8. The Cambrian Mountains are designated an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. To my eye, these parts are among the most dismal landscapes in Europe. But when we tell ourselves something often enough, we start to believe it.
@GeorgeMonbiot The trouble is, these landscapes have been barren for so long we've come to think of their state as "natural beauty" when it's anything but.
@GeorgeMonbiot It isn't an AoNB - but should be
@GeorgeMonbiot Why does your eye matter more than those who designate AONBs?
@GeorgeMonbiot There's a real beauty in the bleak plateau. Taking a hike out to cerrigllwydion lakes to see far more golden plovers than humans is unbeatable. Imo.
@GeorgeMonbiot I've seen the argument employed that attempts at reforestation will ruin peoples veiw of the open landscape. Utterly selfish!
@GeorgeMonbiot There is room for a more mixed landscape, temperature rainforest of the type that already exists in and around Dolgellau, for instance and grazed upland, heathland, big etc
@GeorgeMonbiot When we happened upon it I felt acute anxiety, almost physical sickness, at the sight of that biological desert I could not wait to be out and so welcomed the arrival of a few trees once we reached the edge...
@GeorgeMonbiot I just see a dead landscape when people say how beautiful it is, it's barely alive and the wild life has all but gone.
@GeorgeMonbiot I walked them many times as a kid, it's bleak up there. The problem is we put a far higher value on beauty than we should, you would think in this time where the world is pretty-much burning around us, compromise for the betterment of the world would prevail.
@GeorgeMonbiot The Pennines next to where I live is just the same. The biggest attraction in that area is a huge waterfall called high force. The waterfall is surrounded by woodland and it sticks out like a sore thumb an oasis in the middle of a grass desert. https://www.hikingphotographer...
@GeorgeMonbiot The eye of the beholder!?
@GeorgeMonbiot how true. have a feeling of anger and desperation anytime any treeless landscape is so blithely pronounced "beautiful" or "a wonder of nature".
@GeorgeMonbiot Shifting baseline syndrome
@GeorgeMonbiot This bit of your analysis is not right George.
@GeorgeMonbiot Where's the beauty in a dead land???