Cool Rationalities and Hot Air: A Rhetorical Approach to Understanding Debates on Renewable Energy1 John Barry, Geraint Ellis and Clive Robinson Abstract A key obstacle to the wide-scale development of renewable energy is that public acceptability of wind energy cannot be taken for granted when wind energy moves from abstract support to local implementation. Drawing on a case study of opposition to the siting of a proposed off-shore wind farm in Northern Ireland, we offer a rhetorical analysis of a series of representative documents drawn from government, media, pro- and anti-wind energy sources, which identifies and interprets a number of discourses of objection and support. The analysis indicates that the key issue in terms of the transition to a renewable energy economy has little to do with the technology itself. Understanding the different nuances of pro and anti wind discourses highlights the importance of ‘upsteaming’ public involvement in the decision-making process and also the counter-productive strategy of assuming that objection is based on ignorance (which can be solved by information) of NIMBY thinking (which can be solved by moral arguments about overcoming ‘free riders’)..
Introduction Against the backdrop of increasingly public and policy saliency of climate change and energy choices, the transition to a renewable energy economy has long been taken for granted as a necessary aspect of the transition to a post-carbon world. Renewable energy technologies such as solar, wind (on and off-shore), wave, biomass and tidal have been promoted, researched and significant public and private sources of funding have been invested into making these renewable energy technologies both commercially viable and competitive when judged against conventional fossil-fuel sources of energy such as coal, oil and gas. Equally, alongside this policy level consensus around the need for societies to begin the transition towards a post-carbon energy economy, there are high levels of public acceptance of the need for renewable energy in relation to adapting to climate change and ensuring energy security.2 However, while much research has been devoted to the issues of the technological and commercial viability of renewable energy technologies, less research has been conducted into the following dilemma – while there is general public support for renewable energy technologies, this sits side by side with significant localised and organised opposition to these technologies.3 As the UK’s Sustainable Development Commission notes, “Wind power development arouses strong opinions. For the 1
This research has been funded by the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council (Grant Ref: 00022-1095) and its support is gratefully acknowledged. Further outputs from this study and detailed data related to this article are available at: http://www.qub.ac.uk/research-centres/REDOWelcome/. Address for correspondence Dr. John Barry, School of Politics, International Studies and Philosophy, Queens University Belfast, Belfast BT7 1NN, Northern Ireland, email:
[email protected]. 2 Times 2005; MORI 2004; ICM 2004. 3 Bell, Gray and Haggett 2005; Haggett 2004.
general public, a high level of support nationally for wind power can be contrasted with opposition at the local level”.4 In this paper we explore the issue of opposition and support for off-shore wind energy in the United Kingdom, as articulated in a selection of pro- and anti- publications, ranging from official government and wind industry documents to publications from anti-wind farm local groups and organisations. This sample of key texts is analysed to establish some of the prominent discourses on this issue at a variety of geographic scales (national, regional, local) and from a variety of stakeholders – government, developers, opponents, the media. This analysis is based on the principle that views of renewable energy are articulated in a variety of discourses, each of which rests on certain assumptions, values and judgements about the world and which are shared by those with similar motives and intents to provide ‘discourse coalitions’.5 This postempiricist methodological approach is grounded in the awareness that language does not simply mirror the world, but instead actively creates and constructs the world. The use of language thus carries power in the way in which discourses can suppress or advance different interests. This becomes particularly evident in the context of policy debates, when different stakeholders engage a whole range of discursive strategies to further their arguments, to persuade others of their position or to undermine, ridicule or otherwise weaken the positions of others.
Rhetorical Analysis “He who does not study rhetoric will be a victim of it” found on a Greek wall from the 6th Century B.C. In its broadest sense, rhetoric concerns both the practice and study of effective and persuasive communication with a specific purpose or intent on behalf of the speaker or writer. Hauser offers the following definition: Rhetoric, as an area of study, is concerned with how humans use symbols, especially language, to reach agreement that permits coordinated effort of some sort. In its most basic form, rhetorical communication occurs whenever one person engages another in an exchange of symbols to accomplish some goal. It is not communication for communication’s sake; rhetorical communication, at least implicitly and often explicitly, attempts to coordinate social action. For this reason, rhetorical communication always contains a pragmatic intent. Its goal is to influence human choices on specific matters that require attention, often immediately. Such communication is designated to achieve desired consequences in the relative short run. Finally, rhetoric is most intensely concerned with managing verbal symbols, whether spoken or written.6 The significance of rhetoric cannot be underestimated since it is a key way in which people are persuaded or convinced of another’s position or brought around to another
4
Sustainable Development Commission 2005: ii. Szarka 2004. 6 Hauser 2002, 2-3. Emphasis added 5
point of view or dissuaded from their existing or another point of view.7 Its significance in political life has long been recognised from the ancient Greeks on. Aristotle’s three books On Rhetoric: A Theory of Civic Discourse are some of the earliest and still relevant texts on the subject. For Aristotle, rhetoric is about persuasion: “It is clear, then, that rhetorical study, in its strict sense, is concerned with the modes of persuasion. Persuasion is clearly a sort of demonstration, since we are most fully persuaded when we consider a thing to have been demonstrated”.8 This link between persuasion and demonstration helps us understand why effective public communication depends on having a clear vision of what one wants to convince one’s audience of and also explains the advantages of pithy and memorable statements and the appropriate use of metaphors and similes over over-long, technical and detailed exposition. For Aristotle there are three types of persuasion: “Of the modes of persuasion furnished by the spoken word there are three kinds. The first kind depends on the personal character of the speaker; the second on putting the audience into a certain frame of mind; the third on the proof, or apparent proof, provided by the words of the speech itself”.9 These can be summarised as ethos, pathos and logos. For our purposes it is also significant to place rhetorical analysis in relation to both the ‘linguistic turn’ in social scientific research (and policy-related research in particular) but more specifically in relation to understanding this ‘linguistic turn’ in terms of ‘argumentation’ and contestation. This is because (most) policy and political developments, proposals and interventions rarely enjoy consensus but either reflect or reproduce underlying social dissensus. This is particularly the case with technologically-based economic innovation which invariably generates ‘winners’ and ‘losers’, as well as often raising difficult ethical questions and leading to value-based political debate and conflict, which liberal democracies often find difficult to contain deal with, particularly in relation to the distribution of costs and benefits arising from the innovation.10 Social psychologist Michael Billig has made the point about needing to see the ‘text’ (of a speech, written document or other communicative text) within its argumentative ‘context’. As he puts it: [T]o understand the meaning of a sentence or whole discourse in an argumentative context, one should not examine merely the words within that discourse or the images in the speaker's mind at the moment of utterance. One should also consider the positions which are being criticised, or against which a justification is being mounted. Without knowing these counter-positions, the argumentative meaning will be lost.11 Against theorists such as Habermas who lay emphasis on the regulative concept of an ‘ideal speech situation’ - understood as a discursive context within which the ‘force of 7
Rhetorical analysis is related to discourse analysis and in this paper we use the two interchangeably. For environmental policy-related examples of discourse analysis, see Hajer 1995 and Fischer 2000. 8 Aristotle 2004, Book 1, chapter 1: 1355b 9 Aristotle 2004, Book 1, chapter 2: 1356a. 10 Fischer 2004; Sclove 1995. 11 Billig 1987, 91.
