Washington Window

Koch continues with his "theatre of the absurd"

Editor's note: on Friday, October 9, 2009, the New Times Broward Palm Beach ran a post by Lisa Rab entitled, "Koch's Spokesman: Wind Farm is a 'boondoggle'".

Dick Farley, the author of Washington Window, had this to say:

Congrats to colleagues at New Times for opening and pursuing this story and thread!

As Washington Correspondent for Cape Cod Today, blogging at my "Washington Window" column about the Kennedy-Koch anti-Cape Wind "theatre of the absurd," having Koch's Palm Beach neighbors in on the fun is long overdue.

Hopefully your upscale, educated readers will have some additional insights for us.

Currently, Koch's previous effort to paint the so-called "Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound" various shades of "Cousteau Green" by hiring a former business guy from the old Cousteau orgs as his highly-paid "spokesmodel," having failed, Koch has hired some "hang around the fort Indians" as mercenaries to mount an attack on Cape Wind.

The New York Times article last Monday says it all. Beyond its hilarity, it illustrates the depths to which Skipper Bill has gone to protect his "viewshed" and the famed Kennedy Sailing Grounds. And more seriously and sadly, despite our current President's supposed commitment to "alternative energy" options, the "faux-Native American sacred" arguments are providing a fig leaf for the Obama administration to avoid approving the Cape Wind project, despite Jim Gordon and company having jumped through all of the endless hoops laid down in front of him with flying colors.

Koch's desperate "Indian attack" is an ironic reversal of how Greenpeace and others used the "Native American card" to oppose Yucca Mountain, the pending nuclear waste repository, and other projects.

People who know Bill Koch are unsurprised at his "ruthless skill" at adapting to sea conditions, given that he's a world class champion sailor. What's most sad is how some in the "environmental" community, like Sierra Club and some in Audubon, have been backing away from previous endorsements of Cape Wind as Obama's waffling bubbles up.

Stick with this story.

Be sure to read Rab's article in its entirety here. 

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Salazar Names New Boss at MMS

Interior Secretary Taps Hill Veteran Liz Birnbaum

Will boss agency with primary Cape Wind responsibility

by Dick Farley
cct Washington Correspondent

Washington, DC -- June 25, 2009 -- The federal agency with primary responsibility for permitting the Cape Wind offshore wind power installation proposed to serve  the Cape and Islands has a new boss.

Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar today appointed Liz Birnbaum, a Harvard Law grad with two decades of Capitol Hill and Washington advocacy experience, as the new director of Interior's Minerals Management Service (MMS).

According to a press release from MMS an hour ago, since 2007 Birnbaum has served as staff director of the Committee on House Administration in the U. S. House of Representatives, overseeing the committee that manages legislative branch agencies.

According to MMS Deputy Director Walter Cruickshank, in an interview with Cape Cod Today this afternoon, the Cape Wind permit is only awaiting resolution of historical preservation issues and a waiver from the Environmental Protection Agency  before Secretary Salazar could issue his agency's "Record of Decision" green lighting the project.

Previous to her House apppointment, Birnbaum was vice president (government affairs) and general counsel for American Rivers, "where she directed advocacy programs for the nation's leading river conservation organization from 2001 to 2007," according to the MMS press statement.

Her appointment today, which does not require Senate confirmation, marks her return to Interior, where from 2000 to 2001 she was associate solicitor for minerals resources, managing staff lawyers providing legal advice and developing regulations for MMS, the Bureau of Land Management and the Office of Surface Mining and Reclamation.

Interest in MMS is intense on the Cape and Islands as the eight-year battle over Cape Wind's proposal to construct its proposed offshore wind farm is in what its developers and advocates hope is its final stage in the approval process.

According to MMS Deputy Director Walter Cruickshank, in an interview with Cape Cod Today this afternoon, the Cape Wind permit is only awaiting resolution of historical preservation issues and a waiver from the Environmental Protection Agency  before Secretary Salazar could issue his agency's "Record of Decision" green lighting the project.

Cruickshank has been serving as acting director of MMS pending today's appointment of a new director, but has been involved in its management of the Cape Wind consideration process since MMS was given primary jurisdiction by the Energy Policy Act of 2005.

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Apollo astronaut demands release of "Saucer Secrets"

Apollo Moonwalker Calls for Disclosure of "ET" Contact!

by Dick Farley, capecodtoday Washington Correspondent

The crew of Apollo 14. The mission landed on the moon and lasted from 31 January to 9 February 1971. Photograph is courtesy of the USS Hornet Museum and signed by Dr. Edgar Mitchell.

WASHINGTON, DC -- April 19, 2009 -- Retired navy captain and Apollo XIV astronaut Edgar Mitchell today called for the U. S. government to disclose to its citizens and other Earthlings what he asserts are the realities of long-standing extraterrestrial visitations and interactions with our planet.

