Cape Cod Windbags

A new book, Cape Wind, details the battle between wealthy, well-connected and mostly liberal New Englanders to prevent construction of an offshore wind-energy farm near Cape Cod.

The biggest windbag in the story is Senator Ted Kennedy, with nephew Robert Kennedy, Jr., presidential candidate flip-flopper extraordinaire Mitt Romney, and historian David McCullough not too far behind.

Energy entrepeneur Jim Gordon has been trying for six years now to put 130 large wind turbines on Horseshoe Shoal, off Nantucket Sound, to provide about 420 megawatts of clean energy--75% of Cape Cod's annual consumption--to Massachusetts. The wind turbines would be about five miles from the Kennedy compound, nine miles from Martha's Vineyard and 14 miles from Nantucket (a distance at which they'd barely be visible).

So, have the Kennedy's, and Romney--all of whom profess to be for energy independence, renewable energy, clean energy and effors to reduce global warming--used their considerable influence to get this worthy project on the fast track?

Nope. They've done everything they can to stop it, citing everything from "visual pollution" (wait until you see the visual pollution of a major hurricane bearing down on the Cape) to a presumed decline in property values along the shore (evidently, being able to point proudly to the clean energy being produced just offshore doesn't help one's property values in stodgy Massachusetts).

We say, a pox on Cape Cod and its wealthy limousine liberals. Poetic justice would be a major hurricane, inflamed by warm ocean waters from global warming, sending a 20 foot storm surge across the Cape, wiping it clean for new development. More likely, your tax dollars will go to shoring up the Cape as gradually rising oceans lap ever higher on its shores. Maybe in 50 years, when the Cape is gone, someone will put an offshore wind farm right on top of what had beenTed Kennedy's old homestead.