the better argument’ holds (roughly equating to Aristotle’s logos based mode of rhetorical persuasion) - Aristotle reminds us that in the real and non-ideal world of discourse, communication and language use (particularly in political debate and argument), an individual’s moral character (or perception of moral character) or ability and skill in speaking to or ‘tuning into’ an audience’s emotional state are equally – if not – more widely used and effective. Given one of the constitutive aspects of the study and the practice of environmental or green politics is to both engage in political activity (through conventional and unconventional means); and that a central aspect of that political engagement is the (political and democratic) persuasion of citizens, policy-makers, business interests and other stakeholders of the normative rightness and scientific credibility of the need for a different type of social organisation – based around the (contested) concept of sustainability – it is surprising that there has not been more work on the relationship between the art of rhetoric and green/environmental politics. There have been some explorations12 which use rhetorical analysis and green theory, and other more activist-orientated analyses that look at marketing and ‘branding’ green politics and issues13, and some use of rhetorical analysis within environmental policy discourse.14 However, on the whole there has been relatively little research on the role/s of political rhetoric in relation to green politics and the politics of sustainability more widely. In this article we seek to demonstrate the significance of rhetorical analysis for renewable energy development, itself a key aspect of the politics of sustainability in general but also we feel with particular relevance to green/environmental politics. So to conclude this brief overview – a rhetorical approach views language as an expression of argument and persuasion, so that any discourse will show how its originator (speaker or writer) sees the world and attempts to persuade others to adopt similar standpoints or to dissuade them of other opposing standpoints. Rhetoric helps identify this process of argumentation by clarifying the resources, devices and techniques the originator deploys in putting her message across, the creativity of language used, the understanding of context and the claims she makes on rationality, the moral standing of the speaker/proposer, the justness or rightness of her argument and the unjustness or irrationality of other positions, arguments and viewpoints. This has exciting, but under researched, potential for application in a range of environmental disputes, but none so pressing as the current push to expand the wind energy sector in the UK and indeed throughout the world. The main ‘blockage’ to this expansion appears not to be technological or financial, but in terms of local opposition wind farms proposals.15 A first stage in exploring the nature of such debates is to understand how each protagonist in this conflict expresses their aims, concerns and fears, from which a deeper understanding of the respective positions can be gained, the starting point for any conflict resolution process.
Wind Energy related Texts Chosen for Rhetorical Analysis Twelve texts were chosen to represent archetypal examples of policy argumentation, and as such can be analysed and interpreted through a study of the rhetoric and 12
Lane, forthcoming; Torgerson 1999. Gordon 2002. 14 Hajer, 1995; Fischer, 2004 15 DTI 2003; Toke 2005; Beddoe and Chamberlain 2003; Strachan et al 2006; Sustainable Development Commission 2005. 13
rhetorical devices they employ. As such, rhetorical analysis is ideal for understanding how different stakeholders or interested parties contest the issues around wind farm development, with the variety of discourses deployed over such developments saying much about the different interpretations of wind farm development, and the power held (or assumed) by the different stakeholders engaged in the debate. The texts selected as a sample of the different discourse coalitions at local, regional and national spatial scales were: a) Policy documents produced by government and regulatory agencies dealing with windfarm development: - Text 1: Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (2004) PPG 22: Renewable Energy. - Text 2: Department of Enterprise Trade and Investment (2003) Energy White Paper. - Text 3: Department of Enterprise Trade and Investment Northern Ireland (2001), Renewable Energy in Northern Ireland: Realising the Potential. b) Promotional material issued by developers and supporters of windfarm proposals: - Text 4: UK Sustainable Development Commission (2005) Wind power in the UK. - Text 5: British Wind Energy Association (nd): Frequently Asked Questions - Text 6: B9, Powergen, RES (2002): Tunes Plateau: Northern Ireland’s Proposed Offshore Wind Farm: Outline Project Description. c) Campaign material developed by those opposed to windfarm development. - Text 7: Coleraine Borough Council (2002): ‘Possibly the Right Solution? Definitely the Wrong Site’. - Text 8: ‘Invasion of the Wind Turbines’ Moriston Matters (2003) - Text 9: J. R. Etherington/Country Guardian (2006) The Case against Wind ‘Farms’ d) Local and national media reports relating to windfarm development: - Text 10: Leake, J. ‘Invasion of the Wind Farms’, The Times (24/4/05) - Text 11: Vidal, J. ‘An Ill Wind’, The Guardian (7/5/04) - Text 12: Crowely, M. Tilting at Windmills’, Derry Journal (6/9/02) The results of this analysis are summarised below.
Opposition Discourse Themes There are a number of themes we can identify in the discourses of opposition in the examined texts. These include: Sacrifice and Disempowerment This discourse places strong emphasis on place-based local values (including both a sense of the importance of local sea and landscape, and associated community identity associated with those). It sees these values and the physical environment and the social/community practices upon which they are based as being scarified for national
or global ends. A clear expression of this position is Leake’s question as to “whether Britain should be preserving its landscape or saving the world from global warming. Is the loss of some of our most beautiful views a reasonable price to pay for the renewable energy that could tackle climate change?”.16 Typical of the statements found in this opposition discourse are the following passage from Simon Jenkins: There lies the complete Cader range: an unsullied panorama of British landscape from the heights above Bala round to the shores of Cardigan Bay. I have gazed on this view since childhood and even the Forestry Commission’s set-square plantations failed to ruin it. Today the view has been defaced beyond belief… Across its summit now march 24 gigantic white windturbines. Like creatures from The War of the Worlds, they frantically wave their arms across the scenery… Nobody with an ounce of respect for the countryside could have permitted their erection.17 This rhetorical device presents both the proposed sites for wind energy development and the communities who live there as being vulnerable, threatened and facing larger more powerful opponents. Within anti-wind power discourses there is a consistent theme of local interests being (relatively, though not completely) powerless against large centralised and impersonal forces of central government or big business. Thus, rhetorically these anti-wind farm texts seek to present the anti wind-energy position as ‘Davids’ facing renewable energy ‘Goliaths’ – variously identified as renewable energy corporations, the state and/or wind industry lobby organisations and supporters, including (some parts of) the environmental movement. Prominent throughout anti-wind farm rhetoric is the discourse of the sacrifice and despoliation of pristine and beautiful natural environments. We find phrases such as “the desecration of beauty and the destruction of, and introduction of unwarranted risk to, otherwise unspoilt natural territory” and “This sacrifice, therefore, is the basis of large corporate profits”.18 The vulnerability and powerlessness of local defenders of these areas of natural beauty is also graphically described. An example is from Cameron McNeish (head of the Scottish Ramblers Association) who writes of his personal helplessness at the ‘theft’ of his children’s birthright in the name of ‘green energy’. As I lay by the small summit cairn and allowed the vastness of this wild landscape to percolate my own spirit I’m afraid I cried. I wept tears of frustration at man’s arrogance and greed. I wept tears of helplessness that people like me, to whom these wild places mean everything, couldn’t effectively fight the political/corporate forces that are determined to steal Scotland’s soul in the name of green energy. And I wept tears of genuine sorrow that my children’s children wouldn’t enjoy these places as I have done.19
16
Leake 2005 Jenkins, in Etherington 2006, 19. Emphasis added. 18 Cowley 2002. 19 McNeish in Etherington 2006, 20. 17