Speaking this morning at "X-Conference 2009" in Gaithersburg, MD, a suburb of the nation's capital, Mitchell told several hundred attendees and a phalanx of video cameras that, with our planet confronting population pressures and critical questions of environmental and energy sustainability, the need for disclosure about extraterrestrial involvement with Earth is critical.

Mitchell contends that the dispersal of knowledge about what he believes to be the end of Earth's apparent quarantine from other civilizations, and advancement of planetary culture beyond its present fragmentation and incoherence, are desirable results of the widest public release of information about the extraterrestrial presence he believes is real.

See and listen to a recent interview
Edgar Mitchell, an Apollo 14 astronaut and moonwalker, says his belief in UFOs and aliens being real is nothing new -- contrary to what tabloid reports might imply. Credit: NASA.

The conference, organized by long-time "UFO Disclosure" activist and one-time Maryland congressional candidate Stephen Bassett, centers on an emergent field of cultural reconsideration its advocates term "Exopolitics." Basset's nonprofit Paradigm Research Group has mounted a decade-long broad spectrum campaign advocating disclosure of what he says are unwarranted secrets about "UFOs" and "ETs" held over as unnecessary "Cold War paranoia."

Questions of "What do we do and say after we say 'Hello!' to ET?" remain distant from wider public consideration, let alone consensus about their implications for national sovereignty, religious traditions and global policy formulation, discussions about which conference organizers and presenters are intent on provoking.

Mitchell, Bassett and other "ET disclosure" activists are banking on President Barack Obama's repeated assurances that government agencies withholding information from US citizens are "on notice," in the President's words, that an era of unnecessary secrecy is over.

Obama has said his administration's tendency will be to unlock what he and senior officials consider information rightfully belonging to the public, while recognizing constraints required for national security, a presidential promise replayed on video at the conference to sustained applause by hopeful disclosure advocates.

Mitchell said he believes such changes are essential for Earth to make progress through problems confronting humanity's competing needs, religious imperatives and cultural fragmentation.

"We live in challenging, magnificent times," Mitchell said, emphasizing that, in his opinion, information that we are not alone in the universe -- and indeed, he said, that we here on Earth are having ongoing interactions with nonterrestrial beings -- may provide a key to consciousness changes he and his colleagues believe are necessary.

Mitchell said he believes such changes are essential for Earth to make progress through problems confronting humanity's competing needs, religious imperatives and cultural fragmentation. His efforts since leaving NASA and the space program have been focused on exploring frontiers "of the mind, body and spirit," he said.

Mitchell acknowledged that, before humanity can travel with practicality much beyond our own solar system, solutions to Einsteinian limitations to faster-than-light propulsion of our spacecraft must still be solved, a frontier the aging astronaut said he believes science eventually will do.

But he stressed that our own limitations have not limited the extraterrestials he asserts are present on Earth.

"The aliens have done it!" Mitchell said of an apparent ability to traverse what to us are insurmountable distances.

He contends that as a result of wider public awareness of the ET presence, revisitation of much phenomenology catalogued in human history should precipitate revision of how we understand planetary history in light of what he believes are long-standing extraterrestrial interactions on Earth.

The Cape Cod connection?

The late Harvard psychiatrist Dr. John E. Mack, a former summer Cape dweller who studied and wrote about purported "ET alien abductions" in the early 1990s, and long-standing "ET abduction" researcher (and Provincetown resident) Budd Hopkins, a New York modern artist who has studied the phenomenon since his own "UFO" sighting in 1964, met each other at the Cape. They were introduced by a mutual friend, Dr. Robert Jay Lifton, the acclaimed psychiatrist and author, also at Harvard, who lives on the Cape.

The astronaut, who told Cape Cod Today he was raised in a strict Baptist household, said reevaluations of source phenomena that led to Earth's major faiths, and which he said foster divisions among humans, might be another of the beneficial results of wider awareness of what Mitchell believes is the historical and ongoing "ET" presence and their asserted involvements in human development.

Mitchell and his fellow explorers of what he has called the "Frontiers of Consciousness" have long contended that broader public awareness of the extraterrestrial presence and interactions the astronaut-scientist believes are reality could help promote a "global mind change."

Mitchell and colleagues assert this could point us toward "planetary transformation," helping Earth's culture to mature sufficiently to gain entry into a wider community of civilizations for which they believe abundant evidence exists, now and throughout history, when viewed through a filter in which the claimed extraterrestrial presence is considered.

Taking questions following his presentation, Mitchell told Cape Cod Today that his beliefs as expressed this morning about extraterrestrial involvements with humanity on Earth are drawn from information generally available to those who study the field of alleged "ET-UFO" events and experiences, citing no "secret information" to which he has been privy.

