In the debate over how best to respond to the challenge of climate change, the environment and economic growth are often cast as in perpetual conflict. At first glance, Coul Links, some 350 hectares of sand dunes and their deserted hinterland on the Sutherland coast in the far north-east of Scotland, seems an unlikely place for that conflict to be playing out publicly.
In this beach-fringed wilderness currently covered in pink rosebay willowherb, cream-coloured meadowsweet, spindly birch trees and great clumps of coconut-scented gorse, the only inhabitants to be glimpsed are the occasional rabbit or deer. Yet a proposal to build an eco-friendly golf course here has inflamed passions in the tight-knit community that surrounds the links.
