My Hopes for 2008

2007 was the year the world woke up to the reality of climate change. It was the year in which an un-arguable consensus emerged - that climate change is real, requires urgent action if we're to keep the planet habitable, AND will be cheaper to deal with than to ignore.

So I hope that this year will be the year that something actually gets done about it. We need to take some pretty bold steps to fight climate change and at the forefront of that is the need to build wind turbines in every region of the country. Because the way we make conventional electricity is the single biggest cause of climate change in our country today and changing that has to be our top priority.

This should be the year we dispel the notion that turbines ruin the landscape (who really believes that?), the year that we acknowledge there is no status quo to be preserved - the world we live in will either be changed radically by climate change or by the sight of windmills – shouldn't be a hard choice really. Here in Gloucestershire we've already had a taste of what climate change means through the widespread flooding of last year.

Climate change can't be prevented with words, it needs deeds. It's time the planners stood up to the NIMBY minorities and allowed real steps to be taken. Time that the planning process recognised both the urgent need and the majority support for wind energy. Maybe it's time we all spoke up.

Dale Vince - Ecotricity