He also contradicted some other presenters at X-Conference 2009, who claimed that Mitchell and the other NASA astronauts were briefed before their space flights about potential encounters with UFOs of an extraterrestrial nature and how to handle or disguise them from the public. He said unequivocally that this did not occur.

In a previous private interview with Cape Cod Today, Mitchell also expressed skepticism about some of the more popular "UFO conspiracy lore," i.e., stories that NASA astronauts did not really visit the moon or that the space agency has been covering up satellite photographs of Mars purportedly showing evidence of past civilizations.

"We had no briefings on UFOs during our astronaut training," Mitchell told the conference, suggesting that "human nature" tends to embellish and distort things about which there is insufficient information or which embody concepts disruptive of our respective world views.

Mitchell said decades of "UFO disclosure" revelations, drawn principally from elderly military and nonmilitary folks claiming bits and pieces of the larger puzzle about what they believe really happened at Roswell, NM in 1947

He also acknowledged that the UFO field has often been the target of disinformation and intentional misinformation seedings throughout the years, some perhaps for legitimate national security reasons having to do with terrestrial aerospace research and development.

But Mitchell's stance on NASA-centered conspiracy theories about "ET UFO" remained firm in the face of questions.

"It was not mentioned during my career," he said, adding that he and his fellow spacefarers saw no evidence of space visitors on the back side of the Moon, another long-standing tale among the more cult-like cohorts of UFO faithful.

Mitchell said decades of "UFO disclosure" revelations, drawn principally from elderly military and nonmilitary folks claiming bits and pieces of the larger puzzle about what they believe really happened at Roswell, NM in 1947, helped shape his belief that the event actually took place and was not, as the US Air Force claimed, a crash-test balloon.

He cited what he described as the credibility of the witnesses and the coherence of their stories as influencing his belief in the reality of the ET scenario attendant to the Roswell event, which stems from a 1947 cover-story released in July of that year after a crash of some unspecified aircraft not far from Roswell Army Airfield (AAF).

The next day the initial "recovered flying saucer" cover story issued by Roswell AAF public affairs staffers was countermanded by a senior Army Air Force commander, who said a "weather balloon" was what had crashed, pieces of which had been recovered.

The story died for three decades until being resurrected in the early 1980s, eventually prompting a 1994 U. S. Air Force revision of their "official story," contending that the Roswell crash was of a "Mogul" project balloon of the type used for atmospheric monitoring to detect possible Soviet nuclear weapons tests.

A subsequent version of the Air Force story was that the alleged "recovered alien bodies" endemic to some Roswell crashed saucer tales were, in reality, "crash test dummies" used for testing experimental high-altitude equipment for the U. S.'s growing strategic bomber forces.

As is well known to worldwide "UFO" enthusiasts, the Air Force's efforts to defuse the Roswell story were in vain, and a host of alternative scenarios have persisted.

These range from "ET crashed saucer recovery" to speculations that the event being camouflaged was human experimentation on unwitting subjects, in contravention of the then-recently adopted Nuremberg Protocols governing medical experimentation on humans following disclosure of Nazi concentration camp Holocaust horrors.

Mitchell is among many former military officials and large numbers of US and world citizens who scoff at the Air Force "clarifications," citing what he says are the credibility of the witnesses and the coherence and consistency of their recollections, in his opinion, that an extraterrestrial craft indeed crashed and the event covered up for six decades.

"What more do you need?" Mitchell declared, asserting that the Air Force's balloon stories are transparently false.

Ironically, the future astronaut grew up in Roswell, NM, where his family had a ranch not far from the alleged crashed saucer site, although Mitchell said that at the time it happened, he had no firsthand experience or knowledge about it.

But other space related research was going on at Roswell during Mitchell's youth, as rocket pioneer Robert Goddard had moved his research and testing program to Roswell in the 1930s and launched numerous experimental rockets. The youthful future astronaut was captivated by Goddard's efforts, which captured his imagination about possible travel away from Earth and to the stars.

Mitchell also related that in 1945 he and his family's neighbors witnessed the bright, white flash over the horizon which signaled the advent of the atomic age with testing of the first nuclear weapon at the Trinity site. Mitchell said the bomb influenced him significantly when he later learned what it was and, much later, better understood its implications.

Mitchell said he believes the nuclear explosion also may have attracted the extraterrestrial presence he believes resulted in the alleged ET aircraft collision which UFO researchers have claimed for three decades happened near Roswell, which is situated not far from where the nation's first nuclear weapon was detonated.

"I have a sneaking suspicion that the reason for Roswell (as the alleged ET aircraft crash is euphemistically termed) was that the UFO phenomenon was drawn to our nuclear sites," Mitchell told the gathering. He said he is concerned about the tendencies of terrestrial governments and their militaries to stake claims and perhaps fly weapons in space, a concern Mitchell believes may be shared by the intervening extraterrestrials.

