The Government is mistaken in putting so much faith in wind energy, the environmentalist and broadcaster, Prof David Bellamy, has said.
Prof Bellamy, who was in NUI Galway yesterday to mark the 10th anniversary of the Martin Ryan Marine Science Institute, said that anyone familiar with peat knew that "you don't dig holes in a blanket bog, particularly on a slope". This had been proven by last year's landslide on the site of a 60 megawatt wind farm project in south Galway.
Installing "big blocks of concrete" for wind turbine bases would "never pay back the carbon balance", Prof Bellamy added.
"Nowhere in the world has a conventional power station been closed as a result of the development of a wind farm." Wind turbines killed birds and bats, and these wind factories were simply weapons of mass destruction.
Prof Bellamy said that his views on wind energy were so anathema to current British government policy that he had not appeared on a BBC television programme for the past 12 years.
His last broadcast on the network - for Blue Peter - was on his opposition to wind energy, he recalled.
"I find myself repeating the words of the late British government scientist, Dr David Kelly - I don't think Britain is a country I really want to live in any more," Prof Bellamy said.
A botanist and marine biologist, Prof Bellamy has been coming to Ireland for the past five decades and was turned down for the post of chair of botany at NUI Galway 30 years ago. During that time, he has given his support towards various Irish environmental issues, such as the protest over proposed interpretative centre on the Burren at Mullaghmore, Co Clare. Speaking last night at a lecture hosted by Prof Michael Guiry to mark the tenth anniversary of the Marine Science Institute, he appealed for sustainable use of the marine environment.
The EU's Common Fisheries Policy had "done to our seas what the Common Agricultural Policy has done to our land - destroyed wildlife and fisheries," he said. "I don't blame the small fisherman for this - the main problem is at international level."
