Latimer on Law & Politics

The Capacity For Wonder

The Capacity For Wonder

Most of the big shore places were closed now and there were hardly any lights except for the shadowy, moving glow of a ferry boat across the Sound.  And as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors eyes -a fresh green breast of the new world.  It's vanished trees, the trees that made way for Gatsby's house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have once held his breath in the presence of this continent, . . . face to face for the last time with something commensurate with his capacity for wonder.                 -Nick Carroway, The Great Gatsby, 1925

 

                                                           If you're fond of sand dunes and salty air,

                                                           Quaint little villages here and there,

                                                           You're sure to fall in love with old Cape Cod.

 

                                                           If you like the taste of lobster stew,

                                                           Served by a window with an ocean view,

                                                           You're sure to fall in love with old Cape Cod.

                                                                - Patti Page, "Old Cape Cod," 1957

                                               

                                                The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window panes,

                                                The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window panes

                                                Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,

                                                Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,

                                                Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys. . . .

                                                 - T. S. Eliot, The Lovesong Of J. Alfred Prufrock, 1917

 

                                                And daddy won't you take me back to Muhlenberg County,

                                                Down by the Green River where Paradise lay.

                                                Well, I'm sorry my son, but you're too late in askin.'

                                                Mr. Peabody's coal train has hauled it away.

                                                - John Prine, "Paradise," 1971

 

                 Opponents of the modest proposal by Cape Wind to site 130 power generating wind turbines on Horseshoe Shoal have recently turned to claims of "spiritual" values against what they describe as the "industrialization" of Nantucket Sound.  I say modest proposal because, of course, the proposed "wind farm" is only a small step in what is needed to address the multiplicity of detriments, economic and geopolitical as well as environmental, caused by our present abject dependence on fossil fuels as the source of our energy needs.

               While I agree that spiritual values are an important part of environmental protection, it should be pointed out to those who raise this concern in opposition to the Cape Wind project that, as far as Nantucket Sound is concerned, that horse left the barn a long, long time ago.  Nick Carroway's reflection on the fate of Long Island Sound in 1925 was even then equally apt for Nantucket Sound, and it is even more so, geometrically, today.

               A body of water like Nantucket Sound is defined by the landforms which surround it, in this case Cape Cod and the islands of Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard, and those landforms are a far, far cry from what Nathaniel Gosnold saw when he first sailed our local waters.   As Fitzerald reminds us, through the reflections of Nick Carroway, it was the great uncharted and unspoiled landmass of the American continent which inspired the wonder of the early Dutch explorers who "discovered" Long Island Sound, and Gosnold's experience here was surely no less spiritually inspiring. 

               Such spiritual wonder, however, was not produced by the waters of Long Island Sound or Nantucket Sound which, by themselves, are no different from the waters of the open ocean or of those near the shores of the Netherlands or England.  People who object to Cape Wind's plan to erect wind towers visible from the southern coast of Cape Cod have a highly selective concept of both scenic values and related spiritual concerns, investing the waves, tides and currents visible on the Sound with some sort of special scenic or spiritual value while ignoring the environmental and spiritual degradation that surrounds them.

               In reality, there's nothing scenically or spiritually unique about the tides which routinely course through Nantucket Sound day in and day out, while the landforms which define the Sound have long since lost their ability to measure up to our capacity for wonder.   Scenic views are a two way street, and the view from Nantucket Sound onto the present day landmasses of Cape Cod and Martha's Vineyard, with very few exceptions, ain't a pretty sight. It is inane to speak of "pristine" views of sea water when the landforms that border it are as degraded as the shores of the Cape and Islands today, with overbuilt McMansions dominating every square inch of privately held land. 

           That degradation I might add is the result of decades of overdevelopment, i.e. "industrialization" in the name of profits for the real estate industry and the construction industry, which is a far, far cry from anything we might consider as contributing to our capacity for wonder or any other uniquely "spiritual" experience.  

            It should be added, too, that unlike Long Island Sound of the 1920s, Cape Cod's "big shore places" today don't close for the winter.  The year-round population has mushroomed over the past few decades, and this week a multi-million dollar, twenty-year project was anounced to clean up our local estuaries, because of the rampant development of the past twenty years.  Many of those estuaries carry runoff from the Cape directly into the purportedly "pristine" waters of Nantucket Sound.  "Industrialization," indeed!

