The Cape Wind controversy is a satirists' delight. A project that has long been the type of energy development that everyone says they favor -- clean, not right next door to anyone, in an area that is energy-deficient -- should be supported by virtually everyone.
But it's not. Local residents, many of them wealthy and prominent, have banded together from various areas around Nantucket Sound to fight Cape Wind, which would install 130 turbines in the sound to produce, at peak, 420 Mw of electricity from the winds blowing over the sea off Cape Cod.
What's not to love about it? Plenty, according to the opponents. For example, they hold that the view from Nantucket Island is going to be ruined, and fishing areas will be damaged. Supporters on the other hand say the change in Nantucket's view won't amount to anything more than the horizon now dotted by what looks to the naked eye like small sticks arising from the ocean.
Where a satirist has his day is in the makeup of some of the opposition. For example, Bill Koch of Koch Industries, which has refined a barrel of two of oil in its day, is part of the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, the leading opposition group to the project. Douglas Yearley, who used to head copper producer Phelps Dodge, is another prominent opponent. Copper smelting has rarely been cited as a clean industry.
And the most prominent opponent of all is Ted Kennedy, the patriarch of the Kennedy family that has been the leading clan of Nantucket for time immemorial.
The odd position of one of the nation's leading liberal lions opposing a wind project doesn't need any further explanation on the degree of irony involved. But imagine the supporters of the project when they consider the possibilities in mocking the Senator. The Barrel can just envision the joy at the advertising company given the task of putting together a television commercial to mock Ted. What a lip-smacking assignment, regardless of political leaning!
Here's the result.
(A fairly one-sided yet very readable account of the controversy can be found in this recently-published book.)
This link gives some evidence as to why Charles Koch opposes these types of projects. I read his editorial in the WSJ about Cape Wind, and his justification was 100% economic.
http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/energy/environment/2007-08-24-wind-project-scrapped-environment_N.htm?csp=34
We just need Al Gore to buy some property on Nantucket to build yet another mansion and join the other rich objectors.