Blue Mass Group

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Activists Rally for Clean Energy at Cape Wind Opponent’s Boston Office

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Rally for Cape Wind outside Suffolk Construction (June 13, 2013 / Better Future Project)

A wealthy Cape Cod estate owner fighting Cape Wind got a big surprise today when clean energy supporters rallied at John Fish’s corporate headquarters. Reports Boston Business Journal’s Thomas Grillo:

A dozen demonstrators showed up at Suffolk Construction headquarters in Boston on Thursday to protest CEO John Fish’s stance against Cape Wind.

Fish, who also serves as chairman of the Massachusetts Competitive Partnership, a non-partisan public policy group comprised of chief executive officers of some of the Bay State’s largest businesses, recently took out a full-page ad in The Boston Globe and other publications opposing Cape Wind, a proposed offshore wind energy project off the coast of Cape Cod. […]

“Does Fish think the next Hurricane Sandy hitting Boston will make our businesses more competitive?” Altemose said in a statement. “How about sea level rise inundating tens of thousands of Massachusetts homes and businesses? Climate change, and the fossil fuels causing it, are the real threats to Massachusetts businesses. If Fish doesn’t understand that, he’s missing the boat.”

Joshua Jackson, an organizer for Better Future Project, cited economic benefits of the $2.5 billion Cape Wind project, noting that the project will reduce wholesale electric costs, resulting in savings of $7.2 billion over 25 years. He also said Cape Wind will create 514 jobs in Massachusetts and 1,119 jobs in New England.

What’s the real reason these wealthy businessmen are fighting Cape Wind? “John Fish, Chairman of the Massachusetts Competitive Partnership and CEO of Suffolk Construction, owns an $11 million compound in Oyster Harbors, the exclusive gated community in Osterville where Bill Koch also lives,” according to Walter Brooks at CapeCodToday.com. Bill Koch has been quite vocal that the fight against Cape Wind is primarily about protecting his estate’s view at the expense of Massachusetts’ public health, energy security, and climate stability.

Tell the Cape Cod estate owners fighting Cape Wind that we’re not backing down. Sign the petition from the Conservation Law Foundation & MoveOn Civic Action to build Cape Wind now.

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  1. This brings us to the $64,000 question: was Hurricane Sandy made worse by anthropogenic climate change? A research team, led by environmental studies graduate student Jessica Weinkle,2 conducted a thorough analysis of tropical cyclone damage. Their results suggest that economic destruction from such storms has increased dramatically over the last century. Yet these researchers showed that the observed changes could be explained entirely as a result of societal factors unrelated to climate change. These factors included significant increases in and distribution of wealth, buildings, and populations near coastal areas during the twentieth century.

    There is more!

    The authors further argue that anyone who suggests that the world is experiencing a “new normal” with respect to tropical cyclones is mistaken. Like others,3 Weinkle’s team points out that global tropical cyclone activity—though active during the late 1990s and early 2000s—has actually declined recently; and tropical cyclone landfalls were also more intense prior to 1970. In particular, from 1950–1969, land-falling, intense hurricanes occurred in the north Atlantic and western north Pacific at a 40 percent higher rate than during 1970–2010.

    I wish people would stop using Hurricane Sandy as a reason to build ocean-based wind power and no to Keystone and Anwr and good old American coal. For goodness sake, it’s the middle of June, and I still have a winter quilt on the bed.

    http://www.reasons.org/articles/hurricanes-and-the-climate-part-1

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