I view with dismay how your counties of the South West are being ravaged by the desire of others for you to solve the world's climate change problems.I am not surprised that the wind farm development at Fullabrook Down in North Devon was passed. Cornwall has been an easy target for developers and now, with government blessing, the race is on to ruin Devon. ...One problem for our ministers, planners and inspectors is that unless they take the time to do independent research, the technical data they are presented with will have been supplied either directly by the British Wind Energy Association or an agency which gets it from the same source. While the public begins to wise up to wind power the Government still sees what it wants to.

The so-called green benefits will not out-weigh the damage and destruction that this will bring to the area. What also saddens me is the fact that this isn't the only village that is under threat as we speak. It seems that wind farm developers will not be happy until every village from Carlisle to the Lakes is home to these things.

The Government's decision to approve a wind farm at Fullabrook will, if implemented, have woeful consequences, ripping the heart out of rural North Devon. Make no mistake, these planned turbines are giant industrial artifacts, each one reaching more than 120 yards into the sky, each monster higher than St Paul's cathedral, dominating the landscape, generating noise pollution. ...You can see the reasoning in Energy Minister Malcolm Wick's statement about 'tough' choices' to meet 'clean energy objectives'. Unfortunately, the net energy contribution from the massive investment will be minimal, and it will do little or nothing to halt climate change. The Government wanted to demonstrate its hard-nosed green credentials. It has unfortunately no appetite for the really difficult action which would make a difference, such as compelling existing homes as well as new homes to be adopt energy saving features, switching from road building to public transport and using tax to phase out out petrol and diesel vehicles.

Forget about wind farms and nuclear power stations. The answer to Britain's looming energy crisis could be cheap, plentiful and planet-friendly coal ...The problem for the politicians is that there are conflicting imperatives and no consensus on what should be done - you would more easily achieve agreement on the existence of God. It is not so much a debate as an aural riot, voices shouting against one another like dealers on a trading floor. All claim to be driven by high principle. All promise "sustainable" energy and low carbon emissions. But no lobby ever changes another's mind, and all argue that the best chance for mankind lies in whatever technology they happen to be commercially, professionally or ideologically attached to. Various hard-hat divisions are gung-ho for coal, gas or nuclear. Greens bicker over wind (onshore and off), biofuels, tidal and wave. They pelt each other with wattages, price projections, bar charts, climate forecasts and abuse. Onshore wind power to the hard-hats lies somewhere between Blue Peter and a money-laundering scam. Nuclear to the bean-eaters is the final phase in the Fall of Man. Everyone speaks, nobody listens, and the government calls for yet more talks.

Little noticed, however, was a recent recommendation from Ofgem, which regulates gas and electricity industries, that the Government should end its Renewables Obligation, under which the wind industry receives a hidden subsidy of nearly £1 billion a year (eventually due to rise to a staggering £32 billion a year), paid by all of us through higher electricity bills. This compels the electricity companies to buy all the power generated from wind at around twice the normal market price. Without a subsidy, as the British Wind Energy Association pointed out, the industry would become so "uneconomic" that investment would dry up. ...In the past year or two, however, a significant change has come over the nature of these battles. No longer are communities objecting to wind turbines just because they represent colossal intrusions into some of our wilder, more beautiful landscapes. The penny is dropping that subsidised windpower is an expensive way to generate only pitifully small amounts of electricity, and that the CO2 emissions it saves are derisory (when it was recently boasted that the hundreds of turbines in Wales save 200,000 tons of CO2 a year, an expert pointed out that a single coal-fired power station in Glamorgan emits this amount every week).

JEFFREY Corrigan of Broadview Energy company (letters, October 5) should tell us how many megawatts of electricity the proposed turbines at Westnewton will produce. It is high time these energy company representatives stopped all their "spinning" about how many houses will be supplied by these industrial monsters.

MORE than 200 people, who are fighting against a proposed wind farm, staged a protest march on Sunday. ...Rowan O'Duffy of the Stop Benington Wind Farm (SBWF) action group, said: "Areas of outstanding natural beauty like this are precious and need to be looked after. "We must save the historical landscape of Cotton Lane and High Elms Lane. The significant change to the character and appearance of the landscape caused by wind turbines hugely outweighs the benefits in terms of renewable energy generation."

