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Extracts from Ofcom Complaint, by Category: Misrepresentation of People’s Views

1. Extracts From Complete Transcript and Rebuttal

[Paul Driessen]

Let me make one thing perfectly clear: if we’re telling the third world that they can only have wind and solar power, what we are really telling them is: you cannot have electricity.

[Comment 133: So far as we are aware, no one is actually advocating this.]

(In breach of Ofcom 5.7)

[James Shikwati]

The challenge we have, when we meet western environmentalists who say we must engage in the use of solar panels and wind energy, is how we can have Africa industrialised; because I don’t see how a solar panel is going to power a steel industry – how a solar panel, you know is going to power, maybe, some railway train. It might work, maybe to power a small transistor radio.

[Comment 134: So far as we are aware, no one is actually advocating this either; and the above statement is also highly misleading, because there are low-carbon power generation technologies available now that can deliver enough power for large scale applications such as steel mills or trains. Some of these are: hydroelectric power, large scale wind farms (such as the offshore wind farms being installed in Denmark and now the UK); coal fired power plants with carbon capture and sequestration (although this is still being developed), nuclear power, and biomass.

In addition, in the tropics, photovoltaic solar panels can produce large amounts of electricity very efficiently. As already discussed, for rural villages photovoltaic solar generators are often far more efficient and cost-effective than a national grid; but in tropical and sub-tropical regions, photovoltaic panels can also form an efficient part of the supply mix used by a national grid – for example see Watt et al, 2006. Photovoltaics research and development in Australia, http://tinyurl.com/yttmoj.]

(In breach of Ofcom 5.7)

[Patrick Moore]	I think one of the most pernicious aspects of the modern environmental movement is this romanticisation of peasant life; and the idea that industrial societies are the destroyers of the world.
[James Shikwati]	One clear thing that emerges from the whole environmental debate is the point that there’s somebody keen to kill the “African Dream;” and the “African Dream” is to develop.

[Comment 135: See previous comments, especially Comment 123, page 104, [of the full complaint] – this statement is either extremely ill-informed or profoundly and intentionally misleading.]

(In breach of Ofcom 5.7)

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Comment 133: ‘Straw man’ claim about renewable energy and environmentalists / Comment 134: Misrepresentation of role of renewable energy in overall energy mix / Comment 135: Claim ‘that there’s somebody keen to kill the African dream’]


Page 32 of 50	Final Revision	Last updated: 11 Jun 2007