Longtime Cape Wind opponent Peter Kenney has an op-ed in today’s New Bedford Standard Times attacking me personally. It’s part of a broader strategy by wind opponents to bully clean energy supporters into silence. Will Massachusetts leaders stand up for reasoned debate, or give into scare tactics?
What was my crime in Kenney’s eyes? Daring to point out that Bill Koch, a billionaire Cape Cod estate owner and heir to a polluting energy fortune, is blocking New Bedford clean energy jobs by bankrolling Cape Wind opposition. I’m only the latest person Kenney has targeted for personal attacks. “Mr. Kenney has a history of not being able to disagree respectfully,” Yarmouth Planning Board Chairman Erik Tolley said last year.
What’s bizarre is that in Kenney’s op-ed, he claims I refused to take his call. I talked to him on April 23 for two minutes. Here’s my annotation of the phone record:
It was a short call. He immediately launched into berating me for supporting Cape Wind and accused me of taking bribes not to say anything bad about Cape Wind. I asked why he was calling since it didn’t exactly sound like there was much room to win him over. We said goodbye. That was it.
It’s not just Kenney – across Cape Cod in Falmouth, wind opponents are using similar bullying tactics. “As town meeting members spoke, turbine abutters Neil Andersen and Colin Murphy sat in the back of the auditorium, quietly heckling speakers at times,” Sean Teehan reported in the Cape Cod Times last month.
Falmouth has already voted against dismantling its turbines, but the anti-wind crowd has forced yet another vote on May 24. With Fox on their side, you have to wonder: Will the anti-wind folks will just keep forcing votes until they get their way?
More broadly, Massachusetts elected officials and news organizations need to decide how we’ll determine our shared energy future. Will we have a reasoned, fact-based dialogue and move forward together? Or will we let the loudest, harshest and most frequently raised voices dominate debate and shout down anyone who disagrees with them?
If you stand with clean energy, sign up and register your support at Cape Wind Now.
Cross-posted from The Green Miles
First – disclosure. I’ve known Peter Kenney a couple dozen years. We see each other at all the various wind hearings (which are now in their second decade) and chat. I support, he opposes, we both know we aren’t going to change the other’s mind, so we remain friendly and talk other mutual concerns, like municipal tax rates.
Now – the Falmouth situation has nothing to do with Cape Wind, except as a poster child as to why it should be built. I listened to wind opponents (like Sen. Kennedy) say for years that we should not despoil Nantucket Sound but should instead have land based turbines. Some have worked out, like Hull and the PAVE PAWS turbines. But green advocates got them into a residential neighborhood, and there are reports of sickness, noise, etc. I am personally skeptical of some of the extreme complaints, but the situation seems bad enough to go beyond NIMBYISM.
Which is WHY we should build them five miles out to sea! So they WON’T make people sick, so there WON’T be noise, etc., etc.
All turbines are not equal. My town has passed a residential wind bylaw, limiting size and type in residential areas, and the Falmouth ones would not have been allowed as too big. Opposing Falmouth doesn’t mean opposing Cape Wind – they are very different issues.
And Peter would be the first to disparage as needless hyperbole your ‘base stirring’ empty rhetoric – he has an accurate, if misguided, intelligence. We don’t need the rah, rah.
or the islands.
I oppose ocean based wind power like CW because it is the most expensive way to generate electricity. I have read it is 3X as much as gas or hydro power, and isn’t reliable. When the wind isn’t blowing, alternate sources need to be powered up, like the oil plant in Sandwich. I have read there is a transformer with 1000 of diesel fuel that accompany these turbines, along with 40,000 gallons of transformer oil, I hope it doesn’t leak.
I saw a show about German nuclear power. It is impossible to have a meltdown, even if they tred, it’s that safe. Why not build one of those?
Cape Wind isn’t viable, so long as other sources of energy are much cheaper. I have proven much of the turbines are made overseas, and the assembly jobs are just temporary.