Such personal and highly emotionally charged forms of rhetoric are clearly designed to invite the reader to feel sympathy with the plight of the individual (and the argument he represents), this deploying ‘pathos’ (one of the three main modes of rhetorical persuasion as outlined by Aristotle above) and instilling a particular positive emotional reaction in the audience. In the statement from McNeish above we get a mental picture of the lone (heroic and noble) individual defending a ‘birthright’ from faceless, powerful ‘outside’ forces. This trope of a rightful minority resisting more powerful opponents is of course a dominant one in western culture, literature20, art and history, and this theme of ‘outsider’ versus ‘indigenous’ or ‘local’ is discussed further below. Lack of trust in Government, Regulatory Processes and Windfarm Developers Throughout the analysed texts there is a common theme of a lack of trust in government and regulatory agencies and wind energy developers and supporters. This varies from mild scepticism to outright mistrust of the public institutions involved in windfarm promotion or regulation and the motives and intentions of windfarm developers. In some discourses (such as Etherington’s document) there is also scepticism about the science and economics behind not just wind energy, but also about the scientific evidence for anthropogenic climate change (Etherington, 2006: 45-52). This involves recourse of alternative ‘authoritative’ knowledge and science, pragmatic appeals to ‘common sense’ and pragmatism, and the deployment of the language of rights and democratic participation to claim that wind farms cannot simply be ‘imposed’ from outside on unwilling communities and citizens. Part of this distrust in public institutions is discursively presented as the government actively supporting (via subsidies) or being forced to support (via its commitments to EU and global climate change policies and treaties) the ‘urgent’ development of wind energy. This is portrayed by opponents of wind energy as being a ‘wind rush’ (Vidal, 2004) in which the state has created an artificial and subsidised commercial environment for quick profits at the expense of other energy solutions and against the express wishes of local communities and environments affected. This taps into the populist suspicion that we live, ultimately, in a corporatist state, with big business and lobby groups having privileged access to government decision-makers, thus compounding the hurt felt by wind farm objectors – not only are they being robbed of their loved landscapes and tradition, but also cheated of natural justice and their democratic rights. Some examples of this scepticism are the statement from Cowley that, “the business promoters hold themselves as saviours of the world and use that idea as their mission statement. They suggest that nothing like a profit motive enters into the equation” (Cowley, 2002). Here the author is rhetorically precluding that wind energy can be seen as both contributing to ‘saving the planet’ and also being commercially profitable and also denying profit-making as a legitimate reason or basis for building wind farms. But perhaps more that that the aim of the author is to present the prowind development position as disingenuous and that effectively those holding that position as lying about or hiding their ‘true’ motives – that is making profits and not 20
A classic expression of this (and the anti-colonial rhetoric discussed below) and appropriate to the emotion that McNeish tries to evoke is Kipling’s “A Pict Song”, which begins: “Rome never looks where she treads/ Always her heavy hooves fall/ On our stomachs our hearts and out heads/ And Rome never hears when we bawl/Her sentries pass on – and that is all/ And we gather behind them in hordes/ And plot to reconquer the Wall/ With only our tongues for our swords”.
saving the planet. This binary logic is a common rhetorical device used not just by anti-wind farm discourses but can also be found in pro-wind farm documents as will be discussed below. Another dimension of this lack of trust in public institutions is the common theme in anti-wind development texts that there is a ‘done deal’ around the aggressive and widespread development of wind farms within the United Kingdom. That is, despite the official consultation and regulatory, planning and other measures in place to govern and manage wind farm development, the anti-wind energy position consistently seeks to question the integrity of those public institutions put in place to balance wind energy development against other interests, such as the views of local communities or environmental and economic considerations. A good example of this is Etherington’s 2006 pamphlet in which he draws attention to the UK rejecting the report of the 1994 Welsh Affairs Select Committee on Wind Energy. He writes, The Committee had advised that wind ‘farms’ should be sited neither within Designated Areas nor where they would be clearly visible from such areas. Government rejected that ‘general presumption” as it “would effectively preclude development from the greater part of Wales.” From that view has grown the feeling that the wind power industry can force wind turbines onto almost any part of Britain.21 Here, the wind energy industry is being portrayed as a powerful economic interest group that can unjustly subvert the ‘normal’ democratic and policy process in a way the anti-wind energy lobby cannot or could not. But allied to that is the more powerful rhetorical communication that the UK Government has already decided to push for wind energy development regardless of countervailing views and opinions. Thus the Government – in conjunction with the renewable energy industry – is portrayed as not acting in the public interest or as a neutral arbitrator balancing different interests and objectives, but as partial and biased and acting in particular not general interests and failing to adhere to proper procedures and democratic standards. As Etherington puts it, what is happening in the UK in relation to wind farm development is “the undemocratic overthrow of public opinion”.22 In this way, antiwind industry objectors portray themselves not simply as defenders of valued local environments but also as grassroots defenders of the democratic process. Language of War, Conflict and Defence Objector discourses also have recourse to the language of conflict, war and defence, reflective in part of the intensity of feeling around their opposition, but also evidence of a strategic deployment of an ‘us/them’ narrative, one of the most powerful of rhetorical modes. Phrases such as ‘Invasion of the windfarms’ are common in the texts reviewed, while other phrases expressing this discourse include ‘three armed invaders’ and ‘a phalanx of turbines’ and also need to see anti-wind farm opposition as a ‘battle against wind farms’.23 Allied to this the texts also articulate the need to ‘defend’ valued local environments and their associated land/economic uses – 21
Etherington 2006, 21. Emphasis added. Etherington 2006, 23. 23 Leake 2005. 22
particularly the local tourist industry which is often portrayed as threatened by wind farm development and therefore in need of defence and protection. Some of the anti-wind farm texts talk of ‘waging a war against turbines’ and aspects of this discourse sometimes shade into a quasi anti-colonial trope in terms of this local war and defence being waged against ‘outside’ and centralised (i.e. non-local) agents, interests and sometimes values. This is expressed not just in written form but also through the use of photomontages which portray wind farms or individual turbines as huge, threatening, ‘unnatural’ and out of place in scenically beautiful settings. The rhetorical device of ‘threat’ (though what constitutes the ‘threat’ is understood in different ways) is interesting in that it is pervasive in both objector and supporter discourses and its common usage can be explained by the fact that the identification of a ‘common threat’ both helps mobilise people and bring them together – the ‘us’ and ‘them’ rhetoric is common in the discourses of warfare, civil defence and conflict. Thus the deployment of the rhetoric of ‘threat’ and war is powerful and one of the most persuasive rhetorical moves that is employed in the public debate around wind energy. Indeed, one could go so far as to say that the use of a language of war, ‘us’ and ‘them’ etc is one of the most powerful (and increasingly common) discourses one can use in politics. One has only to think of the increasingly use of this security and war discourse in contemporary geopolitics and how it is used to persuade people to think in binary and simplistic terms of being either ‘with us or against us’, whether this is the US President talking about the ‘war on terror’ or the UK Prime Minister talking about the war and occupation in Iraq. In an increasingly risk and security conscious age (manufactured or real), there is real political benefit to be gained from presenting arguments and positions in terms of this security and conflict discourse, particularly if one can inflect it in terms of constructing the political context as one constituted by ‘friend and enemy’ as famously articulated by Carl Schmidt.24 It is also the case that, as indicated above, anti-wind energy positions also present themselves as defending democracy, often along populist lines of the ‘peoples’ democracy’ needing to be protected from the pervasive influence of non-elected, nonlocal corporate and bureaucratic elites and special business and environmental interest groups. In this way this aspect of the anti-wind energy discourse has elements which it shares with other populist anti-environmental rhetoric such as that found in the US ‘Wise Use’ movement25 or a ‘free market environmentalist’ position26, or indeed with the more progressive, left-wing environmental populism of the ‘environmental justice movement’27 that has effectively merged the discourse of civil rights with that of environmental protection.. Foreignness, Aliens and Anti-Colonial Rhetoric The rhetoric of ‘us’ and ‘them’ is also commonly seen in discourses of migration and colonialism and these are also strongly represented in debates around wind farms which portrays them alien and foreign. Examples include highlighting turbines as a ‘Danish invention’ transplanted to another and inappropriate place or the expression ‘they don’t belong or fit in here’. One interpretation is that wind farms are seen as 24
