Despite windmills are scenic spots in Spain

Don Quixote is the most famous Spanish name in Japan. I’m sure the name is known even more than Penelope Cruz. Mind you, that doesn’t mean Japanese people have high cultural standards. Embarrassingly, most of us just recognize the name as the major discount store with more than 600 stores even only within Japan, and may not know it derives from the title of a classic novel. By the way, the discount store chain is very popular with foreign visitors to Japan. You should definitely check it out next time you come. Anyway, Don Quixote, the name of the man of La Manch comes up in my mind every time I see power-generating windmills increasing in number lately.

Do you have power-generating windmills around your residence? How do you like them? Do you like landscapes with many windmills standing tall? According to the annual report of the Energy Institute in 2023, the top five countries in the world ranking of wind power generation capacity are as follows:

1^st China

2^nd USA

3^rd Germany

4^th India

5^th Spain

When first seeing the ranking, I was surprised to see that the result roughly matched the world GDP ranking, except that Japan is out and Spain is in, but the Spain’s ranking sounds reasonable. There must have been many windmills in Spain from a long time ago, so many that Don Quixote wanted to attack.

Windmills: saving the earth but changing the scenery

Japan is still barely ranked in the 3rd or 4th in the world GDP ranking but is placed around 20th in wind power generation capacity according to the above report. Our country seems to be behind in this field. I’m not sure if that’s why, but power-generating windmills have been built one after another here in Hokkaido lately. As the number of windmills increases, a conflict of opinion has come to the surface: windmills protect the environment but spoil the scenery at the same time. Now, let me repeat the first question. Do you like landscapes with many windmills, though they may save the earth?

To tell the truth, I’m OK with landscapes with many windmills. It may be because I rarely see them. In most cases in Japan, power-generating windmills are built at the seaside where the wind blows stronger, and I live in the middle of Hokkaido, way far from the sea, surrounded by the mountains. Probably out of curiosity, I’m kind of excited to see huge windmills lined up along the coastline, but of course, I can understand some people may feel completely differently, like people who have lost familiar landscapes by those windmills.

The true place of humans in the nature

Having said that, I always felt something wrong with an often-said opinion against power-generating windmills. Some people criticize windmills saying natural landscapes are spoiled by artificial structures. I didn’t know clearly why that was, but I felt something like human arrogance in such opinions. Recently I came across an essay that well expressed why I felt like that.

It’s an essay written long ago by Stanisław Herman Lem, who is often referred to as one of the best sci-fi writers in the 20th century. In summary, he wrote like this: “If finding an anthill in the field, most of us will just regard it as a natural structure, while we call our houses artificial structures. This is because we believe we are something beyond nature.” I didn’t mean to use his words as an excuse to destroy the environment, but don’t you think you can become a little more tolerant of power-generating windmills?

As I wrote sometimes before, we plant trees every year. It has been generally seen as an environmentally friendly activity. Nevertheless, I sometimes wavered about if it was a right thing to do or not because the wood species that we’ve planted is always oak only. Primary forests consist of multiple wood species, and so, our tree planting wouldn’t contribute to restoration of really natural forests. This idea sometimes made me waver, but the essay made me realize that I had forgotten that we, in the first place, were a part of nature.

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