Democratic deficit
Shetland’s association of community councils (ASCC) organised a meeting to present powerful arguments in favour of a moratorium on energy developments in Shetland, in common with many communities across Scotland and further afield.
Hannah Goodlad and Alistair Carmichael, Shetland’s parliamentary representatives at Holyrood and Westminster respectively, rejected the powerful arguments presented as, in their view, they weren’t “Shetland-centric” enough, whatever that’s supposed to mean.
Politicians stop short of backing energy moratorium and call for Shetland specific plan
I wonder if Ms Goodlad and Mr Carmichael are familiar with the concepts of representative democracy and democratic deficit?
The contention around “renewable” energy development in Shetland, Scotland, and further afield, centres on who, if anyone, has a legitimate right to exploit natural capital, and on any contentious negative causal sequence resulting from that exploitation.
In Shetland’s case, the natural capital in question is wind, and to assert that any state, locality, or person has any greater legitimate right over any other to exploit it is utterly ridiculous.
In Shetland’s case, in common with many others further afield, the contentious negative causal sequence resulting from exploitation of wind is the intrusive and destructive infrastructure required to generate, transmit, store, and distribute any electricity that might be generated from wind.
Remote and anonymous transnationals presently own the required ineffective and inefficient infrastructure, and are the only bodies to profit from it.
Political parties and their representatives are evidently in thrall to those transnationals, to the detriment of the communities they have been elected to serve.
Hopefully, the admirable work done by ASCC and Sustainable Shetland and others in attempting to highlight the many negative aspects of “renewable” energy developments in Shetland will continue, and they’ll remain undeterred by the moral cowardice demonstrated by the parliamentary representatives who attended the meeting on Saturday 22 August 2026, a date that should be marked in historical records.
Leslie Sinclair
Kirkwall
Orkney