            The ongoing industrialization  and profit-taking from our local waters is not confined to real estate and construction.  There are also the boating industry, the fishing industry and the tourist industry which all contribute to the ongoing degradation of the once pristine waters of Nantucket Sound, not just visual degradation but real, physical degradation as well.

            I'm a former boater myself, having spent many pleasurable days fishing the waters of Nantucket Sound in my 21-foot center console, and I hope to get back into it some day with a smaller more fuel efficient boat. So, I'm not really trying to bash the boating industry or boaters generally.  I recognize that the boating industry is an important part of our local economy too.  But it is an industry, and it has already "industrialized" the waters of Nantucket Sound to a far greater extent than 130  non-polluting wind turbines could ever do.

            Gosnold plied our local waters under sail.  Today, very few Cape Codders can tell the difference between a schooner, a ketch and a yawl, never mind know how to sail one,  but they all know a Cigarette boat when they see and hear one roaring up and down the Sound, burning gasoline as it pollutes the environment for the sake of a few cheap thrills.  A fellow I know once boasted to me that he'd run his overpowered speedboat from Falmouth Harbor to Newport in only a few hours, and I had to stifle the temptation to ask how long it took him to refuel once he got there.

            It's not just motorboats, either.  Even with sailboats, the boating industry with its toxic paints and fiberglass materials contributes to water pollution and air pollution while servicing, repairing and maintaining our many, many private pleasure boats.  Just drive past Falmouth inner harbor or any of the many other Cape harbors and try counting the thousands of plastic boat hulls that are on cradles or fork-lift racks today for winter storage. In the summer they're all out on the waters of Nantucket Sound. 

            Maybe some of us consider the sight of several dozen plastic boats zooming across the water at any given hour of the day, with engines roaring loudly as they burn hundreds of gallons of gasoline and oil purchased at a harborside gas dock, to be spiritually gratifying.  Somehow, though, that sight just doesn't measure up to my own capacity for wonder like, say, the truly unspoiled wilderness of the Gaspe Peninsula or Minnesota's Boundary Waters.

            Fishing is another industry that has operated on the waters of Nantucket Sound as such from the earliest days of European settlement.  Nantucket itself was the center of the New England whaling industry which supplied the lamp oil that illuminated most Cape Cod homes for over a century until it was rendered obsolete by fossil fuels beginning in the late 19^th Century.  Many local fortunes were built on the profits earned through such industrialization of our local waters, not only from the whaling itself but from shipbuilding and processing whale oil as well.

            The whaling industry, with wooden ships powered by sail, didn't cause significant local pollution compared with today's fishing industry, except perhaps from lead based bottom paints, but today's commercial fishing boats are significant polluters and cause significant degradation of the environment, from burning gas and oil to dredging the seafloor with heavy mechanized trawling equipment.  I'm not trying to be critical of the local fishing industry either.  I eat a lot of fish, and I appreciate the commercial fisherman's importance to our local economy but, again, it is an industry which has long since "industrialized" the waters of Nantucket Sound.

           Then there's the tourist industry, with all the ferry boats, excursion boats and the overflowing parking lots that service them.  The tourists park their cars here in Falmouth at several off-site parking lots because there's no more room at water's edge in Woods Hole.  They ride buses belching exhaust fumes to the dock and crowd onto diesel powered ferries to Martha's Vineyard.  A similar scenario plays out in Hyannis for the Nantucket bound tourists.

            The tourists produce voluminous amounts of trash.  We often see them on the ferry tossing French fries and other snack foods over the side to attract seagulls.  Even without that kind of idiocy, the sight of boatloads of tourists in tee shirts, shorts and flip-flops crowding onto ferries crossing Nantucket Sound isn't really very scenic or "spiritual," but it sure is industrial.  

           There's also the public beach crowd, sprawled on the sandy shore with cars parked right behind them.  Some people may enjoy seeing thousands of almost naked people lolling about on the sand at the edge of Nantucket Sound, with their tanning oils, picnic lunches filling trash barrels, loud radios, et cetera, but it really isn't what I'd consider a "spiritual" experience or something with a lot of scenic value.  It is, however, an important part of the tourist industry that exploits Nantucket Sound and Vineyard Sound and has been doing so long before Patti Page paid tribute to it in the song  "Old Cape Cod."

