Many of us here in Wales, UK, have read the article on "Wind Turbines" in your paper on 14-6-07. It has been posted about by e mail. We in Wales UK are planning a national ANTI Wind Turbine demonstration on July 8th. This horrendous industry will never ever halt global climate change it will only enrich its developers via the obscene level of subsidies being paid in Europe. Are there such massive subsidies your side of the Atlantic?

It is 20 months now since British Airways proudly announced a new scheme to deal with climate change: for the first time, passengers could offset their share of the carbon produced by any flight by paying for the same amount of carbon to be taken out of the atmosphere elsewhere. "I welcome warmly this move from BA," said the then environment minister, Elliot Morley. And how much carbon has BA offset from the estimated 27m tonnes which its planes have fired into the air since that high-profile moment in September 2005? The answer is less than 3,000 tonnes, less than 0.01% of its emissions - substantially less than the carbon dispersed by a single day of its flights between London and New York. The scheme has been, as BA's company secretary, Alan Buchanan, put it to a House of Commons select committee earlier this year, "disappointing".

What are we going to do about these farms? Get on to your MPs, Assembly Members, local councillors and all the other bodies involved. Tell them that you are opposed to these things coming here. Wake up Wales; there is a wind farm coming near you! Get together and stop them!

In Provence's Valee des Baux, where we live when not at home in Moray, wind farms are forbidden. Being France's most popular southern tourist destination, there is a consensus in Les Baux that any development likely to jeopardise the area's outstanding beauty must be banned. Similarly, Moray's future as a truly unique tourist destination in Scotland, and ultimately in Europe, will depend on how well it protects its own unique landscape.

It was Michael Crichton who first prominently identified environmentalism as a religion. That was in a speech in 2003, but the world has moved on apace since then and adherents of the creed now have a firm grip on the world at large. Global Warming has become the core belief in a new eco-theology. The term is used as shorthand for anthropogenic (or man made) global warming. It is closely related to other modern belief systems, such as political correctness, chemophobia and various other forms of scaremongering, but it represents the vanguard in the assault on scientific man.

That is why we should not allow Europe's energy needs to be planned by multinational, multi-utility behemoths or set a target for the temperature of the world. It is also why when people tell us what the planet will or should be like in 2050, we should recall how large and unforeseeable have been the economic, political and environmental changes in every 50-year period for the past several centuries.

Declaring that climate change is a real and serious threat won't raise too many eyebrows these days. But where the debate really starts to warm up is in asking how much energy consumers should pay towards eradicating the threat of climate change. Soundings by Ofgem suggest that most people expect a reduction in emissions to come at a price. What's not clear is whether the amount people anticipate paying will match what they may be asked to pay.

The CO2 hysteria is absurd, considering the minute contribution made by human beings. Of course the climate is changing - it always has done, hence the thriving vineyards of Northumberland in the 12th century and the Thames frozen three feet deep in the 19th - but human activity is largely irrelevant. The world's climate is controlled by solar activity, by variations in the earth's rotation and orbit, by external factors in space and, terrestrially, by clouds and volcanic activity. If the Canutes of the IPCC imagine they can control those elements, they are even more infatuated than they appear.

Companies like ECO2, Gamesa and Airtricity should beware - we are not going to take these intrusions into our lives lightly. We will use every means at our disposal to thwart your plans.

New Scientist's report on the large number of bats succumbing to wind turbines reinforces a common misperception - that the blades move slowly (12 May, p4). It is true that the blades of older, small wind turbines rotated rapidly and so would appear to a bird or bat as a semi-solid disc to be avoided. Modern 2-megawatt wind turbines make an apparently lazy 10 to 20 revolutions per minute, but the blades are around 40 metres long. Simple geometry shows that the blade tips travel at between 150 and 300 kilometres per hour. For a bird or bat in misty weather, these aircraft-sized blades appear from nowhere at intervals of between 2 and 4 seconds, a scenario that even a fighter pilot would find alarming.

The potential of the proposed windfarm out in the entrance to the Bristol Channel, when the wind is right, is enough power for half of the homes in the South West.Its potential when the wind is wrong or there isn't any is zero. In our homes we do not wish to have potential, but constancy.

IT seems the truth is beginning to come out when Trade & Industry secretary Alistair Darling makes a very damning statement on wind-generated electricity saying: "On very hot days or very cold days, if the wind doesn't blow, you would have a big problem!" Opponents of wind farms have been saying this for years and it is just not lack of wind - little or too much wind and you have the same problem! The next falsehood that needs tackling is the claim of saving on greenhouse gasses and the claimed impact on global climate - wind farms, during their construction phase, do produce greenhouse gases. But what is deniable is the various claims of significant savings in greenhouse gases while they are in operation - every wind farm needs back-up by conventional power stations for a guaranteed supply. Other issues that require addressing are the health of those living in close proximity to these monsters, the industrialisation of beautiful landscapes, property values and the exploitation of customers.

This week, industry, household, councils, environment and development groups were all trying to work out what the proposals mean. All that is clear for now is that the balance has shifted from development at any cost, and that the environment is now stage centre.

Government faith in wind powered energy was described by a national newspaper commentator yesterday as "a delusion that mediaeval methods could fuel the 21st Century."I know that many correspondents to this paper share that view. I must admit the sporadic performance of the single turbine on Swansea docks, as viewed from my bedroom window, inclines me to agree with them.

The energy white paper, published this week, seems to complete the government's change of heart on nuclear power. Four years ago, this option was effectively ruled out of the equation. More recently, there have been more favourable noises, plus the Committee on Radioactive Waste Management's report (which seems to chart an acceptable way forward via rewarding communities prepared to host waste facilities) and now a white paper which clearly makes the case for nuclear as an important part of the mix. This may have caused Alastair Darling some embarrassment when asked to explain the change of heart on the Today programme, but ultimately the government had no choice. This is a public acceptance that nuclear is the only currently viable base load technology to give a major reduction of carbon emissions.

Energy has a price - as consumers we are painfully aware of it when the gas bill surges or the cost of a litre of petrol catches us by surprise. When it bites our wallets we tend to blame oil companies, Middle Eastern sheikhs or Russian oligarchs, depending on prejudice or the last news headline. Less understood is the political price of energy, but it was the hidden message in the reams of paper published yesterday by Alastair Darling, the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry. For years the Government ignored the warnings about crumbling nuclear plants and the need to scrap dirty coal power stations. Finally someone has grasped the uranium fuel rod.

I agree with Dr John Etherington's critical observations (April 23) about the recent "survey" on the impact of wind turbines on property values. I came across this "survey" in the media and wrote to the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) expressing concern about its media statements about it. My letter and the response from RICS are as follows:

The real "rural terrorists" (report, May 10) are the wind farm developers holding communities to ransom while offering a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow to landowners. When local people see their landscape in danger of demolition and their community destroyed then feelings will run high.

Does the BWEA think it unreasonable that SWATT request that the Welsh Assembly call a moratorium on wind farm development until independent surveys are executed on these vital issues. Concerning the election, our campaign resulted in us getting the issue onto the election agenda. And the two anti-TAN 8 main parties were the ones who gained seats in the elections.

'Rural terrorists" was how a company described the protesters who destroyed a 280ft anemometer mast, built to test wind speeds for yet another clump of giant wind turbines in Norfolk. "People have a democratic right to complain," said a spokesman for the Marshland St James wind consortium, "but this was a criminal act." No doubt it was, but one reason people might be tempted to commit such criminal acts is that the Government, in its zeal to see thousands more wind turbines built, has removed pretty well all democracy from the process.