Last week two “citizens” groups and the Town of Barnstable filed a notice of intent to sue Massachusetts Secretary of Energy and Environmental Affairs Ian Bowles.
These groups object strongly to the recent ruling by Mr Bowles, that the Cape Wind project would not have any significant negative effects on the local environment. If you don’t like the answer mom gave you, go ask dad. Or in this case, sue mom.
They seem especially peeved about the fact that the ruling points out that there regulatory power is limited to the cable that travels through state waters, and any structures built in the Town Of Barnstable. I guess I don’t understand why they feel they can sue to gain powers they didn’t have before just because they don’t like this project. Why have jurisdictions of control at all, if you can enlarge them as you see fit. Cape Wind federal project is a project located in federal waters and as such is regulated by the federal government. The power cable that will run onto the Cape (to provide 75% of its power cleanly) however is under their jurisdiction and they can regulate the hell out of it if they want.
Because the project is not even through federal review yet this legal battle may or may not cause further delays. This is not the first time frivolous law suits have been brought against the project. One of these groups sued to keep the test data tower from being installed. They failed then, and will most likely fail again. Losing in court is of little concern to these very well funded opposition groups.
Putting up road block after road block will only serve to slow this very important project down. People all over the world are waking up to the need for a clean, renewable energy source. I think this law suit will fail, as did the previous. The political winds are shifting on Beacon hill, as well as nation wide. The people of cape cod are also waking up to the real and dire consequences of business as usual.
I expect these groups to become further marginalized as the the specter of global warming starts to rear its ugly head here. Beach side residents might be getting a much better view of the ocean as there homes are slowly swallowed by rising seas.
I grew up in Marin County north of San Francisco during the 70s. Back in the day when Hippies and Flower Children ruled the roost there was still an element of rationality and intellectual honesty among them. Being liberal was being human but also being constructive.
Today in Marin though you can’t throw stone without hitting a Yuppie who says one thing and promptly does the opposite. It’s not just the Bush administration that talks from two sides of their mouth. The classic example was the family-owned Japanese restaurant in Mill Valley that got sued because some rich faux-liberal lawyer decided having only Asian-faced family employees was discriminating against rich, white kids. Try to find a brown face in this bastion of the left and you’ll have to go the white-enforced ghetto of Marin City – Jim Crow’s got nothing on Marin. No. Those are not “liberals”.
Suing to prevent a wind farm project that will help our energy situation and our national defense is the work of the same kind of people – people who are not constructive citizens of this country – people who put their own shallow neuroses over their duty as citizen. The main reason I don’t live in Marin is that the place is now dominated by unprincipled, two-faced asses like these.
Of course the real issue is that the labels of Left and Right don’t really address reality well – Virginia Postrel hit the nail on the head when she identified these people as those who simple can not deal with change and thus do every they can to stop any change regardless of value, even to themselves. They are the laggards and late adopters of everything. The rest of us with vision and education understand that the world changes without regard to any of our desires and only by embracing change can we have any hope of controlling what change does to us – the wave comes and not riding the wave is not the same as riding it and choosing where it takes you.
These folks can be right-wing religious fundamentalists or they can be left-wing, anti-growth primitivists. They are EXACTLY the SAME thing. They represent the same disease on civilization. Either left or right, they would be happier and better off living in the 15th century. They don’t belong in this century and shouldn’t be allowed to control what they clearly can’t and don’t want to understand.
Your wrote: “Cape Wind is a federal project and as such is regulated by the federal government.”
Cape Wind is NOT a federal project. It is a private project of a private energy developer, Jim Gordon of Energy Management Inc..
The MA Secreatry of Environmental Affairs did not do due diligence on his review of this report nor did he investigate public comment on it. That is why he is being sued.
Thanks for the correction Donna.