Schmidt 1996. Beder 1997. 26 Barry 2007. 27 Schlosberg 1999; Szasz 1994. 25
‘pollution’, in the sense that pollution is simply ‘matter out of place’. That is, if pollution is some substance or entity which is not in itself ‘bad’ or ‘wrong’ but as a consequence of it being placed in the ‘wrong’ place or site becomes ‘pollution’, it is possible to link the anti-wind farm discourses of ‘pollution’ and ‘foreignness’, which can act as an effective foil to being drawn into the debate of the virtues of renewable energy per se. In both the Cowley and Etherington texts, much is made of the ‘Danishness’ of wind turbines – the implication being that while it might be appropriate to Copenhagen, wind farms are not suitable for the UK sites chosen. At the same time, the anti-wind texts have a clear line of argument which suggests that the agenda for wind energy development is being pushed from above by global agreements such as the Kyoto protocol. In some texts there is also a nascent ‘anti-colonial discourse’ or sub-text, in the sense that aspects of the objector discourses deploy similar other rhetorical devices that are found in anti-colonial arguments. There is the clear drawing of firm boundaries between ‘us’ and ‘them’; the unwillingness or inability to concede anything positive about ‘them’; the classification of ‘them’ as coming from either some foreign land (Denmark) or from the ‘centre’ within the country (London or Belfast in the case of official government agencies and developers); the firm belief that the intentions of ‘them’ are malign and that these outside forces are intent on exploitation and expropriating the local environment and destroying the local community and its values. In the texts reviewed we find statements about Scotland being ‘cleared’ and sacrificed for energy users in South of England.28 In the case of the proposal for an off-shore wind farm off the Tunes Plateau in Northern Ireland, the local community is portrayed as rural, peripheral and being ‘sacrificed’ for central government or business interests.29 Taking the ‘us and them’ device beyond the foreign or colonial metaphor is the portrayal of wind farms and wind turbines as alien – that is not of this world – and something from science fiction. This can be seen in the quote from Jenkins above where wind turbines are presented as being ‘Like creatures from The War of the Worlds’. Other examples of this include McNeish’s similar claim that wind turbines were like ‘metal giants, like something from a HG Wells novel’ (presumably the same novel – The War of the Worlds). Thus not only are wind farms being presented as foreign (from another country) to their proposed location but also as something completely out of keeping with human comprehension (from another planet or future time), or even the global biosphere. Clearly, in the case of The War of the Worlds (rather than, for example ET), these aliens are imbibed with destructive intent. In this way, the technology of wind energy – specifically the size, shape and design of wind turbines – are presented as the ultimate ‘other’. Turbines are not just a malign and unwanted intrusion into a settled and (putative) harmonious balance between a local community and its environment, but incomprehensible and utterly out of appropriate human (never mind local) context. Industrialisation and Commercialisation of the Environment
28 29
Moriston Matters 2003; Vidal, 2004. Cowley 2002.
This anti-wind farm discourse depicts windfarms as destroying areas of beauty and tranquillity, turning the ‘rural’ or ‘wilderness’ into an outdoor industrial production plant for electricity generation. Here, in part, the emphasis is on undermining the notion of ‘farm’ which has rural, pastoral, ‘safe’ and ‘unthreatening’ connotations and in its place the projection of such developments as industrial factories. A good example of this is Etherington’s consistent placing of ‘farm’ in scare quotes throughout his pamphlet,30 drawing attention to and questioning the association of wind energy production with agricultural land use and associated rural practices, values and symbols. Haggett and Toke also note this rhetorical move to dissociate wind energy production from the values ands symbols of the rural through the use of ‘wind farm’. As they note, “A “farm” is an obvious and fitting part of the countryside. The term has connotation of working with nature, and of productivity. “Farms” will be a part of the rural landscape, not an alien imposition upon it”.31. Questioning the naming and status of renewable energy installation as ‘farms’ thus breaks the link between wind energy production and rurality and appropriateness as well as undermining its ‘green and clean’ image. This issue of the contestation over the narrative of ‘rurality’ (and associated discourses and conceptions of ‘nature’ and ‘naturalness’) and the ‘appropriateness’ of wind energy within a rural setting between pro and anti groups has also been highlighted by others.32 From this perspective of renewable energy as the industrialisation of the environment, windfarms are the 21st century version of William Blake’s description of factories as ‘dark satanic mills’ which were viewed by opponents to this early phase of industrialisation and the factory system as despoiling England’s ‘green and pleasant land’.33 It is clear that this aspect of the anti-wind energy discourse turns on presenting the local environment and community as an unspoilt, non-industrialised and non-urbanised ‘countryside’ bathed in tradition, and therefore, as countryside, effectively outside or beyond industrial society and its dynamics. As Rennie-Short puts it, “the countryside is seen as the last remnant of a golden age...the nostalgic past, providing a glimpse of a simpler, purer age...[a] refuge from modernity”.34 Such a positive-cum-romantic view of nature as refuge from (or saviour of) modernity and industrialisation is usually associated with ‘deep’ green perspectives such as those associated with the preservation of ‘wilderness’, deep ecology and bioregional or place-based articulations of ecological thinking and action. In part, such critiques of wind-energy development articulate romantic-based (which sometime shades into an environmentally-based) defences of the ‘rural’ and the ‘natural’ against the ‘industrial’ and ‘unnatural’. Again, much like the ‘us and them’ discourse of war and defence, the use of the rhetorical device of ‘natural-unnatural’ is equally powerful in terms of debate, argument and persuasion. As Soper (1995) has suggested in her authoritative study of the ideological and political uses (and abuses) 30
Etherington 2006. Haggett and Toke 2006, 117. 32 Woods 2003, 273. 33 Barry 2007. 34 Rennie-Short 1991, 31-34. An important issue in need of further research is to calculate the influence of second-home owners or members of local communities who have retired there (as opposed to being native to or working there), within anti-wind farm mobilisation and indeed other forms of ‘environmental’ protest. Anecdotal evidence suggests a disproportionate influence of ‘part-time’ and ‘second-home’ owners as pivotal actors in such disputes, ironically highlighting the romantic rural tradition, but not essentially being of it themselves. 31