Mitchell said that many years ago, after leaving NASA, he authored a manuscript advocating against militarization of space attendant to nationalistic colonization of the high frontier for military advantage or benefits other than for all of humankind.

"I submitted it to thirty-four publishers, and all refused to publish it," Mitchell said.

He told the X-Conference that his coming forward so unequivocally at this time reflects his concerns about the direction our planet is heading and his belief that wider public awareness that "we are not alone" will precipitate a healthier consideration of Earth's future.

Mitchell is slated to appear at the National Press Club tomorrow morning (Monday, April 20, 10 a.m.) to amplify his encouragement of the Obama administration to compel disclosure of what the U. S. government may know about the extraterrestrial interactions with humanity the astronaut said he believes have been happening and remain ongoing.

Cape Cod Today is planning to cover that press conference.

And as for the Cape Cod connection? The late Harvard psychiatrist Dr. John E. Mack, a former summer Cape dweller who studied and wrote about purported "ET alien abductions" in the early 1990s, and long-standing "ET abduction" researcher (and Provincetown resident) Budd Hopkins, a New York modern artist who has studied the phenomenon since his own "UFO" sighting in 1964, met each other at the Cape. They were introduced by a mutual friend, Dr. Robert Jay Lifton, the acclaimed psychiatrist and author, also at Harvard, who lives on the Cape.

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Federal Agencies Smooth Offshore Energy Process

Jurisdictions for renewable energy projects on Outer Continental Shelf clarified

Designates MMS as principal agency for leasing and siting of offshore wind power

by Dick Farley, capecodtoday Washington Correspondent

WASHINGTON, DC -- April 10, 2009 -- An agreement signed yesterday (April 9, 2009) by top federal regulators should smooth offshore renewable energy leasing and licensing, reducing potential bureaucratic conflicts and uncertainty about agency jurisdictions.

The term "outer Continental Shelf" refers to all submerged lands, its subsoil, and seabed that belong to the United States and are lying seaward and outside of the states' jurisdiction.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) Chairman Jon Wellinghoff signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) clarifying their respective agencies' "jurisdictional responsibilities" for renewable energy projects on the U. S. Outer Continental Shelf.

According to a statement released from Secretary Salazar's office, the MOU "clears the way for developing wind, solar, wave, tidal and ocean current energy sources."

The problem being solved by yesterday's interagency agreement centered on which agency, Interior's Minerals Management Service (MMS) or FERC, has primary jurisdiction over offshore renewable technologies which use the movement of the water itself to generate electricity.

"Clears the way for developing wind, solar, wave, tidal and ocean current energy sources."

So called "hydrokinetic" projects, which use wave action, tidal changes and ocean currents, will fall under FERC jurisdiction, primarily, while "non-hydrokinetic" offshore renewable technologies, such as wind and solar, will have MMS as their lead permitting agency. Yesterday's MOU formalizes what has been the de facto practice of both agencies.

And while the joint federal agency action taken yesterday has no direct impact on the pending Cape Wind offshore wind power project, Cape Wind spokesman Mark Rodgers hailed the progress he said it signals for offshore energy.

"The MOU between MMS and FERC should help provide regulatory certainty and advance the important industry of offshore renewable energy in the United States that will create jobs and promote a cleaner environment and greater energy independence."
    - Mark Rodgers, Cape Wind

"The MOU between MMS and FERC should help provide regulatory certainty and advance the important industry of offshore renewable energy in the United States that will create jobs and promote a cleaner environment and greater energy independence," Rodgers told Cape Cod Today.

Although not applying directly to potential offshore wind power projects, the problem potentially solved by yesterday's agreement between FERC and Interior's MMS involved potential "turf" conflicts involving leasing and permitting of offshore hydrokinetic technologies, an apparent conflict partially resulting from the Energy Policy Act of 2005.

That legislation designated MMS as the principal regulatory agency for leasing and siting of offshore wind power and other technologies using the seabed along the coast and Outer Continental Shelf, extending MMS jurisdiction from their traditional role managing offshore oil and gas leasing and permitting.

FERC, on the other hand, has been the federal agency charged with licensing hydro-power projects, such as electricity generation projects along rivers and in a few tidal areas of the US. The resulting lack of clarity about which agency has primary responsibility for offshore hydrokinetic technology was seen as a potential stumbling block to investors.

"There may have been some hesitancy to pursue certain projects due to the jurisdictional standoff between FERC and MMS."
                  - Nicolette Nye, NOIA

It also introduced an element of confusion if developers staked competing or conflicting claims for a particular site, leading to some fears of possible "claim jumping" as projects lingered in a bureaucratic "limbo" caused by real or perceived jurisdictional conflicts, various analysts have said.

