Leaders lead, others obstruct

How can The Cape Cod Times reconcile its lack of support with the choices before us?

By George M. Woodwell

Renewables at any cost?
Wind farm is not a battle between those who support alternative energy and those who don't.
   Like-minded people don't always agree, but it's nonetheless discomfiting when an issue of such significance as the proposed wind farm drives a wedge between old friends and allies.
   For instance, those of us who oppose the industrialization of Nantucket Sound have long respected and admired the work of George Woodwell, director of the Woods Hole Research Center, and John DeVillars, former regional director of the EPA.
   Woodwell and DeVillars support the wind farm, arguing primarily that global warming demands the urgent development of renewable energy projects.
   But this is not a battle between those who support renewable energy and those who do not. It's more a battle between those who want to develop renewable energy at any cost and those who want to develop renewable energy within the context of a comprehensive national plan.
   Of course this nation needs renewable energy; it's just a question of how it's developed. In supporting the wind farm, DeVillars wrote, "I agree with the opponents that the current process for siting offshore wind farms is flawed.
   It borders on the shameful that we do not have the public leadership that puts the government in the driver's seat in selecting offshore energy sites and establishing cogent and transparent processes and rules for determining who can build where. "The residents of New England as well as Cape Wind and other developers would be better served if there were a proactive effort to determine what portions of our ocean waters should be zoned for these purposes. "But Cape Wind has played by the rules and it seems extraordinarily unfair to hold them hostage to a process that, while putting the cart before the horse, nevertheless allows for a robust and thorough analysis to determine the project's merits."
   In other words, DeVillars is willing to allow a development of this magnitude to proceed even though he realizes the process is flawed. Why can't we as a nation get it right before we allow the first offshore wind farm - a huge development - to forever change the nature of Nantucket Sound, a national treasure?
   DeVillars has also argued in favor of the wind farm on the grounds of environmental justice. "I am more concerned about what the people in Somerset and Salem and other communities that are host to coal-burning power plants face every day than I am to the addition of windmills in Nantucket Sound."
   Has DeVillars forgotten that Cape Cod hosts one of the state's "Dirty Five" power plants - the Canal power station? Has he forgotten that Cape Cod lives in the shadow of the Pilgrim nuclear power plant? Once again, the Cape is seen by outsiders as a playground of the rich, but we have more than carried our burden of industrial pollution.
   Environmental justice, Mr. DeVillars? How could you have forgotten the legacy of the Massachusetts Military Reservation, where billions of gallons of our sole-source aquifer have been contaminated by the military. Environmentalists like DeVillars and Woodwell must reconcile their views about the clear need for offshore wind farms with the absolute need for them to be developed in the right way, in the right place and within the right regulatory framework.
     (Published: April 18, 2005)

In “Renewables At Any Cost?”  (in box on right), The Cape Cod Times persists in its editorial opposition to the wind farm in Nantucket Sound, urging me to reconcile my views about the need for this wind farm with the need for the “right regulatory framework” in which to develop a comprehensive national plan.

We residents of Cape Cod share with the rest of the world a crisis of environment and energy. The wind farm project is a very important example of what can be done in developing local sources of energy. It will take local measures meeting with success to give the foundation on which a national plan can be built.

This is our opportunity.

This project is not proceeding without vetting or without regulation. The long delayed 4,000-page Draft Environmental Impact Statement is far in excess of what is required and quite carefully shows that there are no significant environmental effects.

Where the wind is

The wind farm is as large as proposed because it has to be large to be viable. It has to be in Nantucket Sound because that is where the wind is. It cannot be on land because there is not space or reliable wind. It cannot be off shore because the water is too deep and the stormy seas too large.

The further delays now being introduced are a serious obstruction to the wind farm, increasing the expense and the overall financial and environmental cost to the public. Worse, the delays obstruct the actual displacement of fossil fuels, and deny us all the clear and necessary evidence that we can make progress on an inevitable shift to renewable energy.

Leaders lead. Others obstruct

Currently, on the national scale, the United State is doing serious harm by denying global environmental changes that have the potential for eroding -- even possibly ending -- this civilization in our own times. We seem firmly committed to precipitating the crisis by pouring money for oil into the very interests cultivating terrorism.

Due to a gross failure to continue policies recognized as necessary in the Carter administration, implemented, and then scorned by subsequent administrations and abandoned, we are now faced with the consequences, a nation heavily dependent on foreign sources of oil for energy, and a crushing climatic crisis of overwhelming proportions.

Here is a cure now, a rapid transition to renewable energy under circumstances that offer us less and less choice. By supporting the wind farm, and its steps towards broader use of renewable energies, our choices create the basis for comprehensive national planning.

We, then, are leaders by example.

How, then, can The Cape Cod Times reconcile its lack of support with the choices before us?

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George M. Woodwell is the founder and director of The Woods Hole Research Center, an independent research institution dedicated to science, policy and education for a habitable earth. He is the 2001 recipient of the Volvo Environment Prize. gmwoodwell@whrc.org For more information, contact: Elizabeth Braun Associate Director of Communications ebraun@whrc.org 508.548.9375, x.109