The Greenhouse

If he was, his recent comments about being imaginative enough to install wind farms on the central reservations of motorways and outside every school would have created endless bad jokes (like the one above) about turning again and again, rather like, er, a wind turbine...

More pertinent than this lame sense of humour is the fact that Lord Turner is advocating the use of medium-sized wind turbines; they couldeven be described as small. This seems like an admirable approach. As part of the 'old world', the UK has a rich tradition of small/medium scale exploitation of local energy sources - think water mills and those aesthetically pleasing predecessors of wind farms - windmills.

The only issue I have with Lord Turner is that he apears to have changed tack. As a former head of the CBI, that bastion of free-market economics, surely he should be aware that there's no shortage of desire or ability to build these things in the construction industry, it's the fact that making a return on the investment for such relatively small wind turbines is nigh on impossible. Hence the drive to build bigger and more visually intrusive wind farms as the only way to generate returns sufficient to involve the private sector in building them; hence also the reticence of the wider public and planning authorities; hence, finally, our appallingly slow reaction to the changes needed if we do want to reduce the likelihood and consequences of man-made climate change.

The article about Lord Turner's ideas goes on to say he has written a book on economics with a chapter on the 'green capitalism'. I've not read, it, and judging by Amazon not many others have either (except Gordon Brown, maybe). But this apparent desire to at least broach the issue provides some hope. It's only once people like Lord Turner begin to cotton on to the fact that only when we have an economy, capitalist or otherwise, that actually attributes appropriate values to environmental issues that we stand a chance of actually being able to build a sustainable future.