As a result of yesterday's agreement, each agency has an option to collaborate on siting and licensing should administrators so choose, with the MOU spelling out which agency will have primary responsibilities for different technologies, avoiding duplicative processes while shortening development times for offshore renewable projects.

The National Ocean Industries Association, member industries of which encompass offshore renewable firms as well as more traditional oil and gas recovery companies, weighed in as supportive of the FERC/MMS agreement.

"There may have been some hesitancy to pursue certain projects due to the jurisdictional standoff between FERC and MMS," NOIA spokeswoman Nicolette Nye told Cape Cod Today.

"But this MOU certainly provides jurisdictional clarity for companies interested in pursuing offsore wave, tidal and ocean current technologies," Nye said.

Nicolette Nye may be a familiar name to followers of the Cape Wind permit consideration process, as Nye previously was spokeswoman for the Interior Department's MMS program establishing rules for the offshore renewables program. Nye joined the National Ocean Industries Association as its Director of Public Affairs about one year ago, she said.

• See the MMS description of Outer Continental Shelf.
• Link to Memorandum of Understanding (MOU).
• Link to Ocean Renewable Energy Coalition website, which has an analysis of the FERC/MMS Memorandum of Understanding.
• Link to the National Ocean Industries Association.
• Link to the Dept. of Interior release of April 9, 2001.

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Tilting At Windmills

Marketing the Ghost of Jacques Cousteau to his next highest bidder
Alliance perverts icon's philosophy

Despite his best efforts and several millions of other peoples' dollars, departing Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound president and former CEO Charles Vinick has been unsuccessful in camouflaging his patrons' opposition to Cape Wind with green paint.

It's a win for Cape Wind unless Senator Ted Kennedy persuades President George W. Bush to designate Horseshoe Shoal as a federally protected "national monument," Charles is jumping ship, bailing out just when the Minerals Management Service of the US Dept. of Interior has released its "Record of Decision," setting forth how the agency will go about considering and approving offshore alternative energy projects and alternative uses for existing offshore platforms. MMS has done a seemingly thorough and fair job of it, so far.

The decision MMS has taken, essentially continuing to develop a formal set of rules while moving forward with its consideration of the Nantucket Sound proposal and others, is a "win" for Cape Wind, articulating as it does MMS's process and criteria which, from all indications, Jim Gordon's project will easily meet. Jim's efforts and persistence are charting the course for future offshore wind and alternative energy projects, and we all owe him mightily.

This allows Cape Wind to go forward without much by way of obstructionist rhetoric and back alley politicking, which thus far have characterized the way opposition forces have played. A few nitpicking lawsuits by die-hards and big egos, then: "Voila!" A tidbit of recovery from America's fossil-fuel addiction!

Charles Vinick is off to follow the money, again, with the wind at his back, compass characteristically in full spin, to market the Ghost of Jacques Cousteau to his next highest bidder.Unless Senator Ted Kennedy persuades President George W. Bush to designate Horseshoe Shoal as a federally protected "national monument," thereby taking the Cape Wind site off the table, the Cape and Islands will live up to its pioneer seafaring traditions, while drawing electricity from winds that once filled the sails of whalers and fishermen and drew America's settlers to its rocky shores.

Characteristic bluster and bravado

But shouldering his characteristic bluster and bravado, Charles Vinick is off to follow the money, again, with the wind at his back, compass characteristically in full spin, to market the Ghost of Jacques Cousteau to his next highest bidder.

We read now that he's consulting with a major player in the budding wind generation industry, helping that company "avoid conflicts." This gives new meaning to the word, "Greenmail." It is reminiscent of how the Reverential Racial Shake-Down Kings, Jesse Jackson, Sr., and Al Sharpton bully a Burger King or Toyota or other firms, raising issues of prejudice and then "helping" their targets create programs addressing a perceived discriminatory practice, all for a fee or a grant or "philanthropic" contribution to their own nonprofits.

In Vinick's present case, what is he going to do for Clipper Wind? Help them to identify and confront hypocritical NIMBYs, bird lovers and fear-mongers -- some fronting for coal and other fossil fuel industrialists, who fear windpower as "creaming" off their peak demand while giving Americans a hope of energy alternatives -- who lay all manner of disproportional, disingenuous unlikely risks in front of Charles Vinick's new company's wind projects? What then?

Will Vinick drag out his can of "Cousteau Green" paint to help grease Clipper Wind's projects through an environmental and regulatory gauntlet that Vinick helped to create via his "leadership" of the senseless opposition to Cape Wind?

If so, in this Vinick will be maintaining a tradition of betrayal of the values the late Jacques Cousteau's fans and followers of a generation past understood "the Commandant" to hold. Cape Wind he would have loved! Jim Gordon he would have celebrated. To the Cape and Islands he'd have said, "Congratulations!"

