Post by Donna Quixote on Apr 21, 2013 13:49:56 GMT -4
The Wild and the Wind
By Susan Wright — The Herald Scotland – Sunday 21 April 2013
JOHN Muir’s presence in the California Hall of Fame might bemuse many people on this side of the Atlantic.
Steve Jobs, Barbra Streisand, Clint Eastwood and Walt Disney may be household names here, but the Dunbar-born naturalist – celebrated in America as the founding father of the country’s 400 national parks – remains an obscure figure in his native Scotland. And while his writings are familiar to conservationists and mountaineers, his name would leave most people scratching their heads in a pub quiz.
That may be about to change. Today is the first John Muir Day in Scotland, marking the 175th anniversary of his birth. Meanwhile, the Scottish Government has made Muir a focal point for the Year of Natural Scotland (this year) and Homecoming (in 2014), partly in the hope of attracting visitors from the United States.
Yet our relationship with the man who pioneered the modern conservation movement is paradoxical. We want to reflect the glory of this champion of wilderness, but we exploit the land of his birth for commercial gain.
We’ve been doing it for centuries through deforestation, hunting, large-scale sheep farming and sport. John McGrath exposed this most eloquently in his 1970s play, The Cheviot, The Stag And The Black, Black Oil. If he were alive today, McGrath may well have expanded his title to add the latest Highland gold rush.The spread of colossal wind farms across our wildest landscapes promises to generate billions of pounds in profits for energy corporations and private landowners. In return, we are supposed to be creating lovely, clean, low-carbon energy, plenty of jobs and a better world. So why does it feel wrong?
Wind power is meant to help us tackle climate change by reducing the consumption of fossil fuels. But despite all the turbines built so far, carbon emissions continue to rise. We now burn more coal than gas, we are opening up 14 new oilfields, our economy is still based on endless consumerism, and most of our houses are draughty heat-leakers. Meanwhile, we attempt to save the planet by eroding the remaining places where nature might flourish, and where people can find peace, beauty, clean air and adventure.
If the proposed wind farm at Stronelairg goes ahead, 67 turbines, each 135 metres tall, will tower over the landscape from a 700ft plateau in the heart of the Monadhliath Mountains, near Loch Ness. Much of the development will be built on peatland, an internationally important habitat that stores huge amounts of carbon, supports wildlife and helps to filter clean water. Around one million tonnes of rock will be excavated to build the site’s concrete foundations and 40 miles of access roads. The entire development will create a footprint the size of Inverness, making Stronelairg not so much a wind farm as a wind city. It is just one of many wind cities being proposed for Scotland.
As a boy, John Muir loved roaming the Lammermuir Hills, and the woodlands and coastline near his East Lothian home. He was just 10 when his family emigrated to the US in 1849, but he would later recall his love of “everything that was wild” in Scotland. What would he have made of the current assault on wild places and open spaces in the land of his birth?
Muir dedicated his adult life to protecting vast swathes of the American wilderness. These weren’t places devoid of human presence. Native Americans had inhabited and explored every inch of California, but they had a profound respect for the land that provided the food, water and beauty that sustained them. This connection to the natural world was alien to many of the Europeans who were exploiting California’s natural riches with vigour in the late 19th century.
Following his first visit to Yosemite, Muir observed that “in a few feverish years”, the “pick-and-shovel storms” of the Californian gold rush had severely damaged great swathes of the state, in sharp contrast to the centuries of minimal impact by Native Americans who, he wrote, “walk softly and hurt the landscape hardly more than the birds and squirrels”.
By the time Muir wrote these words in 1869, much of Scotland’s natural heritage had been destroyed. Most of her native tree cover had gone – felled over the centuries for houses, agriculture, and ships, and to fuel the Industrial Revolution. As a result, nutrient-rich soils were blown away by the wind that now had free rein over the bare hillsides. Plants and insects disappeared. Continue reading, here…
www.heraldscotland.com/comment/columnists/the-wild-and-the-wind.20811820
By Susan Wright — The Herald Scotland – Sunday 21 April 2013
JOHN Muir’s presence in the California Hall of Fame might bemuse many people on this side of the Atlantic.
