If we would watch the sunrise we should go on burning oil.
I don’t know about you, but I can’t resist mentioning a news item from today’s Times on my Blog. You may have been reading of the long controversy (going on for nine years now) over Cape Wind, on Cape Cod in Massachusetts. The plan is still after all these years to place 130 wind turbines in Nantucket Sound, about five miles from the shoreline, with blades reaching as high as 440 feet above sea level and covering some 24 square miles, an area nearly the size of Paris where I am currently living.
Well today the federal government gave the green light to this project, that which, if all goes through as planned, will become the nation’s first offshore wind farm. And this one will make it easier for others to follow, although mostly on the Atlantic coast where the waters are shallower and the costs are not prohibitive.
Of course and in spite of the government’s action the controversy over the wind farm remains. And the project will certainly encounter further blows before being realized.
But the reaction on the part of the Wampanoag Indian tribe deserves special mention. As I read what their spokesperson had to say I almost blessed the controversy that could bring this out in the open. And I smiled, laughed to myself, and was just happy to be a witness to all of it.
Here is what brought the smiles:
“The coastal Wampanoag tribe, which requires unobstructed views of the sunrise for sacred ceremonies, said Monday that it was preparing to challenge the project for violations of tribal rights. Andra Parker, president and chief executive of the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, added:
‘We will not stand by and allow our treasured public lands to be marred forever by a corporate giveaway to private industrial energy developers.’”
Actually Senator Kennedy a resident of the same Nantucket shore line was right there on the side of the Wampanoags. Although he never mentioned that his view of the sunrise from the Kennedy compound was obstructed I’m sure he felt that way. He chose to be safe and to say only that the whole project was a giveaway to a private developer.
Don’t you like it? Alternative energy sources, those things that might some day free us from our dependency on Arab oil, are out because they would block our view of the sunrise.
