on the outcome of the proposal.