of the concept of ‘nature’, the use of a natural/unnatural distinction or frame means that whatever if defined as ‘unnatural’ (such as wind turbines in this case) is effectively pejoratively and negatively described and normatively proscribed. A related discourse here is that not only do windfarms represent the industrialisation of local environments, but also the main benefits of this are private not public. This constitutes the commercialisation of the environment in that it is for private profit that windfarm development takes place. Drawing on further analogies with the early phase of industrialisation, there is a strong sense that what windfarm development represents is a form of ‘enclosure’ and ‘privatisation of the commons’. That is, the commercial aspect of windfarm development is viewed as the taking of what was once publicly owned and/or enjoyed into private ownership and control. A clear example of this is in John Vidal’s article ‘An Ill Wind’ noting that “Cameron McNeish, the president of the Ramblers Association in Scotland, says wind power is the biggest threat Scotland has faced since the Highland clearances”, or Cowley’s article which is keen to stress the profit motive of the wind farm developers as paramount and effectively crowding out any other possible environmental or sustainable development motive.35 The effect (or intention) of this presentation of wind farm development as the privatisation of the countryside is to portray those proposing or supporting wind energy development as motivated solely by commercial and pecuniary interests, leaving those opposing wind energy to occupy the high moral ground of environmental protection and concern for future generations and the preservation of valued traditional landscapes and associated modes of life. Thus, the rhetorical devices used by anti-wind energy positions deny or pre-empt the possibility that those proposing wind energy can be motivated by both profit-making and environmental/sustainability motives and that commercial viability can be compatible with environmental concern and sensitivity. In this binary presentation of the issue, the anti-wind farm position is similar to the early environmentalist position in the 1960s and 1970s which saw no possible compatibility or harmony between ‘economic growth’ and ‘environmental protection’.36 This opposition was overcome, rhetorically at least, with the emergence of the discourse of ‘sustainable development’ in the late 1980s, particularly when understood in a ‘triple bottom line’ sense, and the policy discourse of ‘ecological modernisation’ in the 1990s – both of which are discussed below. NIMBY rebuttal A final, strong narrative within discourses opposed to windfarm is the countering of the perception of objectors as expressing narrow and parochial concerns or that objection to wind energy is based on ignorance of the realities of climate change, energy security and the need to move to a low carbon economy. This shows awareness of how accusations of the populist ‘NIMBY’ concept37 can be extremely damaging to anti-development protests. The discourses of objection tend to be characterised by a self-understanding of objectors not as ‘ignorant locals’ or climate change deniers, though some such as Etherington and the group for whom he wrote the pamphlet, Country Guardian, do fall into the latter category.38 Those presenting the anti-wind energy position are keen not be regarded as motivated by self-interest, 35
Cowley 2002. Barry 1999. 37 However unfounded – see Wolsink 2006 and Ellis 2004. 38 Etherington 2006. 36
but are sceptical of ‘non-local forces’ (state and business) coming in and trying to pull the wool over their eyes with what they see as ‘PR stunts’ portrayed as consultations. Cowley expresses this explicitly in describing the ‘nice line in pedantry’ of the PR consultant representing the wind energy promoter which he views as being presented for ‘lesser mortals’ i.e. local people.39 This anti-wind discourse can be regarded as articulating what Plough and Krimsky’s (1987) term ‘cultural’ rationality to distinguish it from the ‘technical’ rationality of experts and expert knowledge. They understand technical rationality as a mind-set that stresses the centrality of empirical evidence, data gathering and the scientific method and it relies and defers to expert judgments in making policy decisions and recommendations. A typical example of technical rationality would be the standard ‘cost-benefit analysis’ used in many countries to inform decision-making from road building to investment in new technologies such as wind energy or biotechnology. ‘Cultural rationality’, in contrast, is orientated around the importance of personal, emotional and value-based experiences and modes of judgement rather than objective, impartial, technical and quantifiable calculations. As Fischer puts it, Cultural rationality can, in this respect, be understood as a form of rationality inherent to the social-life world. It is concerned with the impacts, intrusions, or implications of a particular event or phenomenon on the social relations that constitute that world. Such concerns are, in fact, the stuff upon which social and environmental movements are built.40 Central to cultural rationality is the standing of the person making the claim or judgement (Aristotle’s ethos), the values of the community in question and the valuebases of the positions that community, or its members, take (something most objective technical modes of decision-making do not take into account) and the integrity of those making the claim. Hence, the importance in this anti-wind energy discourse of the need for objectors to pre-empt their (mis)definition as ignorant locals with a NIMBY and selfish mindset. In keeping with the findings of other research,41 our findings here are consistent with this political and discursive need for anti-wind groups to avoid being portrayed as motivated by NIMBY concerns, since this would prove fatal their attempts to persuade others, whether government or the public, of the ‘rightness’ and ‘legitimacy’ of their case.42 Rather, their strategy as articulated in the texts surveyed is to make visible the (legitimate and important) values upon which objector discourses are based as well as revealing and undermining or questioning the values and interests of supporters of wind energy. This also is related to the strategic imperative to establish the moral ethos (in Aristotelian rhetorical terms) of the individuals or groups articulating an anti-wind farm position as of ‘good character’ and therefore motivated by ‘good (and universal rather than parochial) reasons’.
Supporter Discourse Themes
39
Cowley 2002. Fischer 2004, 91. Emphasis added. 41 Haggett and Toke 2006. 42 Wolsink 1994. 40
There are also a number of themes we can identify within the support discourses from the selected texts: The Assumption of and Imperative Towards Consensus There is a commonly used assumption of consensus/agreement within supporter discourses. This consensus both relates to the reality and threats of climate change and the urgent need for renewables as part of the transition towards a low-carbon economy. This discourse begins with an assumption of overwhelming agreement on need for wind power – hence a pro-development presumption that challenges its opponents, noted in the questions ‘Why Wind? Why Not?’ posed by the British Wind Energy Association,43 reflecting the presumption in favour of development that has traditionally underlain the British planning system.44 Further examples of a more dogmatic insistence on consensus include the DETI Northern Ireland report noting that wind energy as a ‘non-negotiable element of future energy use in Northern Ireland’ (Department of Enterprise Trade and Investment (Northern Ireland), 2001: 2; emphasis added), making it clear that there is no room for flexibility or dissensus on this issue. This presumption in favour of wind farms by government agencies and wind energy developers is based on the pressing need for them based on the irrefutable ‘facts’ and reality of climate change and energy security (as established by scientific expertise, such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, national UK government energy, climate change and sustainable development policies and commitments, and international agreements such as the Kyoto Protocol), which should ‘naturally’ lead to a consensus around their development. The position here within pro-wind discourses is that if and when people know the ‘full facts’ about climate change and energy they will come round to accepting the need for the rapid development of wind energy. The rhetorical move here is to present the anti-wind farm position as based on ignorance and/or intransigence. A typical example of this is Tony Juniper, director of Friends of the Earth UK, who argues that the organised opposition to wind energy in the UK is “parochial, short-sighted, selfish, peddling falsehoods and misconceptions”.45 This claim that opposition is based on lack of knowledge is a standard one in ‘public understanding of science’ type debates which for a long time was dominated by the simplistic idea that if only the people opposing the technological innovation or infrastructural development had the relevant knowledge (as given by experts) then their opposition would wither away.46 However, it is also one to be found in early green political discourse which was based in part, as Dobson points out, on the (naïve) assumption that if people were simply informed about the scientific reality of global and local ecological degradation then that was enough to motivate political action to stop it.47 Thus, there is a common theme here that consensus is the natural or expected outcome if only people were to make decisions based on full knowledge of 43
British Wind Energy Association 2004. Reade 1987. 45 Vidal 2004. 46 Wynne 1995. 47 Dobson 1995. 44