Steve Jobs, Barbra Streisand, Clint Eastwood and Walt Disney may be household names here, but the Dunbar-born naturalist – celebrated in America as the founding father of the country’s 400 national parks – remains an obscure figure in his native Scotland. And while his writings are familiar to conservationists and mountaineers, his name would leave most people scratching their heads in a pub quiz.
That may be about to change. Today is the first John Muir Day in Scotland, marking the 175th anniversary of his birth. Meanwhile, the Scottish Government has made Muir a focal point for the Year of Natural Scotland (this year) and Homecoming (in 2014), partly in the hope of attracting visitors from the United States.
Yet our relationship with the man who pioneered the modern conservation movement is paradoxical. We want to reflect the glory of this champion of wilderness, but we exploit the land of his birth for commercial gain.
We’ve been doing it for centuries through deforestation, hunting, large-scale sheep farming and sport. John McGrath exposed this most eloquently in his 1970s play, The Cheviot, The Stag And The Black, Black Oil. If he were alive today, McGrath may well have expanded his title to add the latest Highland gold rush.The spread of colossal wind farms across our wildest landscapes promises to generate billions of pounds in profits for energy corporations and private landowners. In return, we are supposed to be creating lovely, clean, low-carbon energy, plenty of jobs and a better world. So why does it feel wrong?
Wind power is meant to help us tackle climate change by reducing the consumption of fossil fuels. But despite all the turbines built so far, carbon emissions continue to rise. We now burn more coal than gas, we are opening up 14 new oilfields, our economy is still based on endless consumerism, and most of our houses are draughty heat-leakers. Meanwhile, we attempt to save the planet by eroding the remaining places where nature might flourish, and where people can find peace, beauty, clean air and adventure.
If the proposed wind farm at Stronelairg goes ahead, 67 turbines, each 135 metres tall, will tower over the landscape from a 700ft plateau in the heart of the Monadhliath Mountains, near Loch Ness. Much of the development will be built on peatland, an internationally important habitat that stores huge amounts of carbon, supports wildlife and helps to filter clean water. Around one million tonnes of rock will be excavated to build the site’s concrete foundations and 40 miles of access roads. The entire development will create a footprint the size of Inverness, making Stronelairg not so much a wind farm as a wind city. It is just one of many wind cities being proposed for Scotland.
As a boy, John Muir loved roaming the Lammermuir Hills, and the woodlands and coastline near his East Lothian home. He was just 10 when his family emigrated to the US in 1849, but he would later recall his love of “everything that was wild” in Scotland. What would he have made of the current assault on wild places and open spaces in the land of his birth?
Muir dedicated his adult life to protecting vast swathes of the American wilderness. These weren’t places devoid of human presence. Native Americans had inhabited and explored every inch of California, but they had a profound respect for the land that provided the food, water and beauty that sustained them. This connection to the natural world was alien to many of the Europeans who were exploiting California’s natural riches with vigour in the late 19th century.
Following his first visit to Yosemite, Muir observed that “in a few feverish years”, the “pick-and-shovel storms” of the Californian gold rush had severely damaged great swathes of the state, in sharp contrast to the centuries of minimal impact by Native Americans who, he wrote, “walk softly and hurt the landscape hardly more than the birds and squirrels”.
By the time Muir wrote these words in 1869, much of Scotland’s natural heritage had been destroyed. Most of her native tree cover had gone – felled over the centuries for houses, agriculture, and ships, and to fuel the Industrial Revolution. As a result, nutrient-rich soils were blown away by the wind that now had free rein over the bare hillsides. Plants and insects disappeared. Continue reading, here…
www.heraldscotland.com/comment/columnists/the-wild-and-the-wind.20811820