            The opponents of Cape Wind are like Patti Page's tourist, seeking pretty views while they sup on lobster stew.  It's a banal ethic, more sentimental than spiritual, and while there's certainly room for sentiment in how we view our local environment, it's not the same thing as environmentalism.  True environmentalism sees the waters of Nantucket Sound as they are, a small part of the global ocean, and to really protect our local waters, it is essential that we put protecting the ocean and the health of the ecosystem first. 

            Eliot's "yellow fog" of early 20^th Century London, seen through Prufrock's eyes, was the product of burning coal, which England had been doing for most of the 19^th Century.  Today, in America, we still have an active coal lobby doing it's best to oppose any kind of global accord on climate change, in lockstep with the petroleum industry.  Those two industries are major polluters both on the world stage and in our local environment.

             For over a century, well into the 20^th century, coal contributed to the industrialization of Nantucket Sound.  I can recall standing on the dock at Woods Hole in the late 1960s, watching the S.S. Nobska steaming into the harbor from Nantucket, with the yellow-brown coal smoke belching from her tall stack.  The pollutants produced by present day diesel powered ferries crossing the Sound are no less toxic, just less visible.

             More recently, I have often looked up from the water on a bright, high-pressure summer afternoon out on Vineyard Sound to see a long, yellow brown streak across the otherwise "pristine" bright blue sky overhead.  It's the coal smoke from the Brayton Point power plant in Fall River.  There's a story in today's Cape Cod Times about that plant and the Canal Electric plant being the two largest  polluters of our local environment.   

http://www.capecodtoday.com/blogs/index.php/2008/02/28/mirant_canal_plant_owners_sued_for_causi?blog=53

These fossil fuel burning power plants, the source of our present day electric power on the Cape, not only degrade the air and water around us, they are a major cause of pulmonary disease here as well. 

          Those dirty power plants cannot be shut down and replaced with technologies producing clean energy from renewable sources quickly enough!  And spoiling the "million dollar" ocean view from a handful of ugly waterfront mansions, many occupied by executives and investors in the fossil fuel industries,  is a very small price for society to pay. 

           With coal, it's  not just the residue from power plants that threatens our health and the environment.  There's the extraction of coal itself which has destroyed whole mountains in West Virginia and Western Kentucky, with toxic wastes causing once "pristine" rivers to run red.  Those small mountain streams, of course, feed into larger rivers like the storied Shenandoah and Potomac, which eventually run to the ocean.  A true environmentalist realizes that there really is no separate, discrete entity called Nantucket Sound.  It's simply a small part of the vast Atlantic Ocean which, ultimately, receives its share of the toxic waste from the coal mines in West Virginia and Kentucky. 

           The father in John Prine's "Paradise" would surely heap scorn on the NIMBY pseudo-environmentalists of the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound.  Not only does their imagined "industrialization" of the Sound with wind turbines pale  to nothing beside the real environmental degradation in places like Paradise, KY, but projects like Cape Wind's are a long overdue and necessary first step towards eliminating America's dependence on coal and oil for our energy needs -and a very modest step at that given the dire need to develop clean, alternative energy technologies and production as quickly as humanly possible.  We're well past the time when clean renewable energy technology must eclipse and supplant fossil fuels, much as petroleum did to the whaling industry in the 19th century.

           Those self-styled "environmentalists" who oppose the wind farm on Horseshoe Shoal remind me of Cervantes' Don Quixote who, upon seeing thirty or so windmills in 17^th Century La Mancha, imagined them to be gigantic monsters.  Then, imagining himself to be a chivalrous defender of all that is righteous and holy, charged at them  on his horse.  What happened then to Don Quixote is humorous and relatively innocuous, as his lance got caught in one of the windmill sails and he went flying arse-over-teakettle. 

           The obstreperous opponents to the Cape Wind project in    Nantucket Sound, however, those who sincerely believe there is some sort of "spiritual" factor involved as well as those cynically seeking to protect the perceived value of their waterfront homes and the Chamber of Commerce types who fear that offshore wind turbines will somehow hurt the tourist industry, are doing a lot more damage with their scaremongering and false claims about "industrialization" of the Sound than Don Quixote could ever have done tilting at his imagined windmill monsters.

          Cape Wind's opponents are not really protecting the local environment -quite the opposite, and they are, willy nilly, serving the interests of the oil and coal industries, as well as the right-wing global warming deniers, who are spending billions of dollars to oppose clean energy development across the board, people who have long ago lost the capacity for wonder and all sense of spiritual reward from experiencing God's creation in nature.  Shame on them.