READING yet another attack on wind turbines (Letters, July 26), it is difficult to remember that they were once seen as so progressive and desirable that even supermarkets offered them for sale.

They have become today’s popular hate object of choice, having taken over from telephone masts with their death-dealing microwaves, and before that from nuclear power generation.

It is probably true that there are more efficient environmentally friendly ways of generating electricity; using daylight, for example, which is inevitably more constant than wind and involves no moving parts.

However, whether covering square kilometres of farm or parkland with arrays of photo-voltaic cells, as has been done in Spain, would be more acceptable than wind farms to local communities in this country is very doubtful.

We have face the fact that if we truly desire the ends, the decarbonisation of power generation, we have to accept the means.

Maurice Vassie, Deighton, York.