Hello dear readers, we hope you are well and enjoying this vibrant time when spring bursts into summer. As ever we welcome you to another edition of the Voice for Arran and this month we are very excited to share our new website too! A wee team has been working away, updating the design and generally making it more accessible and lovely to use. Perhaps most exciting of all, we now have our full archive of digital issues online, beginning with the first one all the way back in February 2011.
This work has been made possible with a grant from the Arran Community Council – THANK YOU ACC! – who receives funding from the Scottish Power Renewables’ Beinn an Tuirc 3 Windfarm Community Benefit Fund. With this support we have been able to bring an unique and valuable community resource back into operation.
And by a quirk of fate, the subject of windfarms is quite a feature in this issue. We learn more about their potential economic benefit for communities from the Centre for Local Economies. But first, across the water at Trump Turnberry golf course, Greenpeace recently staged a wonderful protest. In a response to the American President’s commands for Britain to keep drilling and ban windmills, activists erected some model turbines on the 4th green. With a more serious message underlying their sign – Choose wind, dump trump – the activists note, “The renewables Trump hates are the best insurance against the chaos he’s unleashed. Wind and solar farms…have saved us seven millions pounds every day since Trump attacked Iran.”
Furthermore, the expansion of renewables over the previous decade has also played a big role in the recent removal by climate scientists of the high-emissions scenario known as RCP8.5. As we hear in a piece by Andrew King, the removal of this scenario isn’t a sign that climate change was a hoax, as Trump and other climate sceptics claim. It is “a sign the expansion of solar, wind, electric vehicles and batteries have slowed emissions growth.” And moreover, King writes, “our efforts to tackle climate change have made a tangible difference. We have averted the worst climate future once thought possible.” Although global emissions haven’t yet begun to fall, and we are still heading towards warming peaking at 1.9 °C (rather than1.5°C), this feels like (for once) excellent news! And such an encouraging message to keep the positive climate actions going.
The new report from the Centre for Local Economies, ‘Blown Away: following the money in Scotland’s onshore wind sector’ affirms this. Yet for the transition away from fossil fuels to be just, and to create greater energy security, it argues that the wealth that is generated from windfarms needs to benefit the communities in which they are located. The authors state, “Scotland’s onshore wind sector generates significant wealth, but current ownership structures mean most of this value leaves Scottish communities rather than circulating locally.” They say the Scottish government needs to be doing more to change this flow of wealth – to direct it to households and communities rather than to a small number of corporate owners. And for this to happen, greater community and public ownership of assets is key.
It is busy season on Arran, with several music Festivals and Running events filling the calendar in the coming weeks. If you fancy something altogether a little slower, a little less speedy, then the reflective feel of the following pages may be just the antidote. There are anniversary celebrations coming up in Whiting Bay and at the Arran Heritage Museum, a review of the recently published Arran Through Time, or perhaps spend some time exploring the Voice for Arran archive!
We hope you enjoy the new website – we would love to hear your thoughts! And please continue to send in any comments and contributions, for it is these that will keep Arran’s incredible tradition of community journalism alive… Elsa
Featured image credit: John Campbell
