– selfish Shetland

Each day I wake up angrier.

In just one year the Viking Wind Farm (103 of the largest wind turbines) has devastated a vast chunk of the main island’s ecology. Very soon, at nearby Sullom Voe, already home to the largest oil & gas terminal in the UK, millions of tonnes of CO2 are going to be stored too, a chemical so deadly that if any were to escape it could wipe out not just all life in Shetland but most of Scotland too. In Unst, the most northerly of the populated islands, a rocket launching facility is preparing to start operations, despite a recent explosion at a similar facility in Japan. While in Lerwick (the only real town here), already ruined by a blight of industrial estates and housing that sprawl further and further outwards (despite no significant increase in population), preparations are underway to expand the harbour further into the sea, just so more poisoned and radioactive fish can be landed. The decision to allow this pointless development, which is rapidly turning the archipelago into a wasteland, has been made without any proper consultation, by Shetland Islands Council. A very select and secretive organisation.

If you’ve been following my blogs this will not come as a surprise. I doubt there is anywhere left in the UK where the diverse and rich natural landscape and oceans haven’t been sacrificed for greed or just plain human selfishness. What gets me is the sheer scale of it at the moment. Since the oil & gas arrived in the 1970s there has been more devastation to the ecology in Shetland than all its previous settled 6,000 years added together. What’s even crazier, if you ask the majority of Shetlanders (anyone who lives here permanently) what they think of this, they will generally reply it’s for the good for the economy, that we desperately need the jobs and investment. This, despite already being a lot wealthier and luckier (to live here) than most people on the planet. They really have no idea how selfish they have become.

This same ignorance permeates the SIC. For them it’s all about money. Respect, or even an interest in what these developments are doing to the planet, doesn’t factor into their decision making. In fact I doubt there is anyone in SIC who is aware there are any environmental consequences. At the same time crofting, traditional small-scale subsistence agriculture, is fast disappearing as a handful of the wealthiest Shetlanders buy up as much land as they can. Turning it into vast intensive farms. The effect of which has already meant adding artificial inputs, so degraded has the land become with overstocking, and those chemicals are finding their way into the water table and sea. Fishing has gone the same way. The small family-owned boats, which were used to supplement a crofting diet, have been replaced by vast trawlers that cost millions, out at sea for months, their catch now destined for markets elsewhere. If there is any land left untouched, that is quickly snapped up for (unnecessary) house building.

I can understand why all this is happening. Our education system has never felt the need to teach children how the planet really works, especially the need for us to live in harmony with it, by acting sustainably. Even in the universities there is still no single department for what has to be the most important of subject of all. The media (and lately even the internet) are no better. To believe them you’d think money (the making and spending of it) and having children at a time when the species is already far too large, are the only thing that matters. A very strange way to behave for a supposedly advanced civilisation. I’d imagine anyone studying us from afar would be convinced we were in the grip of an evangelical religion.

However, even with all this ignorance (or is it a deliberate cover-up?), I still find it hard to believe people can’t know what happens when they spend money, how it affects not just other people but billions of other species.

As you know, I lived in Spain before moving here in 2019. In areas just like Shetland, remote and with the same tightly-knit communities, but where there were still people living in a very simple and sustainable way, based on land that had been passed down over generations. But it is fast disappearing. Local councils are also getting addicted to making money. In the last place I lived, a remote region of Andalucia, they have done this by leasing the mining rights to global multinationals. Who, without public consultation (or any respect for the other species), have proceeded to excavate deep open-cast pits. To give you an idea of the scale of this, they are so large they can be seen from space. Trucks the size of houses are required to bring up the raw material, which is then washed in massive lakes using highly-toxic chemicals to remove the valuable metals. These are then driven 150kms on public roads to the port of Huelva, bound for China. This happens 24/7. They need to work around the clock (just like the Viking Wind Farm) in order to make as much money as possible before the Stock Market changes. Then they disappear (just like the owners of the Viking Wind Farm no doubt), leaving all this devastation. The majority of the people are now unemployed. The mines and all the surrounding land is poisoned. But in many cases all the councils do about it is let other multinational companies come and fill the empty mines with yet more toxic waste (in particular radioactive), from other richer countries. Making the council a profit twice over, but no-one else benefiting. Then it is left to Nature to repair the damage.

This obsession with making money is a relatively new one. I can clearly remember a time, not that long ago, when most people had a lot less to spend than they do now, and there were a lot less people too, if we needed (as opposed to wanted) something, then it would probably be made locally or at least somewhere else in the UK. Today everyone has far more than they actually need, and of course there are far more people. With the effect that those in other countries, the ones making the things people in the UK now want, are suffering. How selfish is that?

What triggered me to write this was the news of the latest pointless development. To build tunnels between four of the islands, just so a handful of people can get to Lerwick whenever they fancy. Until now, if you grew up on one of these islands, or had chosen to move there as an incomer, you took it for granted that getting off would involve a ferry trip. That’s what made them unique. But not for much longer. Even though it is pure madness to spend millions, probably billions by the time they are finished, destroying so much ecology, both here and elsewhere, for something that will actually benefit no-one really, the marketing campaign (by SIC, the political parties, and construction companies) has whipped everyone up so much they can’t imagine a life without them.

It will destroy the surrounding ecology permanently, just as all the other projects have. It will also do the same elsewhere. All the materials (millions of tons of concrete for starters, not to mention steel), and all the equipment to build them, have to come from somewhere, from places just like Andalucia. And when they are built the islanders and tourists, as well as the rocket launching facility (no surprise they are behind this too) will want to make more trips back and forth, because they can. House prices will rise. Then, surprise surprise, the unique culture of each island will disappear, they will become just as ugly and troubled as Lerwick is. Just because SIC and big business want to make quick money building them, no other reason.

Meanwhile, as I try to get used to looking at wind turbines instead of wild Nature, most (though thankfully not all) Shetlanders would rather turn out for the current four-day party organised by SIC in the name of the Tall Ships Races (strangely, that’s exactly what they do in Andalucia, when something bad happens, the Council throws a party), raise money for local charities, or fly the flag for the people of the Ukraine. But when it comes to other species, or the people whose lives permanently destroyed by their spending, they sadly don’t give a damn.

I despair. That humanity, especially in a place like Shetland (renowned for its sense of community), has become so selfish. I thought that being so far away from the madness in Holyrood and Westminster, and proud of their self-sufficient heritage, they would do anything to preserve it. Obviously not. Money has become more important.

As a species we deserve to become extinct.

*

If you would like to be notified when a new post appears, simply add your email in the box below and click Subscribe.