The chairman of the Energy and Climate Change Committee in England’s House of Commons wants to bribe UK residents into accepting wind turbines in their communities, reports The Telegraph. Tim Yeo thinks that by directly offering financial incentives to residents, it will be easier to build the additional wind turbines necessary to meet the Committee’s goal of doubling wind generation capacity by the year 2020.
Mr. Yeo doesn’t believe that residents have been given enough information to positively support additional wind farms and also that they haven’t seen much benefit from them the ones already installed.
“[What] we have to do is work harder to find places where wind farms are acceptable but also, secondly, as this is what we’re not yet doing, be more creative about sharing some of the benefits directly with those local communities,” Yeo said. With utter candor normally reserved for those outside of politics, he added that “frankly, we need to be prepared to bribe them.”
While some Conservative Members of Parliament are opposed to new wind turbines and have considered cutting the subsidies available to companies which build them, the party has laid out plans to offer local communities some of the tax revenues derived from the construction of new turbines. The British Government has said it will enact those plans, but Liberal MPs say the Conservatives are doing it for political reasons rather than on principle.
What do you think? Would you accept “bribes”, as Mr. Yeo called them, from the government in order for them to be allowed to build wind turbines or wind farms near your home or neighborhood?
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