Air travel is a far greater eco-risk (From Gazette Series)

Air travel is a far greater eco-risk

SIR - I fear Caroline Pande (Letters, March 5) has read the situation concerning the pros and cons of wind energy by focusing her brain through rose-coloured specs. The debate is long over. Most informed and unblinkered people are now firmly against land-based wind energy sources. Just take a look at the conservation bodies opposed to land based wind farms - CPRE, CPRW and The National Trust, to name a few, then consider the enormous number of people they represent.

We are not talking here about test masts in people's back gardens. What the modern generation of wind turbines presents us with are huge industrial structures, twice the height of Nelson's Column, situated amongst some of the most outstanding landscape in our country.

As for saving our gas and oil supplies, we don't solve one environmental problem by creating another. A 50-turbine wind farm on a beautiful, peaceful, remote Welsh hill will save peanut pollution and resources compared with the visual damage it causes.

Far better Ms Pande diverts her energies in lobbying Parliament to introduce VAT on airline tickets and tax on aviation fuel. We might then really start saving our planet by reducing the numbers of airliners crawling endlessly across our skies each and every day.

Our part of Gloucestershire is directly under the main flight path from Europe and Heathrow to America. Just occasionally take the trouble to stop, listen and look at the constant flow of air traffic above us, spewing out thousands of tonnes of fuel converted to pollution. Throughout any day there is hardly a few minutes between each plane; more often than not there is no time at all between each plane; and very often there will be two or three planes overhead at the same time.

The equation is simple:

Land based wind turbines = visual pollution + high levels of operational subsidies.

Result = Environmental impact; peanuts saved.

Winners = Land-owners and developers.

Tax on airlines = higher costs for air travel, higher air fares.

Result = fewer flights + more money for the Exchequer.

Winners = the environment, less noise = less pollution = less energy used.

There are, of course, some losers in the last case. They are the companies who constantly send their employees off on firms' jollies when, with a bit of thought, they might possibly use some of the electronic wizardry we are all blessed with these days.

And the other lot. They are the tourists whose expectations of what life can offer them has risen beyond all reason and who should perhaps be seriously thinking that, even if they can afford it, the world can't.

John Forster, Adey's Lane, Wotton-under-Edge