by Quentin Cockburn
They take renewables very seriously here in England. We’d been chased by renewables ever since we got off the plane on that windy aerodrome at Kirkwall. Wind turbines blanketed the Orkney hills. At Stromness, we saw a big construction, the European Marine (Wind and Wave) Energy Centre. (There’s gotta be an acronym for this..”Wind And Natural Kinetic Energy Research’ facility… As distinct from Terrestrial Orbital Systems Sequencing Energy Research Facility.) The site was borne from a Thunderbirds set. Renewables with a BIG R, room enough for the whole fleet of Thunderbirds, International rescue and a docking point for Supertankers, oil and gas tenders and the illusive Thunderbird Five.
Over the next few days as we drove down from Peterhead, Scotland (more renewables there), we crossed country, from the Highlands to the Lowlands, whilst the Betty Allan, sailed a more direct route across the North Sea to East Anglia where the first sign of humanity (though not humility) was ranked formations of wind turbines towering up from the sea.
We rendezvoused with the boat at Lowestoft whose windiness has been made famous by generations of maritime artists. My favourite, being “the Victory at Lowestoft”, mizzen braced, topsails closely reefed as it’s tossed before the teeth of a gale.
For the next few days we explored a hinterland rich in wind derived heritage, the windmills of the broads, immortalised in the vigorous striations of Brangwyns black inked linocut and woodblock windmills. The medium best suited to capturing the grandeur and raw phsysicality of the windmill, the noble woodblock. Yup! This is windmill country!
Since the mid noughties once familiar land and seascapes have been “over-run” by turbines, which, if you accept the doctrine “all in a good cause” are to fight carbon, to save the planet.
Within Lowestoft stands a solitary wind turbine. This tower, perfectly white, with its three sculpted blades, symbol of modernity, of the triumph of technology over nature, hovers over the aging roofscape of Lowestoft. It doesn’t quite dominate, yet is always there. This single wind turbine. We asked ourselves why, after bearing witness to ranks of them along the coast and in the sea, why this one solitary example. 
We performed mental calculations; ‘would one alone power this town’? Would all English towns of medium density require this ‘Centralised Renewable Sustainable Infill’?
No, this solitary wind turbine is a political statement.
Of What? you may ask. It says we can have our cake and eat it too. That we can keep our lifestyle as we have come to know it with all its consumptive hubris and not worry about environmental damage, about global warming, because we have clean energy. And do not worry about the next degrading either, because we can come up with another engineering or scientific fix. This tower speaks of our right to consume more power, more energy as our entitlement, and of our right to delude ourselves.
This tower seems to say “See what we have here? Yes, we’re doing the right thing by the environment!!.” It’s a Faustian pact of sorts, provided the planet, (the global elephant in the room) doesn’t notice.
Have we told the planet??…or hasn’t it noticed either?