Windswept_ The Story of Wind and Weather - Marq de Villiers [131]
The Kennedy connection really grated on those Greens who were for the proposal. The Natural Resources Defense Council, the environmental organization for which Robert Kennedy is a senior attorney, has strongly supported offshore wind power in the past, but here he was, arguing vigorously against just such a project—because, they suspected, he could see it from his front yard. This was not NIMBYism, it was NIVOMDism, "Not in View of My Deck—ism."26 "I am all for wind power," Kennedy insisted in a debate with the developer on Boston's NPR affiliate. "The costs . . . on the people of this region are so huge . . . the diminishment to property values, the diminishment to marinas, to businesses . . . People go to the Cape because they want to connect themselves with the history and the culture. They want to see the same scenes the Pilgrims saw when they landed at Plymouth Rock." The New York Times writer who recounted his rambling defence, Elinor Burkett, pointed out, rather gently, I thought, that the Pilgrims never saw Nantucket Sound, and if they had, they wouldn't have spied the Kennedy compound. As for the pristine sound being desecrated by a skyline of flashing lights, other project proponents were even more sardonic: "The Sound is not pristine," says Matt Patrick, a member of the state legislature whose support for the plan greatly compromised his reelection campaign. "You can't get to shore because it is lined with memorials to bad taste. Motorboats race around it, and if you go offshore in the summer, you look back and see yellow brown haze hanging over the mainland. And they make it sound as if Nantucket Sound will look like downtown New York, but the wind farm will be only a thumbnail on the horizon." Dick Elrick, a Barnstable councilman who has been a ferryboat captain for two decades, is even angrier, mostly about the support given to the antis by commercial fishermen who themselves operate drag-gers. "It's tough to listen to the same fishermen who have hurt the habitat by overdragging the bottom of the Sound [now] waving the flag of environmentalism," he said.27
The truth of the matter is . . . that the truth of the matter is very hard to discern, a common conclusion in this sort of debate. Both sides seem to be talking at cross purposes. The antis are not anti environmentalism, for the most part. They are just suspicious of this particular path to salvation. And so they tend to talk in code, and just end up sounding hypocritical. Wind power enthusiasts, on the other hand, are just as disingenuous, and their numbers are not to be trusted. The wattage output numbers in their press releases and announcements are never actuals, or averages, but always maximums attainable only if the machines were working twenty-four hours a day at full capacity in ideal winds. Consequently, the numbers trotted out for saving so many tons of carbon dioxide are always grotesquely inflated; and so are the figures for the numbers of trees that would otherwise have to be planted, and for the homes that each turbine can safely run. It is generally wise to discount the given pronouncements by at least 50 percent, perhaps more. Nor is wind power saving consumers any money. Nor, indeed, are they yet making any money for their operators, except via state subsidies.
On subsidies, though, both sides are right. Wind power is getting government aid, but then it is also true that the oil, gas, and especially the nuclear industry have collectively received subsidies far greater than the total cost of building all the wind plants so far operating in the world.
And on pricing, it is true that wind's prices are competitive with fossil fuels, taking into account those subsidies. With these further advantages: no price spikes by nasty cartels, and no chance of running out of fuel. And the chance either to get off grid and be independent, something that appeals to environmentalists and conservatives alike, or to make a little money selling power to the distribution companies, something to appeal to the small-business person with