Who knows, he might even have asked me to help draft that speech, the way I did for his keynote remarks 25 years ago for the start of cooperative efforts to study and repair Chesapeake Bay, or his testimony I drafted and reworked with him to stop New York City Mayor Ed Koch from the continued dumping of Big Apple trash too close to the New Jersey shore. No way Cousteau would oppose Cape Wind! Two decades ago the man built his own innovative wind-assisted hybrid research vessel, Alcyone!

Captain Cousteau believed, perhaps to unrealistic extremes driven by the great passions which fuel explorers and pioneers, that the World Ocean (because to him there was just one "global sea") held much promise for human progress and could help to set us free from ignorant and wasteful ways we historically have exploited the ocean, if we but sustainably managed its bounty while harnessing the energy of its powerful forces. It's who Cousteau was! It's what Cousteau did!

The late ocean explorer, film maker and educator, when criticized for not being an "ocean scientist" in any formal academic sense, would counter with, "I am not a scientist; I am an impresario of scientists!" He saw his and our roles in The Cousteau Society as bringing new findings and new ideas to wider audiences, particularly political and industrial leaders the world over. This what Captain Cousteau did, better than any other before or since, and our awareness and concern about the ocean are his legacy. It is not Charles Vinick's or anyone else's product or "brand" to hijack and auction.

Jacques Cousteau is not for sale!

It is not, as Vinick's successor as CEO of the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, Glenn Wattley, put it (in another news outlet's article about Vinick's departure), saying that Charles Vinick's involvement in the Alliance brought " the  Jacques Cousteau side -- the strong environmental," as if it's a two-step with Wattley's self-proclaimed "energy side." Wattley's comment makes what Vinick was hired to bring to the Cape Wind opposition gambit transparently and abundantly clear. Vinick was an environmental show dog, nothing more.

And for Vinick to market his Cousteau history, in effect prostituting his work for and with Captain Cousteau in exchange for "inferentially" lending Cousteau's name to efforts like those of the Alliance in opposing something the Captain would have loved and promoted, is a betrayal and an abandonment of the lowest order. The monumental hypocrisy of such activity is without shame.

 The news reports of Vinick's salary last year, obscene by nonprofit standards for a supposedly regional environmental advocacy group, could well have read: "For Sale! Jacques Cousteau! Only 30 Pieces of Silver! Inquire within!" That it was paid by tax-exempt funds from selfish high-rollers would have for the most part disgusted Cousteau, although it would not have surprised him.

Once in March, 1983, when Captain Cousteau and I were working one-on-one on upcoming testimony before a congressional committee, late at night in The Cousteau Society offices in a Manhattan highrise -- pulling an "almost all-nighter" to make our plane to DC for a 9:00 a.m. hearing on The Hill -- Captain Cousteau spoke about credibility and our shared responsibility to protect it.

"You know, Dick, when one of our films has circulated worldwide, as many as two billion people may have seen it," Cousteau said. "If we make a mistake in our facts or in our philosophy, our enemies will use that to undermine what we are trying to do." Cousteau was very conscious of his celebrity and of what he insisted was the responsible way we'd use public and media interest to direct such attention to issues and to policies he believed was our duty to advance.

In his later years, surrounded by sycophants and servile staffs looking out for primarily themselves and their once and future careers, Captain Cousteau split with his eldest and surviving son (and heir apparent), Jean-Michel -- for whom I had primarily worked before and after Charles Vinick joined The Cousteau Society -- their split coming primarily from family issues plus differences in philosophy and priorities father and son could never comfortably reconcile.

 Jean-Michel, to his credit, has never tried to be his father but he has instead sought to advance the romantic Cousteau Philosophy about the sea and its mysteries toward practical solutions for pressing planetary problems. In doing so, consistently in the 31 years that I have known (and admired) him, he has been willing to work with anyone who could employ science and technology to make progress, while trying to make a living as well as a name in his own right. For this he has been criticized by many, but never by me, for I agree with him.

And if Charles Vinick were fronting for Jean-Michel Cousteau rather than carrying around the philosophical corpse of a deceased environmental icon, this column would be about Ecosphere Technology, where Joe Allbaugh, a  long-time croney of George W. Bush, is fronting for some retired military brass who are  "mining" homeland security budgets, developing products for that market. Joe Allbaugh was Bush's first administrator of FEMA, coincidentally or not. Ecosphere brought Jean-Michel Cousteau onto their board a while back, only to be replaced by Vinick when the younger Cousteau departed its board.

It's all on their website; it's interesting, it's no doubt about the "green paint," but it isn't about Jacques-Yves Cousteau, whose credibility Vinick has not earned the right to sell, no matter the political spin or "PR" or reticence of Cousteau kin to counter or criticize. Vinick was recruited by lobbyists to block Cape Wind, purely and not-so-simply as it's turned out, and now is on to the next "client."

