It came as a breath of fresh air to read that the federal government has given its green light to a huge wind turbine farm off the coast of Cape Cod. It will consist of 130 turbines, down from 170, and occupy an area of about 25 square miles in Nantucket Sound.
Although we are far behind China and Europe, which have had the foresight to recognize the need for renewable sources of energy — not to mention the jobs it produces — and although we will still have the concerns relevant to its impact on fishing, boating, birds, scenic views, etc., at least we have gotten started.
We have been raping our planet and living off the limited remnants of the dinosaurs and prehistoric vegetation for all these years. We drain irreplaceable oil, we rip apart our hills and mountains and burrow for coal beneath the ground, even under the most adverse conditions. We have made fossil fuel our primary source from which to derive our energy.
As a bonus, we get to inhale the toxic fumes. It is time to cease our Neanderthal mentality. We have managed to wean ourselves off whale oil lanterns taken from those ever-endangered beautiful mammals. Perhaps we can do the same to save our ever-endangered beautiful planet.
In only the last few weeks we have been offered several wake-up calls.
In Montcoal, W. Va., 25 died in a mining explosion at the Massey Energy Co., its chairman and CEO, Don L. Blankenship, having received far more violations than any other operation only to have them ignored. He chose rather to pay the relative pittance of a fine. Disgusting! He is also a director of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Then there is the disastrous BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, by some estimates spewing up to 210,000 gallons of crude oil per day. Following Transocean’s oil rig explosion and collapse April 20, 11 workers were killed. The oil slick has now reached Louisiana. Hopefully, this sort of inevitable disaster will return common sense to President Barack Obama and his decision to open areas to off-shore drilling.
It is encouraging but not surprising that Greenpeace is in favor of the turbine farm and advocates more of them — a brave and noble champion of the people. But when the Chamber of Commerce also sanctions it, I worry.
That this despicable, blatantly partisan lobbying machine representing big oil, the pharmaceutical giants, the corporate elite and such, while being against raising minimum wages, scientific opinion on global warming and anti-environmental regulation, should get on board with such a project actually benefiting the American people seems to be the antithesis of its being.
Nicholas Zizelis
Bayside
