Money, money, money… in a rich man’s world the natural environment is the first thing to be sacrificed. All in the name of “green, sustainable energy to save the planet” — energy now being hoovered up by the latest corporate wheeze: data centres. Energy‑guzzling, water‑guzzling data centres.
We have been lied to. We have been deceived. We were told wind developments would be temporary — twenty years and gone. A stepping stone to more reliable generation that simply took longer to build. Then the language shifted in planning applications. First came “repowering”. Then “in perpetuity”. Suddenly these industrial sites were no longer temporary at all. They were forever.
For raising these concerns, campaigners were mocked and dismissed. We had seen the writing on the wall but were called deniers, luddites, nimbys, regressive — and much worse — as the zealots took over the asylum.
By the time Labour’s Miliband rocked up, the catastrophic damage was already well underway. He simply accelerated the rhetoric and swiftly removed community protections in England — protections that had already been denied to their counterparts in Scotland by Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP.
Politicians across multiple parties were complicit. Keen to show their allegiance to the global giants, they posed for press photos and made it abundantly clear where their loyalties lay. Westminster or Holyrood, it made no difference. Both parliaments bowed down to corporate investors and threw their own rural citizens under the wheels of the speeding gravy train.
The Greens — now ironically whining about the very data centres they helped enable — the SNP, the Liberal Democrats… all united in insisting that rural Scotland must be industrialised “for the environment’s sake”.
Meanwhile, global investment companies and multinationals saw their opportunity. They poured in, inhaling vast amounts of public money while campaigners were slapped down again and again. But we kept going. And now the truth is laid bare.
It was never about being cleaner. It was always about the money. Always.
Renewables? Ruinables, more like.
Lyndsey Ward
Communities B4 Power Companies