NIMBYS and vocal minorities are the terms used by the wind power industry to deride the people trying to save our heritage from the ravages of giant wind turbines and associated electricity pylons. The spin doctors are clearly beginning to panic as they see their huge profits being eroded by an under-resourced but extremely determined band of people. ...Wind power fails for four main reasons: it is unpredictably intermittent; it will make little or no difference to global emissions; it only exists because of the huge subsidies that it receives and, finally, it has an unacceptably large spatial footprint.

However, as we know, the vandals have struck and already we can only look at the fells through those obscene abominations called "wind farms."

Why should these massive, noisy and ugly industrial monsters be allowed to be sited so close to our homes? ... Little, if any, consideration is given to local people's views. Occasionally the companies involved might offer a presentation, staffed by slick professional salespeople, or they try to sweeten the locals with perhaps a new community centre or maybe a playground, when actually this money has already come out of our pockets in electricity bills or via our taxes in the form of subsidies. They are frankly little more than latter-day carpetbaggers, mainly from the south, coming to rape our countryside.

Standing in a home a kilometer away from the nearest wind turbine --one of seventeen at the Pubnico Point Wind Farm in Yarmouth County, Nova Scotia --Tony experiences a sensation that he describes as "similar to being close to a high power car audio sound system playing drums. Both situations cause problems that I would say resemble arrhythmia." ...One potential problem associated with wind power is noise, like that experienced by Tony. In some locations, residents living near wind farms find the sound to be an annoyance. A few, reporting acute and persistent health problems, have abandoned their homes, unable to sell them.

The windfarm became operational early last June, and within three days we started having problems with the noise and hum emanating from it. ...As a result of our difficulties we have been forced to find an alternative place to sleep - our sleeping house, five miles away in Spalding itself - so we have effectively abandoned our home. Our house, which would previously have been worth about £180,000 is now likely to have a value of just the land - £35-50,000 and would not be marketable as a home for people to live in any longer.

The ‘green' economy is in much the same situation as the media and telecoms industry was prior to the bursting of the dot com bubble. Like media and telecoms the renewable energy sector is dominated by companies with potentially disruptive business models and aggressive business strategies. Just as dot com start ups found it difficult to find a defensive strategy when the online services market soured, so the renewable energy pioneers will find few places to run and hide when consumers stop consuming and the oil price falls.

On the face of it I was in favour of the proposed wind farm at Thacksons Well, (between Long Bennington and Bottesford) but as with all government schemes, I find it better to do my own research before making a decision. What I have found shocked me. Industrial wind farms are not CO2 savers and are not good for the environment.

ScottishPower is quoted as saying: "Whitelees gives Scotland the perfect opportunity to lead the world in renewable energy." So, where is the benefit to Scotland from this windfarm? The turbines are made in Denmark, the whole thing will be controlled centrally by a handful of engineers and maintenance will be done by a small specialist team. Are these jobs worth allowing 35 square miles of Scotland's landscape to be industrialised and 100 miles of roads carved out of the moor? I think not. Why are we forced by government policy to subsidise this destruction while serious doubts still remain about the efficacy of windfarms?

You all know my opinion on the biofuels con, but is wind power the technology that could succeed where others fail? I don't think so... Cornell University 's David Pimentel called biofuels: "Unsustainable subsidised food burning". I believe that windfarms are just as much of a dead end - they cause highly subsidised devastation of the landscape... Let me explain why...

Millions of pounds of subsidy is pouring into the coffers of multinational energy companies while grave doubts remain about how much renewable energy is actually being produced and how best it can be fed into the national grid. No account is being taken of the damage being done to the finest wild landscapes of western Europe, the consequences for the Scottish tourist industry or the visual impact of enormous wind turbines on local communities and outdoor recreation interests.

PLANS to build a wind turbine in the grounds of a school could be blown away by a colony of bats. ...In response to Mr Swain's comments at the meeting, a council officer said if there were any bats in the area, government environment department DEFRA could make an objection to the application.

While the process of formulating that policy is under way, all wind applications must be put on hold. Fenland is now on the tipping point of total rural landscape and skyline industrialisation. I say enough is enough.

When will these companies realise that Highland Perthshire is not the place for wind farms of any size? This is a magnificent area visited by tourists from across the globe. It should not be the site of an industrial generating plant.