Sunday, September 03, 2006

This week's column:
And they call the wind annoying

I have to admit I’m torn over the whole Cape Wind proposal here in Massachusetts. On the one hand, we have all this wind just blowing around all the time -- for free! -- so it does make sense to do something with it. On the other hand, I don’t want to be staring at a bunch of wind turbines every time I take my yacht out on Nantucket Sound. Oh, wait a minute ... I don’t own a yacht. OK, I’m all for the idea!

Granted, the reality is not that simple. As with any controversy, there are two sides to the story. Specifically:

1) The developers. These are the people who are out to make millions of dollars any way they can, and if they wind up saddling the coast of Nantucket with a nearly useless industrial eyesore, that’s really just a bonus. I’m not saying they’re heartless, but it’s a known fact that the first thing they teach you in developer school is how to pick a project that will net you the largest profit while at the same time killing the most innocent puppies.

2) The residents. If you are a resident of Nantucket, you would probably rather pay extraordinary amounts of money to import power one electron at a time via trained carrier pigeons than to put up with a blight on your multi-million-dollar landscape. It’s bad enough to have to look out into Nantucket Sound on a foggy spring morning and see Ted Kennedy.

For the rest of this week's AT LARGE by Peter Chianca, click here.

1 comment:

Grant Sanders said...

The residents of Nantucket are split on the Cape Wind Proposal. Most of us do not own yachts.