EXTRA...

In depth Jim Gordon interview;

TODAY's quote: "I have a lot of respect for Senator Kennedy—I did have a meeting with him. It was a very amicable meeting. …I'm just hoping he will look at the record and recognize that Massachusetts wants a renewable-energy future and that our citizens want a better future for their children. Certainly, I'm hoping he will at some point embrace this project." - Jim Gordon.

Cape Wind president, Cape Cod vacationer, clean-energy pioneer, provocateur

"The oil embargo occurred in 1973 and 1974. I was sitting in a two-block-long gas line waiting to fill up my gas tank. I saw the dislocation that the embargo caused in terms of social disruptions, economic disruptions, and I felt that energy was going to be a very important issue."
                    - Jim Gordon

If you're looking to put up an offshore wind farm in Massachusetts, there are more politically expedient places than smack between the beloved beaches of the Cape and Islands. But there are not, Jim Gordon insists, any superior spots from an engineering standpoint. And so, for going on eight years, the Cape Wind founder has pressed on with his fight to construct 130 turbines there. In May, the project secured its final state permit; now all that's left is a "record of decision" from an enthusiastic-sounding Obama Interior Department. Could that come this month (to maximize the public relations tie-in to America's new push for energy independence)? Maybe. But if not, Gordon is prepared to wait as long as it takes.

JIM GORDON: You can't just say, "I want renewable energy, but I want it in someone else's backyard." It's an interesting thing: With oil, coal, and natural gas, you can truck, pipe, or barge it. With wind, you can't do that. You have to locate the facility where the wind is.
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When the British embargoed salt during the Revolutionary War, the Cape and Islands responded-they had the salty sea and wind, and soon windmills dotted the landscape. In the 1800s, folks from New Bedford, Nantucket, and Cape Cod lit the lamps of industrial machinery by creating energy from whales. In World War II, our ports made ships to fight fascism. We have the marine and cultural heritage; we've responded to urgent challenges all throughout our history. Where better to do this?
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Whether it's a football stadium or an art museum on Memorial Drive, if you look at any major infrastructure project in Massachusetts, it's not uncommon to have opposition. We have an active democracy... Read the rest of this Boston Magazine interview here and here.

EDITOR's NOTE: This Boston Magazine interview of 2009 reads very much like the opprobrious Cape Cod Times interview of Gordon by then reporter John Leaning written about 2003 which was spiked by then editor Schectman because it was so favorable. The Times had assigned veteran journalist Leaning, the lead reporter on the Cape Wind story, to spend a few days with both Cape Wind's president and Doug Yearley the founder of the Assiance to Protect Nantucket Sound. 
     The two interviews reportedly were like "The Beauty and the Beast", and Schectman refused to let his readers decide bet ween the two men themselves. 
     Read another former Times reporter's pliant here. wb