Op-Ed

Lead, follow, or get out of the way

The people, as usual, are ahead of their leaders - It was ever so

By Richard C. Bartlett

"If we do not take drastic action soon the planet becomes an unrecognizable and in some places, impossible place to live." - 2,500 scientist

Did our Cape antecedents oppose the hundreds of windmills that pumped sea water into drying areas for the then new salt making industry before finding out how much money was being generated by the wind?

Did they scoff at the horseless carriage before discovering they could make money selling gas, pulling out mired vehicles, and becoming a tourist destination? Did they still, like the ancients, believe phlogiston was the magic ingredient of fire, not oxygen?

Spineless politicians echoing their masters

Today's Capers are mostly pro-wind farm, but some, especially office-holders, still advance out-of-date arguments that have been thoroughly disproved. Tourism always, everywhere, has increased near wind farms. No plane or ship has ever been harmed by a turbine. No wind farm has leaked oil, unlike the tankers headed for fossil-fuel fired power plants. Why are those opposition people so obtuse? We are allowed our suspicions.

The minority make us a laughingstock Cape Backward. The majority supporting Cape Wind will make us Cape Forward.

With so much land so close to shore, and at slight elevation, all Cape and Islanders should be supporting every effort to reduce the climate change crisis. "If we do not take drastic action soon the planet becomes an unrecognizable --- and in some places, impossible --- place to live." That's from the Daily Telegraph, reporting on the dire warnings from 2,500 scientists who convened at the International Scientific Congress on Climate Change, March 13, 2009.

They report "Recent observations confirm ... the mean surface temperature, sea level rise, ocean and ice sheet dynamics, ocean acidification, and extreme climatic events." They warn that the change-related threats are accelerating faster than previously predicted.

For us to do our fair share of crisis prevention we need Cape Wind to be operating. Or we can instead junk 175,000 cars as an alternative way to reduce the Cape's emissions by an equal amount.

Want to send your Mercedes to the scrap heap? Or perhaps it would be better to go with the Obama/Salazar call to utilize that 1,000 gigawatts (enough electricity to power the whole USA) from the offshore winds blowing off our Atlantic coast. A free fuel source, and free of emissions.

The minority tries to make us a laughingstock Cape Backward. The majority supporting Cape Wind will make us Cape Forward.

Richard C. Bartlett, Cotuit