11 years. That's how long we've been waiting for the promise of Cape Wind: clean, renewable energy; new, green jobs; reduced air emissions and carbon pollution; energy at a predictable price over the long-term; and energy security. At a time when the evidence of global warming is overwhelming, and the need for jobs critical, unleashing the potential of this home-grown offshore wind project can only be a good thing.
So, why isn't Cape Wind up and running? Because the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, a pseudo-environmental organization backed and led by fossil fuel magnate Bill Koch, is hell bent on blocking it.
Today we say: enough is enough.
Let's be clear: this is one of the decisive struggles in the fight for a clean, sustainable energy future, a battle against the fossil fuel industry whose wealth and power have controlled America for far too long.
That's why CLF, as well as a host of other partners from the environmental, labor, clean energy, business, scientific and public health communities, have joined together in support of Cape Wind Now -- a campaign to expose Bill Koch's dirty-energy funded opposition to Cape Wind.
Cape Wind is ready to go! It's cleared every federal and state review, passed environmental muster, been given the go ahead by the Department of the Interior, has long-term contracts for more than three-quarters of its electricity, and has the support of Governor Patrick and 80 percent of Massachusetts citizens. And yet, a Koch-funded and led group is continuing its tactics of deception and delay.
Koch's Oxbow Corporation is engaged in some of the dirtiest energy activities known to man, including coal mining and the worldwide distribution of petroleum coke, a highly polluting by-product of the oil refining process. As chairman of the board and a major funder of The Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, Bill Koch's dirty fuel fingerprints are all over the opposition to Cape Wind.
With millions of Koch's billions still filling its coffers, the Alliance is angling to continue to fight Cape Wind to the death. That's not just a threat to Cape Wind, but to all renewable energy projects that have the potential to loosen the fossil fuel industry's grip on our country and move us toward a clean and prosperous energy future. And you can bet that if the roles were reversed -- and an opposition group was fighting one of Koch's oil or gas projects -- he would do everything in his power to crush them. Ironic, isn't it?
Bill Koch and his Alliance must not be allowed to determine the future of Cape Wind, when the project has cleared exhaustive environmental and permitting reviews, when a large majority of Massachusetts citizens support it, and when this pioneering offshore wind project promises jobs at such a critical time for our economy and clean energy at a critical time for our planet.
Those who say that coal is cheap and wind expensive need to check their math. The evidence shows that Cape Wind will save electric customers money over the life of the project as it displaces the most expensive dirty power supplying energy to the electric grid. And if you consider all the costs we pay for dirty energy -- environmental, national security, and public health, to name only a few -- offshore wind energy is far less expensive than dirty coal energy.
This is a battle where powerful, entrenched dirty energy interests have pitted themselves against emerging clean energy. It is a fight for the citizens of Massachusetts to have the green energy jobs they want and the home-grown energy they need, when they need it.
To be sure, the fight is more than symbolic. For Massachusetts, Cape Wind is the most important clean energy project. For the nation, it's a bellwether of what's to come. Will we chose to create a clean energy future, or to repeat our dirty energy past.
We can't allow dirty energy interests to thwart our clean energy revolution. Not now -- not when we've come so far. So please, stand with Cape Wind. Stand with Cape Wind Now.
America's flagship offshore folly Cape Wind is, "discontinued", "sinking", "shifting", and "corroding" based on developer's specifications in the 4,000 page Environmental Impact Statement, (EIS); and the developer's specifications in the Construction Operation Plan (COP):
http://bjdurk.newsvine.com/_news/2012/07/29/13018297-cape-wind-is-discontinued-sinking-shifting-and-corroding-by-developers-specifications
Cape Wind represents a public safety hazard according to the navigators of the airspace and waterway most familiar with the Nantucket Sound location's present navigational limitations...their comments:
http://www.boemre.gov/federalregister/PublicComments/AD71/Barbara%20Durkin%203-18-11.pdf
RFK Jr. - Solar Thermal and Utility Scale Wind are Gas Plants http://youtu.be/qcm1gmPL50s
The options are not to choose between Big Energy (mislabled as "clean" energy) and dirty energy. Big energy that is located far from the recipients of the energy, that must be threaded through wilderness, that wastes 10 % of its energy in transmission, is not clean. Clean is when you generate energy right where it will be used. Solar panels on rooftops qualify as clean energy. Large, distant wind farms do not.
When will we learn, the natural surface of Earth or her ecosystems and their biodiversity are in the eco-nomy of all life, including the lives of every human on the planet. What do birds and bats do for Earth? They pollinate ecosystems; they protect ecosystems from pests; they plant ecosystems' plants and trees at the bottom of the ecological pyramid; they keep ecosystems alive and life giving and protect mankind from global disease pathogens that cause disease epidemics.
Mankind is alive and breathing because of wild, natural ecosystems, and ecosystems are life creating and supporting because of their plant and animal biodiversity. Birds and bats are vital biodiversity, in the eco-nomy of life itself.
One study indicates, windmills heat up the climate. How much solar radiation will windmills' metals absorb? How much mining, more destruction to the Earth, for these monster bird and bat killers? How much fossil fuels are released for the manufacture of concrete? The production of concrete alone, is very destructive to the Earth, and concrete is hot, hot. The mining of aluminum is so destructive to the planet.
"The basic ingredients for renewables are the same materials that are ubiquitous in industrial products, like cement and aluminum. No one is going to make cement in any quantity without...fossil fuels..."cement is so energy intensive that each pound releases a pound of carbon into the atmosphere..."
If you want a "revolution," you should be FAR more focused on getting PACE loans back online and establishing a generous feed in tariff for rooftop PV systems so that WE can own and generate the power right where it's needed and we can upgrade our structures for efficiency.
You are trying to re-centralize the grid at the exact moment we are all screaming out for energy democracy and dynamism. We want the internet, you want the telegraph. We want democracy, you want robber barons. We want to participate in the market as sellers, you want us to be piggybanks for Big Energy monopolists.
Many, many of us who oppose Big Energy are NOT pushing for dirty energy, we are pushing for MUCH CLEANER energy than you are, energy that does not slaughter avian life, use tons and tons of high-emissions cement and steel, does not spew SF6 from transmission, and MAKES us money instead of costing us money.
Sorry, we don't want to repeat the mistakes of the past and Big Energy enslavement is one of the worst mistakes out there.