The RSPB’s Conservation Director, Martin Harper, has responded to a piece by anti-wind-farm campaigner James Delingpole in last weekend’s Mail on Sunday (heroically, the Mail misspelled Delingpole’s name, but I’m assuming “James Dellingpole” isn’t a real person). In the piece, Delingpole accused the RSPB of “making hundreds of thousands of pounds from the wind power industry – despite the turbines killing millions of birds every year”, in reference to a partnership whereby the charity gets £60 for every member who signs up with a renewable energy company.
In his piece Mr Delingpole is selective with his facts and has chosen to ignore the large body of science that supports the principle that appropriately located windfarms have negligible impacts, and instead highlights a few studies from other parts of the world that are deeply misleading when extrapolated to windfarms in general, or indeed windfarms in the UK.
The US Department of Agriculture estimates that between 20,000 and 37,000 birds are killed each year by wind farms in America, which is quite a long way off “millions”. Conversely, cats, power lines and windows all kill at least 100 million birds each per year in that country.
Which is to say that windfarms are not likely to be at the top of the RSPB’s priority, no matter how much Delingpole wishes otherwise. But something which is at the top of their priority? Climate change:
With every year that goes by, I am more and more concerned about the very real impact climate change is already having on wildlife. Our global climate is increasingly destabilised and, on average, is continuing to warm; wildlife is on the front line of these changes and is already feeling the crunch. Last year, we were horrified by the impact that the extreme rainfall throughout spring had on birds attempting to breed on our reserves, whilst the evidence that increases in North Sea temperature have disrupted the food chain and are causing declines in seabirds continued to stack up.
Earlier this year, Delingpole was also smacked down by the Met Office, after he claimed that they had conceded that “there is no evidence that ‘global warming’ is happening” (they have conceded no such thing). Given how widely anthropogenic climate change is accepted – and how passionately Delingpole disagrees with the scientific consensus – who or what will he turn his sights on next?
Given how little you need to do to spark the wrath of Delingpole, it would be interesting to see what he thinks about the utterer of these words:
The problem of global climate change is one that affects us all and action will only be effective if it is taken at the international level.
It is no good squabbling over who is responsible or who should pay. Whole areas of our planet could be subject to drought and starvation if the pattern of rains and monsoons were to change as a result of the destruction of forests and the accumulation of greenhouse gases.
We have to look forward not backward and we shall only succeed in dealing with the problems through a vast international, co-operative effort.
Of course, the Mail on Sunday is as unlikely to publish a hit-piece on Thatcher (who, yes, said that in 1989) as Delingpole is to write it. But wouldn’t that be a thing to behold?
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