Posted on 11/24/2005 7:29:04 PM PST by paltz
By DAVID KIBBE
Ottaway News Service
BOSTON - The Conservation Law Foundation has called on Gov. Mitt Romney and Sen. Edward Kennedy to reconsider their opposition to the Cape Wind project in light of favorable findings in a draft environmental impact statement released yesterday.
Romney and Kennedy have spoken out against the proposal to put 130 wind turbines in Nantucket Sound. But Conservation Law Foundation president Philip Warburg said wind energy would help Romney's plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2010.
"Wind energy offers our brightest hope for approaching the governor's goals," Warburg said yesterday at a Boston press conference with other groups that fully or conditionally support the wind farm. "It is time for him to look at the project with an open mind."
Warburg said Kennedy is "historically a champion of sound energy and environmental policies.
"He needs to look beyond the narrow interests that seem to be motivating his current opposition to the project," Warburg said. "Environmental leadership may not be coming out of Washington in the years ahead, so we need to demonstrate that leadership here in New England."
The law foundation was joined by other scientific, labor and environmental organizations that promote wind power, including the Maritime Trade Council of Greater Boston and New England, SmartPower, the Union of Concerned Scientists, Clean Water Action, Cape Clean Air, the Massachusetts Climate Action Network, the Massachusetts Public Interest Research Group, and Clean Power Now, which has chapters on the Cape and islands.
Seth Kaplan, the director of Conservation Law Foundation's clean energy and climate change program, said the group would study the 4,000-page report once it was released to make sure it supported the conclusions in the executive summary, which was obtained by the Cape Cod Times.
"The most extraordinary thing about it is its depth, the length that it has taken and the fact that measures have been put in place to put the review at arm's length from the project developer," Kaplan said. The law foundation said the negative impacts of the wind farm should be kept in perspective.
"There is no such thing as clean energy," Warburg said. "The Cape Wind project will have some adverse environmental impacts. Some birds may be killed by windmill rotors - the draft EIS predicts about one bird a day. The wind farm will be visible from some nearby coastal areas. Some may like the way it looks, some may not."
Warburg said it should be compared to the effect of fossil-burning power plants. "Let's not hold the Cape Wind project to an impossible standard of 'no adverse impacts' ... The question is whether the Cape Wind project, when compared to the alternatives, produces that energy at a lower cost to the environment, now and for generations to come," Warburg said.
Charles Kleekamp, the vice president of Cape Clean Air, said the local group was founded over concerns about pollution from fossil fuels. As such, it found a natural ally in wind power.
"It appears that the Army Corps report tells us what we have long known, and that is the proposal on Nantucket Sound is the most benign source of electrical power with the fewest negative impacts," Kleekamp said. "The enormous benefit of reducing harmful emissions from fossil fuel power plants will include clean air, resulting in better health and fewer premature deaths."
The law foundation said wind energy - and the Nantucket Sound wind farm - was just one piece of the puzzle to prevent global warming.
Ominously, Warburg said, global warming and rising seas would put New England and the Cape and islands at risk for severe flooding in the next century unless something is done.
I have never known or met a green liberal that wasn't a hypocrite. And they have the gall to call the extreme religious right conservatives hypocrites - ha.
Now where are you going to find more wind than ol' Ted ?
Ok,, I'm going out on a limb here....
you can't see the windfarms unless you sail your yacht out far enough????
Two things Teddy knows something about,
NIMBY
BYOB
Hey, they don't want windmills?
Fine, let's build a couple of oil refineries there instead.
Fine, let's build a couple of oil refineries there instead.
And a nuclear power plant too!
Fine, let's build a couple of oil refineries there instead.
Hey the cost would be a drop in the bucket compared to the Big Dig under Boston Harbor.
I live in NC and we have nut-cases whom are against off-shore oil platforms 100 miles from our coast.
I am so fed up with the jack-ass mentality of our politicians.
I'd fire all these a-holes, and let the free market rule.
Adam Smith had it right. But few today can spell anything other than, "It's For The Children."
/puking and /rant
anywhere but your back yard fatteddy? fpos!
Gee, doesn't Teddy already own a few oil companies of his own?
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