the facts. Or alternatively, when in possession of all the relevant knowledge and facts it is only ideological and irrational motives which prevents objectors from allowing the emergent consensus from emerging (which of course also has the advantage of precluding the pro-wind position as being ‘ideologically’ motivated). In short, aspects of the pro-wind energy discourse claim that objectors are simply ‘not getting with the programme’ and are a small, organised and vocal minority holding up progress on this pressing socio-ecological problem. Another aspect of this pro-wind discourse on consensus is the claim that no one community can ‘opt out’ of its energy/climate change obligations. As the Sustainable Development Commission report puts it, it is hard for any community to be considered exempt from ‘doing its bit’ to help decrease carbon emissions and help mitigate climate change.48 In some ways the framing of the issue in this manner explicitly makes those that object to wind farm developments as prima facie ‘free riders’ seeking to enjoy the benefits of any future renewable energy system without having to make any change or sacrifice which will be borne by others. This, of course, is the mirror opposite of the anti-wind position which portrays local communities and valued environments as being sacrificed and exploited by, and for the sake of, non-local interests and objectives. Rational, Knowledge-Based, Scientific Evidence Supporters of wind farms appeal to existing rational and scientific evidence bases to overcome or rebut objectors’ claims over the energy productive capacity, noise, economic viability, visual impact and negative house price impacts of wind farms49. In both official government and developer texts much effort is made to display the rigour of the process with which sites are chosen – inter alia, feasibility studies, environmental, social, economic and other impact assessments, statutory local community consultation, a robust regulatory framework and planning guidance.50 A key rhetorical effect of this is to establish the rational basis and framework upon which decisions are made. In contrast to the cool, objective ‘technical rationality’ upon which the pro-wind position is outlined, objector discourses are thus presented as not based on evidence and clear thinking, but rather are based on ideological and personal, local, selfish and NIMBY grounds51; or on ‘subjective’ grounds around which consensus and agreement is impossible using ‘fact-based’ arguments.52 The report from the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM) states that a better understanding of the technologies involved and of the planning policies and procedures which apply, is needed if the introduction of wind farms is to proceed smoothly.53 This is in keeping with the standard policy process which assumes the superiority of ‘technical rationality’, what Torgerson calls the ‘administrative mind’ and its ‘tragic seriousness’ and unilinear and non-creative modes of thinking, coupled
48
Sustainable Development Commission 2005, 52. This is predominant in supporter discourses, but not isolated to it, for example see Devine-Wright and Devine-Wright 2006, who assess the discursive exchange on the issue of intermittency and its impact on the efficiency of wind power. 50 B9, Powergen, RES, 2002; Sustainable Development Commission, 2005; chapters 5, 12. 51 Vidal 2004. 52 Sustainable Development Commission 2005, 60. 53 Office of the Deputy Prime Minister 2004.5. 49
with its overarching ‘knowledge –deficit’ model to understand and overcome public opposition to most policy innovations.54 A common discursive move made by pro-wind energy discourses is to insist that the context for discussing wind energy must be climate change and energy security of supply and that any objection to wind energy cannot do so without reference to this context. In this way, the pro-wind position seeks to set the discursive agenda as it were by insisting that objections to wind energy proposals must demonstrate awareness of climate change and energy security issues. Specifically, a common formulation used is to make the point that although wind farm development does involve landscape change, climate change will also dramatically affect the landscape. Examples of this include the Sustainable Development Commission’s report which states that, “Climate change will have a radical impact on our landscape, and wind developments must be viewed in this context”.55 In other words, it is not the case – as commonly presumed in anti-wind energy texts and positions – that the choice is between ‘no wind energy development equals no landscape change’ and ‘wind energy development equals landscape change’ but rather the inevitability of landscape change due to climate change and/or landscape change due to wind energy development. The implicit argument here is that the small landscape changes due to wind energy development can mitigate against large landscape changes due to climate change – in other words a small sacrifice for saving/preventing larger (and more harmful) changes. A related but different argument along these lines is can be found in Cowley’s antiwind article which notes that “B9 Energy’s PR consultant had a nice line in pedantry for lesser mortals saying all societies would have to strike a balance between ‘what is invisible and doing damage to our health our environment [climate change] and what is visible and doing us no harm whatsoever [wind energy]. The ‘no harm’ is debatable”.56 This linking of ‘visible-no harm’ and ‘invisible-harm’ is a common discursive move used in pro-wind arguments which at one and the same time acknowledges the visual impact of wind farm development but then moves to undermine the anti-wind position of linking ‘visible’ to ‘harm’ by pointing out that the invisible threat of climate change is more harmful to human communities and the environment. And key to this identification of invisible harm is of course science. Since we cannot ‘see’ future harms of climate change, it is science – specifically the climate change models and scenarios developed by the International Panel on Climate Change and others – which can render this invisible harm ‘visible’ through discursive communication. Unlike the ‘subjective’ value judgements of anti-wind arguments to do with aesthetic judgements around whether wind turbines ‘blend into’ or are a ‘blot on the landscape’ – which cannot admit of ‘fact-based’ agreement – the rational basis upon which pro-wind arguments are based are such that they can (indeed must) admit of agreement and consensus. Allied to this ‘rational’ basis of pro-wind farm positions is the claim that such rational and scientific, evidence-based modes of decision-making establishes the prima facie grounds for appropriate expertise to have an important input into, or indeed make, the final decision about the siting of wind farm developments. The report from the Office 54
Torgerson 2006. Sustainable Development Commission 2005, 52. 56 Cowley 2002. 55
of the Deputy Prime Minister is striking in this respect in the following statement under the heading of ‘Landscape and Visual Effects of Renewable Energy Developments’: The landscape and visual effects of particular renewable energy developments will vary on a case by case basis according to the type of development, its location and the landscape setting of the proposed development. Some of these effects may be minimised through appropriate siting, design and landscaping schemes, depending on the size and type of development proposed. Proposed developments should be assessed using objective descriptive material and analysis wherever possible even though the final decision on the visual and landscape effects will be, to some extent, one made by professional judgement. Policies in local development documents should address the minimisation of visual effects (e.g. on the siting, layout, landscaping, design and colour of schemes).57 While establishing the link between expertise and objective, scientific criteria and data, what is striking about this statement is that it also proposes that disagreements about visual and aesthetic aspects of wind energy siting are amenable to expert judgement. Thus, the ODPM report is effectively saying that even essentially subjective/taste-based disagreements can be decided objectively and therefore by experts rather than other more discursive processes of persuasion and argument in which lay citizens and experts are equally positioned. Of course, such pre-emptive closing down of discursive processes coupled with the explicit confidence (verging on arrogance) in the objective settlement of subjective aesthetic and value-based disagreements, only serves to ‘prove’ – from the anti-wind position – that the decision to proceed with wind energy development is a ‘done deal’ and therefore official talk of ‘community consultation’ is meaningless and a sham. This view that the existing planning system can incorporate and deal with aesthetic disagreements expressed by the ODPM report in many ways represents a ‘colonial’ discourse in the sense that the ‘technical rationality’ of the existing planning system is assumed to be capable of incorporating non-quantifiable, value-based judgements without recourse to discursive processes. This ultimately undermines the democratic character of the wind energy development process and reinforces the perception of the non- or antidemocratic nature of official government and wind developer support for the technology. Overcoming Opposition There is a split in the pro-wind texts on how they analyse opposition to wind farm development and how to engage in changing the minds of those who object. On the one hand there is a dominant discourse which holds that more knowledge about the need for and impacts of wind farms will persuade local opposition – suggesting that the basis for opposition is ignorance or a knowledge gap, which suitable information from government, wind developer and other expert sources will fill. A dimension of this discourse sees opposition to windfarms as ‘old-fashioned’ and/or a localised inability or unwillingness to ‘get with the programme’ regarding the need to develop
57
ODPM 2004, 13.
