A shameful U-turn at the National Trust

What has happened to Dame Helen Ghosh? Last October the director-general of the National Trust seemed prepared to stand against the green orthodoxy which exists in the public and voluntary sectors. She declared that she had an ‘open mind’ on fracking, while she rejected the case for wind farms on the Trust’s land. Her approach was entirely logical. The Trust’s job is to guard the aesthetic integrity of the landscapes which it has bought with its donors’ money, or been gifted, in order to preserve. Not to deface this land with 300 ft-high wind turbines that generate pitifully little electricity.

This week, however, Dame Helen and the National Trust appear to have done a double backflip. She now says that she is absolutely opposed to fracking on Trust land, ‘because as far as possible we want to avoid anything that encourages continued use of fossil fuel’. At the same time, she has softened her stance on wind farms.