Greenpeace

If you ever hear Senator Kennedy from Massachusetts say he is an environmentalist and cares about global warming, the oxygen he’s wasting on the empty rhetoric is nothing more than a bunch of hot air.  His latest effort to kill the proposed wind project off Nantucket Sound – 130 windmills that would be the first offshore wind facility in the US and would provide 75% of the Cape’s energy needs – takes the cake in the category of back room deal making and good ole boy networking.  Whereas Kennedy has done a nice teflon routine to appear unconnected to this latest development by stealthily working behind the scenes, it has his smell all over it.

This past Friday, a congressional conference committee negotiating the final language of the Coast Guard Re-Authorization Bill agreed to give the governor of Massachusetts veto power over the Cape Wind project. The amendment was introduced to the committee – after the bill had been passed in the house and senate without this language – by Congressman Young (R-AK).  Is it just me, or is anyone else wondering why a Congressman from Alaska would go out on a limb to help kill a wind farm off Cape Cod? What’s Kennedy going to do for him?  Pretty smart of Teddy to get a conservative republican from a distant, remote state to do his bidding, thereby adding to the teflon effect.  If you want to dig down to find out what’s really going on here, better bring your waders.

For the sake of argument, let’s suspend logic and make the assumption that this isn’t politically motivated, that there actually might be a good reason for this amendment.  If this really had anything to do with the coast guard (as the title of the bill implies), why not give the decision making authority to them?  We’d also have to ignore the fact that the amendment’s language conflicts with the congressional intent of the Energy Policy Act of 2005. The Energy Policy Act directs the Secretary of Interior to develop, in consultation with the Coast Guard and other agencies, “any necessary regulations.”  The new provision undermines that process, which has only just begun.

So, a congressman from Alaska pens an amendment that gives full veto authority to a governor from a state he has nothing to do with.  Instead of the coast guard or the Mineral Management Service, the regulatory agency in charge of proposed offshore wind farms, making the call, the governor of Massachusetts can simply say “Nah, it kind of screws up the view for a small group of rich people.  I think I’ll take a pass”.

Let’s not forget that one of the most vocal and visible opponents of the Cape Wind Project has been Bobby Kennedy, who had crafted a reputation as an environmentalist and global warming champion until the conversion from theory to practice meant a state-of-the-art wind farm off the horizon from his summer home.  With that in mind, it’s no big surprise that one of the most influential democrats in Congress, who shares the same family name and summer home setting, would also use his considerable weight to kill the project behind the scenes.