Vinick left the Cousteau Society not long after Jean-Michel split with his dad as he pursued his own approach to living with his famous name, while making a living trying to live up to that name. Generally, Jean-Michel Cousteau has been successful at this, and for a time Vinick was among those who helped him be so. But it is beyond borderline dishonest to suggest, as Wattley did so blatantly and cluelessly, that Vinick brought anything the late Jacques Cousteau would have in any way valued to the Alliance's selfish, self-serving opposition to Cape Wind, and if Vinick gave that impression then it is he who must live with that.

Wattley, if he were wise, would never have invoked Cousteau's name in the same sentence as Charles Vinick's, as if Wattley were joining the Cousteau team, as the Captain always called us. As for Charles? He's off the team now!

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Planetary "conversation" crucial to global survival?

Thoreau, Gore, Gordon &  Abdussamatov

One of the most fun aspects of having a "blog" in cyberspace is the capacity for discovery and exploration of what other people on our planet are doing and saying, thinking and wondering.

It's said that Thoreau cried when he first laid eyes on Harvard's library, considerably smaller a collection than it is today.

Why did young Henry David sit on the steps and, perhaps apocryphally, bawl his eyes out?

"Because I realized no matter how long I lived, I could never read them all."

I just love that quote; always have. The point? We've all got a lot to learn and keep on learning. Living on Earth may be the best "ride" in the galaxy, but if we continue soiling our nest before at least some of us can get off this rock, the human experiment may devolve until our galactic mentors hit "Delete."

Earth's survival as a viable ecosystem for humanity, as well as other critters and veggies with which we share Life and, for many species, on which we are depending  for a sustainable future beyond our contemporary event horizon, may ultimately turn on: the quality of our observations; the intelligence of our analyses; and the degree to which we as a species communicate, adapt, grow, compete or cooperate as future history unfolds. Existence may depend on it!

 "Thinking globally, acting locally" in matters impacting and modifying our planetary ecosystems will require consensus if they're to have constructive effects or, perhaps more importantly, help us to avoid or to mitigate future ecological catastrophies and,  in the worst case (for us), ecosystem collapse.

New data challenges conventional climate "catechism"?

Case in point: From a regular Cape Cod Today blog denizen, we learned today about an article that hit a Russian blog yesterday. Now that in and of itself is "way cool," just to think of it. We are a long way from the "two tin cans and a piece of string" that inspired Dr. Alexander Graham Bell to develop telefonic communication when in less than a day we can read what Russians are reading.

The fact that the article is from the National Geographic News Service hardly matters, as what's fascinating is that Russians are reading it and commenting on it, and that we can jump right in. Why not? We're together in space today!

Now, the "donor" of this piece of information no doubt has his own agenda, as do all of us here, but his sharing the "raw data" is the most constructive way to advance his viewpoint, whether we're going to agree with his interpretation of what this means -- or doesn't -- and whether our minds are even open enough to consider it, kind of like the Rorschach test, which blogs most certainly are.

Here's what's up.

At the tail end of comments to my previous blog post, the one saying Jim Gordon of Cape Wind is too nice of a guy and isn't playing rough enough with his critics, the conversation had become, well, boring and stale. The "usual suspects," dumping out their boilerplate critiques, out-of-context snippets and diatribes laced with personal invective belying their ignorance, had all but run out of steam, bored even with their own redundant prattlings.

 Then along comes "this guy," firing in a web reference that ricochets around the world, literally, and opens up an entirely new and decidedly interesting element of these broader "global warming" and "energy emergency" debates.

 "Well," as Ronald Reagan might say: there's this Russian astronomer, name of Habibullo Abdussamatov, which is no doubt impossible to say after even one shot of Stolichnaya Gold (alas), who happens to be the head of the Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory in St. Petersburg, Russia.

Now let's not be chauvinistic here. This is a very big deal, at least to Vlad Putin, who hails from St. Petersburg, and who by the way is less than panicked by global warming. Paraphrasing him, he's got a lot of tundra in Siberia, and if a warmer planet shifts the "breadbasket of the world" from Nebraska to there, that's OK. Vlad's already playing hardball in the oil field; we can't ignore him!

Dr. Abdussamatov, according to the article published yesterday at a Russian blog site (which is linked for you below), says the polar ice caps on Mars are melting and "the red planet is experiencing a warming trend at the same time as Earth." This is significant, if accurate, because it suggests solar radiation is a significant contributor, if not "the" primary cause, to global warming. Hmm!

This would mean that the "human industrial insult" to Earth's rising fever and atmospherics may not be "the only thing happening," which means that we'd not really be very certain whether or to what degree anything we may do by way of mitigation or "forestalling the inevitable" will work, or work in time to avoid the impending ramifications of planetary responses to sea ice melting.

