I’ve previously written about High Speed Rail here. There is an article in the Guardian here and a leader in the Independent here. One thing that only the Guardian has mentioned so far is the potential impact on the environment.
It’s suggested that various “green” groups will lodge “protests” on the Government’s consultation over HS2, available here. What they won’t argue however, is that very little of the British landscape is “natural”.
For hundreds of years we have built roads and railways across this landscape, built huge airports and car parks (shopping centres), expanded our towns and cities across floodplains because it’s cheaper to build on “flat” land and for thousands of years, we have farmed the countryside. We’ve cut down forests for construction and fuel, we’ve planted crops and reared animals.
All these activities have changed our landscape so that it is no longer “natural”, it is “manufactured”. So to all those people who want to protect our “natural” countryside, have you actually taken all this into account?
