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Is ‘naturalness’ worth preserving?
From John Clare country to ancient fenland, Ed Miliband’s solar farm approvals risk industrialising precious rural spaces — we must find greener solutions that don’t sacrifice our countryside’s beauty, writes DAVE BANGS

AS I stood on the top of Mount Caburn, a chalk promontory of the South Downs, and looked east, I could see, stretching for many miles, the landscape that has been created over 140 million years. Scarps and combes, floodplains, ridges and rivers.

I could “read” this sleeping giant of a landscape and its deep-time story in all its natural detail, under its soft blanket of woods, pastures, crops, and villages.

I could picture the immense tectonic heavings that had thrust up the Wealden Dome, and I could see the Ice Age torrents, freezings and meltings that had eroded the chalks, clays, and sandstones back to their current forms.

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