I am from Boston and my family has a place in Buzzard’s Bay, near Cape Cod. The debate around placing an offshore wind farm in the Nantucket sound has been a hot topic for many years in the area. As in most debates over public policy, the spectrum of opinions runs along a socioeconomic axis.
The more affluent do not want any windmills cluttering their view of the “pristine” ocean and the people who live in the area year round would love a drop in the electricity bills. The problem with the pristine ocean is that it is full of garbage and chemicals.
I am twenty-four years old and I can clearly remember a time when you could walk down to the ocean near my house and pick up as many mussels, oysters, and clams as you wanted. Now there is nothing on the shore except barnacles and seaweed. You could hit a deer by accident easily because there were tons of them all around. Now you would be lucky to see one all summer. Greenbrier, poison ivy and other resilient horrible weeds have taken over from roses and blueberry patches. The point is that toxic chemicals and invasive species have done far more damage to the pristine ocean than a wind farm could ever do. This is in addition to the fact that wind farms might lessen the oil barge traffic that regularly runs through these waters, even in winter.
The opponants of wind farms need to understand that how the world looks needs to change in order for us to survive and prosper. If we decide to cut down trees, then we will have to look at windmills instead.
Filed under: Wind Power | Tagged: Oceans, Pollution, Public Policy, Wind Farms, Wind Power | 3 Comments »
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