“What we call the beginning is often the end/and to make an end is to make a beginning/the end is where we start from…”

T. S. Eliot hangover from little bird, listening (see blogs list) notwithstanding, set off from home (mum’s) this morning, down Penglais Hill to catch the train to Mach, but via Sara’s (film-maker) where I’m posting this and as always, having inspiring discussions.

Met some lovely CAT people (hello Cara if you’re reading this, having deciphered the whole snappy blog title wind-dash-mill thing!) on the train here last night, so hoping to catch them there again this morning.

I’ve been reading John Etherington (articulate anti-wind campaigner but fortunately also a climate change denier it seems, so easily dismissed) and George Monbiot and zerocarbonbritain interspersed chaper for chapter, attempting to get a balanced view (and to stop myself getting too demoralised). Of course some of the NIMBY arguments hold up and I’d be being wilfully ignorant if I thought onshore wind energy in itself was an uber-efficient panacea. The wind doesn’t blow all the time and it requires that we maintain at least some fossil fuel power plant (albeit with carbon capture) to ensure continuity of supply. But offshore turbines, high voltage DC power cables combined with other forms of renewables (tidal, solar) both here and elsewhere are still a substantial and laudable contributer to cutting our emissions.

But I’m trying not to get too caught up in the statistics. I wanted to get this all into my head then let it sit there while I walk it through/out of my system. I really want to be open to the fluctuations of opinion (my own and other people’s) I encounter en route. It’s as much a meditation on the changes (lifestyle, landscape) we might be prepared to make and accept as on the changes we might well encounter as a result of climate change. My intention is to carry a copy of Mark Lynas’s Six Degrees http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2007/apr/23/scienceandnature.climatechange and read one chapter each night. A degree’s change for each day walking, then a day to reflect.

Excited and nervous….