Cape Wind is dealt a setback

[midnight armadillo]

http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2006/04/07/cape_wind_is_dealt_a_setback/

Cape Wind is dealt a setback
Bill would give Romney final say

By Stephanie Ebbert, Globe Staff | April 7, 2006

Governor Mitt Romney, an opponent of the wind farm proposed for Nantucket Sound, would gain the authority to kill the controversial project under a tentative agreement reached yesterday in the US Senate.

After days of closed-door talks, members of Congress agreed on a measure that would grant the governor or his successor the right to block the wind farm proposed by Cape Wind Associates, Senate aides said. The break came yesterday when US Senator Gordon H. Smith, an Oregon Republican, switched sides and backed the measure giving the governor the authority to block the project, environmental advocates and Senate aides said.

The amendment is now expected to be attached to a broad Coast Guard authorization bill that would face floor votes in the House and the Senate, where its future remains unclear. Some expect the measure to generate a battle in the Senate, where Senator Pete V. Domenici, a New Mexico Republican and chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, sharply criticized it this week as contradicting Congress's commitment to producing more renewable energy.

But environmental advocates agreed yesterday that the future looked bleak for Cape Wind..........

[TheCowsCameHome]

1. So how will it look for Romney if he becomes Prez re: energy conservation?

[Jim Lane]

6. Some environmentalists oppose the project

The most prominent opponent is Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. of the Natural Resources Defense Council. I think, though, that the weight of opinion in the environmental community is to favor Cape Wind. There's a recognition that there are some environmental costs, but that no method of producing energy is perfect. The global warming problem is so important that it weighs heavily in favor of any energy source that doesn't increase greenhouse gases.

A good article on the dispute among environmentalists: http://www.grist.org/news/muck/2006/01/12/capecod/index.html

As to the point about Romney's presidential ambitions, he'll be able to avert any major damage by pointing out, correctly, that his position was the same as Kennedy's.

[NNadir]

7. To the extent one opposes this project, one is NOT an environmentalist.

Depending on the type of back-up, there is no energy system on earth that has an environmental impact as low as wind power. It is as clean as one can get.

I have never actually been a big fan of the Kennedys, at least since I was a little kid and didn't know any better. I had actually thought RFK Jr. was maybe a cut above the rest of his family. Apparently not.

In Eleanor Roosevelt's family, they put their country and their planet above their social class. Not so here. The global climate change is a crisis of unimaginable proportions. We are all as a species recognizing that we have not recognized exactly how bad it is. There will be no Nantucket as this crisis proceeds.

Fuck Kennedy and the limo he rode in on.

[DS1]

2. If this was a volunteer project

I'd go down there and help build it myself :grr:

[chelsea0011]

3. I gotta tell ya, for all the bluster about alternative energy sources,

I was surprised that the wealthy group, including Senator Kennedy, came together to all but kill a proposal that may have supplied the Cape with 75% of it's electricity.

[PuraVidaDreamin]

5. the rich folks homes would have been overlooking the wind farm

TWO miles away from their precious view out in Osterville
in Nantucket Sound. They can also afford the increase
in energy dollars, so it a NIMBY pure and simple, under
the guise of disturbing fertile fishing grounds.

When will they understand that it's the runoff from
their big fat lifestyles that are seeping into the
sound that is the biggest threat.

One good thing- a few more years of glacial meltage,
and one powerpacked northeast coast hurricane- we
won't have to deal with them anymore.

[formercia]

4. Oil rules

Anything that gets in the way of maximizing profits is dead meat....