President John F Kennedy said: "Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.”

It would be fair to say that most of us don’t like change. Yet over the years things we have witnessed we have even come to accept.

It has happened locally. On our doorstep, shipyards spoiled the natural beauty of the River Clyde. Textile factories sprang up on the Leven’s banks with their belching smoke stacks and changed our lovely valley.

Railways, motor cars, airplanes brought a change that was both positive and negative - but it would be difficult to envisage our world today without them.

The proposed Vale of Leven Windfarm is causing some angst.

The landscape will change. Someone suggested that "the destructive impact would be out of all proportion to any possible potential benefit to our community or indeed our wider need for renewable energy", and that the contribution to renewable energy “would be minuscule”.

Providing enough energy to power 52,000 homes is hardly minuscule. But even conceding that, it could be seen as a step in the right direction.

Another opposition quote said: "The aesthetic cost to a precious, world-renowned landscape far outweighs any benefit that it might bring."

Who makes that value judgement? It will be sited on Braes of Bonhill. That is the landscape. Having been a resident of Bonhill for 37 years of the 49 years I have lived here and loved the place, I would be hard pushed to describe it as “world renowned".

A threat to the landscape? The biggest threat to that landscape was the building of almost 1,900 houses some years ago. But it gave homes to thousands and thousands of families.

The positives of that building work by far dwarfed the negatives. And it seems to me that when we consider this development we may well come to the same conclusion.

Anything I have read seems to suggest a consensus indicating that wind farms are one of the most viable renewable energy options, and that they could generate a significant proportion of our electricity needs, create local employment and don’t produce any emissions.

It might be good if the green fields were to remain untouched. But for the benefit to the Vale, to Scotland and to the planet, I sincerely think it’s a price we should be paying.