Hastings: Puppet or Muppet?
I've been passed some background information (thanks David!) on the "Renewable Energy Foundation" whose 'independent' report Max Hastings quoted in the Guardian yesterday:
"According to the Guardian (July 15th 2004), REF is backed by anonymous wealthy individuals and hopes to gather the 80 or so groups opposing wind farms around the country"
Independent? You really have to be careful what you believe, don't you? Looks like the whole "PR front/think tank with misleading name" thing is hitting these shores.
This really bothers me as the environmental movement is often protrayed as a bunch of hysterical blinkered fanatics, but we've got science behind us, and they've got, er, Mr Blobby... Apparently REF's chair is Mr 'cosmic positivity' himself, Noel Edmunds. Glad to see they've got a real expert in charge.
posted by Gareth Kane @ 8:16 AM
2 comments
2 Comments:
Try doing a bit more homework - he knows an awful lot more about turbines particularly than you may think. I would have thought that you might give other people the respect that you clearly expect them to give you and your opinions. Don't assume that because someone is a celebrity they can't have genuine knowledge and expertise just like you or I. If you'd read anything about the REF you would know what they are about. Science by the way continues to back both sides of the environmental argument while huge financial rewards continue to back the turbine moguls. If you or the government were serious about the environment you would be campaigning for every newbuild to have solar panels and an individual turbine, instead of wasting your own and your reader's time on schoolboy comments about people you don't know.
My first flame! - glad to have stimulated some debate.
I have indeed read the REF website and they're highly anti-turbine and the organisation is indeed headed by Noel E. Hastings in his original article didn't say who had written the report - dodgy journalism. Therefore the basis of my piece is solid.
Don't understand your comment about science, and am amused by the phrase "turbine moguls". I've never seen a renewables company with the same economic or political muscle as Big Oil.
BTW I spend a lot of professional, political and personal time campaigning for a wide range of sustainability issues, so my conscience is clear.
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