wind energy, hence the stress on ‘social learning’ needed by anti-wind groups and the public at large. On the other hand, while there is a shared preference in windfarm supporter positions for ‘win-win’ approaches to local community involvement and participation in decision-making, there was also a minor discourse (particularly evident in the Sustainable Development Commission Report) that recognised that this may not always be possible. This discourse holds that given the subjective nature of the strongest objections to windfarms (visual/aesthetic impact), it is not possible to make recourse to any ‘fact-based’ argument to settle the matter. As the report puts it, Out of all the issues surrounding wind power development, landscape and visual impact concerns are the only ones that are primarily subjective. As the effect cannot be measured or calculated and mitigation options are limited, it is unlikely that these issues can ever be resolved to everyone’s satisfaction. It therefore seems inevitable that some people will always be objectors to wind farms in rural locations, and as UK wind resources correlate strongly with remote and rural areas, disagreement is unavoidable.58 Therefore, there will have to be an acceptance of ‘dissensus’ and continued disagreement around their development in particular siting areas. This is related to another common narrative in pro-windfarm positions around the claim that local communities cannot exempt themselves from ‘doing their bit’ for national, global and future goals, objective and common interests, as indicated above. In some respects this is viewed in the selected texts as a form of ‘social learning’ for these communities now faced with the prospect of ‘hosting’ windfarms, given that the greatest potential for windfarm development in the UK is often in areas that have never had any large industrial presence or energy generating technology and hence explains the greater levels of resistance. However, this minor discourse, which could be labelled a ‘tough decisions’ position, is clear that while it understands and can explain local opposition, it should not be used as an excuse and suggests that aesthetic judgments alone cannot be used to prevent windfarms being developed. In this way the pro-wind discourse while seeing inclusive win-win approaches as superior and more desirable, there is a sub-discourse which is realistic enough to countenance that wind energy development will have to live with dissensus and that government should not be dissuaded by localised pockets of resistance (again with echoes of a rhetoric of war and conflict). Urgency and threat of Climate change and the Transition to a Low Carbon Economy A constant feature of all the supporter texts is the threat of energy insecurity and climate change and the limited economic window for the full competitive business opportunities flowing from wind energy development to accrue to the UK wind energy sector. The sense of urgency is developed through the common use of the argument that we need to act now in order to have any chance of making future benefits in terms of either mitigating climate change or achieving a competitive 58
Sustainable Development Commission 2005, 63. Emphasis added.
commercial advantage. In relation to the latter, the commercial and technological success of the Danish wind energy industry in not only providing over 20% of Denmark’s energy needs, but also in being the world leader in exporting wind turbine technology is commonly cited in pro-wind texts. In some of the official texts there is a view that there is a ‘small window of opportunity’ for UK to develop an international leadership position in wind energy and also to make the necessary infrastructural, economic and public opinion changes necessary for a smooth transition to a low carbon economy.59 While all supporter discourses of wind energy stress urgency and threats, it is particularly common to quote Chief Scientist David King’s view that climate change is a bigger threat than global terrorism.60 This of course connects this pro-wind discourse to the common usage of the language and symbols of war and conflict indicated above. However, in official texts there is no discernable sense of panic or crisis in regard to either the ‘problem’ (climate change and energy insecurity) or the ‘solution’ (rapid and widespread development of windfarms).61 The official discourse can be summarised as holding that ‘Climate change and energy insecurity are problems, but we’re working on it, know what we’re doing and while more needs to be done, we’re going in the right direction’. Thus the sense of urgency and threat identified is countered by a reassurance that the state and its agencies are addressing these threats and therefore protecting us all and our future. The Discourse of Ecological Modernisation In official texts and media coverage there is a clear ‘ecological modernisation’ framing of windfarm development. Climate change and energy insecurity are not simply threats but also business opportunities. For example, the ODPM report states that: Positive planning which facilitates renewable energy developments can contribute to…the maintenance of high and stable levels of economic growth and employment – through the creation of jobs directly related to renewable energy developments, but also in the development of new technologies. In rural areas, renewable energy projects have the potential to play an increasingly important role in the diversification of rural economies.62 Ecological modernisation essentially holds that the ‘old’ opposition between ‘environmental protection’ and ‘economic growth’ has been overcome, such that we can ‘de-couple’ energy and overall environmental impact from rising material standards of living and a competitive and expanding economy.63 Wind farm development is presented as an exciting and a central 21st century, modern, technological innovation that can help in the ‘greening’ of the economy as we shift away from fossil fuels. This commercial/economic dimension is of course explicit in the wind developer literature, since these are commercial entities seeking to make money from wind energy projects. 59
Office of the Deputy Prime Minister 2004; Sustainable Development Commission 2005. Sustainable Development Commission 2005; Vidal, 2004. 61 Sustainable Development Commission 2005; Vidal, 2004. 62 Office of the Deputy Prime Minster 2004, 6. 63 Barry 2005. 60
This economic aspect within some of the pro-wind texts is in contrast to an equal emphasis on energy efficiency and the need for energy reduction and management of energy consumption, which one finds in the Sustainable Development Commission report (SDC, 2005) and in the discourses of most environmental organisations on the energy issue. In contrast to this, the dominant discourse within many pro-wind texts stress wind energy as a supply-side and production-based policy that will not harm UK competitiveness or economic growth, indeed the opposite is held to be the case. This ‘ecological modernisation’ approach to wind energy development is consistent with the explicit adoption of ecological modernisation within UK sustainable development strategies from the New Labour government64 to the devolved administrations such as Northern Ireland.65 It is interesting to note that both the broadly pro-wind Sustainable Development Commission Report and texts and arguments from the anti-wind position both share a focus on the need to place wind energy production within the context of seeking energy reduction and efficiency and the overall context of reducing carbon emissions. For example, Etherington (from an anti-wind perspective) calculates that, “A dozen or two jumbo jets indeed emit more CO2 annually than the whole British wind power fleet saves!”66, thus intimating that if we want to cut CO2 emissions we should tackle air travel, instead of promoting wind power. The SDC report notes that, ‘Using less energy is one of the cheapest ways of reducing carbon emissions…The SDC believes that energy efficiency and the development of renewable energy go hand in hand…The benefits of energy efficiency are well known, yet too often opportunities are missed and investments are not made…We should certainly aim to reduce our energy consumption dramatically’.67 Pro-wind farm discourses stress the ‘continual improvements’ in design of turbines to minimise aesthetic, noise and other negative impacts and the dynamic improvements in the electricity generating capacity of wind turbines. This stress on innovation and design is a key feature of ecological modernisation discourse. The flexibility of wind energy in the decentralised energy infrastructure of the future and the potential to decommission wind farms at some future date68, unlike conventional fossil fuel or nuclear power stations, also stress the ecological modernisation elements of this prowind discourse. In contrast to the view of objectors that commercial profit-making is the real aim of windfarm development, supporter discourse tends to holds that the commercial exploitation and development of wind energy is a legitimate means (private profit making via technological innovation and government support) to a valued end (the public interest in security of energy supply, tackling the threat of climate change and benefiting future generations). Thus, this pro-wind discourse displays the value-basis for supporting windfarms – they are in the common good and based on a concern for future generations who are vulnerable to our decisions today. Wind farm development is portrayed as being not just about profit making but also about combating climate 64
Barry and Paterson 2004. Barry 2006. 66 Etherington 2006, 37. 67 Sustainable Development Commission 2005, 11, 38, 39. Emphasis added. 68 B9, Powergen, RES 2002. 65
change and the transition to ‘one planet living’. In this way, pro-wind arguments are presented as addressing the ‘triple bottom lines’ of sustainable development – namely meeting economic, environmental and social objectives. Thus, from this triple bottom line perspective, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with there being a commercial aspect to wind energy development in the way anti-wind energy arguments seem to suggest. Official texts highlight wind energy as a way of addressing geopolitical instability and conflict around securing energy supplies and a mechanism for securing energy for the most vulnerable in society.69 This is also consistent with the ‘triple bottom line’ discourse of sustainable development where windfarms are presented as making environmental (combats climate change), social (concern for both current and future generations) and economic sense (opportunities and ensures energy security).
