Feature
Putting the wind up
by Bruce Ansley
Continued from page 2...
Its Central Otago opponents don’t believe it. “No one is going to come to bloody wind farms,” says Webb. You wouldn’t, say others, have had the Lord of the Rings scenes filmed in Central Otago if there had been wind turbines all over the skyline. Some resent their name. Nothing to do with farming, say the west-side farmers. They’re wind factories.
Either way, they’ve raised another issue: the South Island independence movement is kicking back into gear.
Should the South Island put up with being the camel’s humps? Says Turner: “From decade to decade, those further north have seen the South Island as a convenient source of energy. It’s about time someone had a look at South Island viability as an entity in itself. Compare the income from exports and other things with the cost of running the place. I think we’d find we do very nicely.
“Seeing the South Island as an energy farm just means inevitably the continued destruction of all sorts of places that I hold dear. It’s the old idea that if you want energy, you want to progress, you’ve got to allow for this sort of development, you make the sacrifice. In whose interests is the sacrifice being made? Someone like me, I don’t feel any great sense of obligation to the north at all. I find the sort of lifestyle encouraged is offensive, the increasing consumerism, the gross use of energy, all sorts of profligacy. It shows no appreciation of the fact that our natural capital is finite; you have to start behaving as if you understand that and want to do something about it.”
Turner is sitting in his little Oturehua cottage before his log fire. He has just returned from a bike ride to Ranfurly, a round trip of some 50km. He tucks into his scroggin.
