DAVID ATTENBOROUGH

Few people can be more alert to the progress and perils of climate change than David Attenborough.

Well, this is what he said after visiting the site of a windfarm application in Sussex (Times Online, 26 February 2008):

"Having visited the proposed site, I noticed that it is close to a place where not long ago, a windmill once stood. I suspect that were that windmill still in existence, many of us would regard it as a welcome feature in the essentially domesticated Sussex landscape and would speak passionately in favour of its protection. That, surely, is because most of us have a care and affection for the past. I certainly have.

"But I also have a care and affection for the future. A wind turbine, with its graceful lines, collecting energy from the environment without causing any material damage, is a marvellous demonstration of the way we can minimise our pollution of the atmosphere, if we wish to do so. It would help protect not only the countryside we have known for centuries but also the wider world beyond."

Can you feel that?

That's a breath of fresh air, a few measured words of common sense.

VVASP once claimed that Lenchwick Windfarm would 'kill the Vale countryside'. But David Attenborough recognises that such windfarms are a way to 'protect not only the countryside ... but also the wider world beyond.'

Whose view do you reckon is the more impartial, the more reliable? David Attenborough, who has spent a lifetime studying the natural world, or VVASP, who haven't?