Conclusions This rhetorical analysis of a selection of the published material produced by pro- and anti-wind farm development groups and interests in the UK contains some policy significant and interesting findings in terms of the social acceptability and democratic legitimacy of the transition to a low or post-carbon future. The texts analysed and the discourses revealed, demonstrate (as if such further demonstration were needed) that they key issue in terms of the technological transition to a renewable energy economy has little to do with the technology itself (though of course there is a discourse/debate between pro- and anti-wind energy positions regarding the security and quantity of electricity that wind can provide). Rather, what the analysis shows is that key is the public acceptability of wind energy, and that this cannot be taken for granted when wind energy moves from abstract or principled support (as evidenced in national surveys) to local implementation. At a methodological level, the analysis demonstrates the usefulness of adopting a post-positivist approach to the issue of wind farm conflicts in shifting the research terrain away from survey results towards examining the narratives and discourses of the pro and anti- wind energy positions. In short, a rhetorical analysis offers a more finely grained or explanatorily thicker description of the various positions and discourses held by protagonists in debates and conflicts about wind farm and wind energy. For example, the rhetorical analysis indicates that it is difficult to characterise (and therefore undermine and dismiss) objector positions, considered as a whole, as NIMBY-motivated, based on ignorance or climate change deniers. Or rather, if such descriptions/labels are to be used (by pro-wind positions), they also need to take into account the values and worldviews underlying the motivations of those who object to wind farm developments. In short, the texts need to be understood and engaged within their valued-based discursive context. Related to this is the clear evidence that each side knows the main arguments, sources of evidence/data of the other, with each side pre-empting possible common objections and often using similar or standard lines of argument or rebuttal. This level of ‘intimate awareness’ of the position of ‘the other’ is of course common in social conflict situations, and only offers further proof of the co-evolutionary character of the debate between the various pro and anti 69
Office of the Deputy Prime Minister 2004; Sustainable Development Commission 2005.
positions, in that one cannot really understand one discourse (pro or anti) without also understanding its relation to and discursive co-dependence on its opposite. Another conclusion is the acknowledgement and recognition of differences (often subtle, but nonetheless significant) within as well as between pro- and anti-wind farm positions. A rhetorical approach reveals that there are not two homogenous and undifferentiated discourses of ‘pro’ and ‘anti’ facing one another; but a (not unlimited) variety of pro- and a variety of anti- wind farm discourses, linked together in, and under, what may be termed as a ‘discursive coalition’.70 Part of this analysis identifying the differences within discursive positions also highlights the potential or actual areas of ‘common ground’ between the two positions, which of course is useful in terms of seeking ways to resolve such local siting conflicts. A more ‘realpolitik’ or strategic finding is that a close rhetorical examination of documents and texts will result in a deeper understanding of the position of the main protagonists. This can reveal not only the discursive strengths of particular discourses (for example, by highlighting the way in which particular discourses tap into the powerful mobilising discourse of ‘us and them’, or appeals to the powerful normative language of ‘justice and injustice’ for example), but also potential weakness. For example, the assumption or expectation that consensus and agreement will arise (expressed by pro-wind discourses) is discursively weak in the sense that a) it is based on a flawed assumption that the main reason for anti- positions is ignorance and lack of knowledge, - hence this discourse’s’ naïve correlation between information provision and agreement – and b) can verge on arrogance in terms of pre-emptively ruling out any negotiation – which or course serves to inflame rather than inform the debate. In this way the assumption, or confident expectation, of agreement and consensus is misplaced and actually puts the pro-wind position in a weak, not strong negotiating position. It is weak in that its dogmatic adherence to the ‘rational production’ of agreement to a pro-wind outcome actually disempowers it as a negotiating position, largely because it does not see itself as a ‘negotiating position’ at all. This self-perception makes it ‘unfit for purpose’ in relation to dealing with creating the conditions for ‘conflict resolution’ and compromise acceptable to all protagonists, since there is no compromise permissible or possible. Rather, this dogmatic/arrogant/inflexible pro-wind position is like the tree that does not bend in the wind (via compromise) and breaks (resulting in non-conflict resolution and perhaps conflict exacerbation). Equally, on the anti-wind side the failure of its many discourses to clearly and concretely outline the alternatives it proposes instead of the particular wind farm development (or wind energy in general) undermines this position being able to appeal to a wider audience. This failure also presents such antiwind groups with the dilemma of simply swapping a NIMBY label for one of ‘free rider’ in terms of not outlining clearly enough how and in what way they would ‘do their bit’ in shouldering the responsibility (and associated costs/sacrifices) for the collective effort of the transition to a post-carbon economy. A particularly important and potentially encouraging conclusion from this rhetorical analysis is the amount of agreement that already exists, the common normative/value bases and arguments, metaphors often used by the two sides. This shared/common ground gives some hope that with more open and discursive processes of bringing the 70
Szarka 2004.
two sides together (informed by the practices and experiences of ‘conflict resolution’ we would add) there is the potential for mutual learning (which as indicated above already goes on, but is more strategically driven) and arriving at compromise which is mutually acceptable to all sides. Central here is to see and enter into the debate with a view to compromise being the outcome – rather than (as is particularly evident in the pro-wind texts and discourses within them) a naïve or arrogant assumption of its view necessarily ‘winning’ the day, indicating some degree of flexibility and willingness to ‘trade’ some issues in return for equal trading from the other side etc. A conflict resolution approach accepts the legitimacy of pro and anti positions and moves in the direction of demanding each side to engage with the other on grounds of mutual respect and as co-equals, whereas as the analysis of the texts indicate there is a strong narrative of being the ‘underdog’ within anti-wind positions – thus making themselves out to occupy the moral high ground of the aggrieved/innocent ‘victim’, while pro-wind positions often present themselves as expert-based and therefore epistemically ‘superior’ to their opponents. Such crude positions do not capture the complexities and opportunities that can be created for negotiated compromise. Key here is ‘created’ since such opportunities do not and will not arise ‘naturally’ or sui generis given the level of generalised and particularised entrenchment of pro and anti positions. In keeping with others such as Wolsink71, central to a resolution to the conflict over wind farm in a manner which the social bottom line of sustainable development (understood as democratic legitimacy or social acceptance) is not scarified for the environmental and economic benefits of wind energy development demands a more deliberative decision-making process built on an honest recognition of differences not as pathologies which need to be eliminated but as healthy signs of a vibrant democracy seeking to find democratic ways to address problems faced by citizens who regardless of them holding pro- or anti- positions have a common and shared citizenship with unites them as prior to what divides them. And this shared citizenship is one shaped in part by shared sustainability considerations and the need for processes and social learning spaces aimed at common problem-solving, rather than seeking to ‘win’ the argument and ‘defeat’ their ‘opponents’.
71
Wolsink 2000.
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