The first U.S. offshore wind farm, a giant project 5 miles/8 km off the Massachusetts coast, was approved on Wednesday after years of opposition involving everyone from local Indian tribes to the Kennedy family.Rich environmentalists love them wind farms, but only so long as they are located in barren hellscapes such as West Texas or on mountains without ski slopes where less-than-rich people live, such as the Poconos or off of Queens, NY. Let someone propose putting a wind farm where they will see it from their estates or their sailboats, however, and my oh my, how do they howl.
U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar gave the green light for the 130-turbine, 420-megawatt Cape Wind project in Horseshoe Shoal, Nantucket Sound, in what supporters considered a huge step forward for renewable energy in the United States.
President Obama could serve two terms and the 45th president could keep Salazar on and he still wouldn't be on the job long enough to see Cape Wind built.
I was dumbstruck when I first learned that the Kennedys were against it.
ReplyDeleteThen, I thought, give them the choice of a wind farm or a coal plant.
I never understood this. Wind farms are beautiful. I once sat on a hillside near Palm Springs for hours, just watching the turbines turn.
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