Uh, oh! You mean it may not be all George Bush's fault for not signing us up for Kyoto's Protocols? Well, yeah! I know Bobby Kennedy, Jr. wants to blame ol' Georgie for everything from Hurricane Katrina to the sinking of Atlantis to the future overwash of the coastal cities and oceanic atolls worldwide, but: "No."

See, there is some question whether all of the hype about Veep AlGore.com's "inconvenient truth" may be leaving out some of the caveats from our qualified planet-level scientists, as differentiated from "world class," meaning it is not enough that you have a Ph. D. in wildlife biology for you to pontificate about "ionospheric reflections of 'greenhouse' gas'," or the "oceanic capacity for CO2 uptake," which are among the most significant uncertainties in models used in climatological prognostication, because then you have no more credentials to talk about it than I do, or worse yet, some of our most vociferous bloggers.

Sorry! I know that's a Faulknerian sentence-paragraph and my English teacher is spinning in her grave, but the point is: all of this is very complicated, if I may be excused for understatement. Planetary systems ecology and its physics, chemistry or socio-political ramifications are not amenable to hyperbole.

Now, I'm not a scientist, and I don't play one on TV. Well, actually Captain Cousteau sometimes did, and I worked for him, and Forrest Gump-like truth be told, I wrote a couple of the earlier "journalistic" articles on global warming and sea-level rise back in 1982 and 1983, when Reagan's EPA was studying whether these were sufficiently serious issues to merit consideration in the siting of coastal (or "future" coastal!) hazardous waste repository sites to be used in isolating toxic chemicals cleaned up during Superfund remediations.

Bottom line: Global warming is "real." Sea-level rise is a happening thing. We human "tool-makers" definitely have, are, do and will impact the atmosphere.

Can we do anything about global warming? If so, what? Why?

The actual questions are: What are the impacts of the "human element" on the total process; what will be the impact if we modify our collective behavior (and if we don't, substantially); and is the human component of sufficient "weight" in the total process to mandate we take radical steps to alter our behavior before we reach planetary carrying capacity? In sum, can we do anything about it?

More questions: whether scientific consensus is "missing something;" what is the present accuracy of the predictive models; and do we know enough for us to "navigate" Spaceship Earth into a future where we believe we ought to take some kind of responsibility and control, if we can, rather than sacrificing our virgins to the volcano gods or dancing "sky clad" under the Moon at equinox?

Because what's going on, to transport us to a Star Trek metaphor, is no less than a "battle for the helm" of that Spaceship Earth, and whether it's going to become "Lifeboat Earth" if we choose not to or are unable to alter our future behavior. Planetary carrying capacity is an ever-changing, evolving factor!

 In March 1982, in The Cousteau Society's Calypso Log magazine then sent to our 225,000 members in fifty countries around the world, I quoted a top US climate scientist, Dr. William W. Kellogg, who after outlining what we knew and didn't yet know about global climate process and their potential implications, said this: "Even after we know enough to persuade society to halt its CO2 production, if that point is ever reached, it might take another 500 years for the temperature rise to slow or cease."

 And Dr. Kellogg wasn't taking into account a future, like now, where we'd have access to climate processes on Mars and throughout our solar system. But please don't get me and particularly Dr. Kellogg wrong here. It's quite real!

Yes, earth is warming and we are contributing to the process. Dr. Kellogg was a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), in Boulder, CO, funded principally by the National Academy of Sciences, which has more recently firmly weighed in on global warming and potential impacts.

What Dr. Kellogg wondered was whether, if we ever chose to try, we could do enough to make any significant difference in various outcomes because of the momentum of climate change on the planetary level, and because the human element may not have been the only, or even primary, contributing element.

That jury is still out. More about all of that later. Keep checking this blog.

Back to Russia and the Mars Factor

But for now, "Let's go back to Russia," with Dr. Abdussamatov, and his assertion that Martian polar ice melting may pin planetary warmings on solar radiation hitting the entire solar system, and his belief Earth's warming is caused by this.

According to the National Geo article, other scientists are dismissing Dr. Abdussamatov's conclusions. Conventional understanding is that Mars and Earth "wobble" in their orbits differently, and most scientists believe that it's pure cosmic coincidence we and the Martians are currently between ice ages.

Hey, that's the way science is supposed to work! You know:  repeatable results, logical hypotheses, peer review and conclusions following from the data and laws of physics, which apply even on Mars... at least in this quadrant of "our" universe.  The problem for us, we have to do something! Anything! Or do we?

 My personal view is that there are many, many reasons and rationales for America trying to diversify and secure our energy sources, making Cape Wind a potentially viable approach, if as Governor Patrick says the science is sound and the siting process is fair. Sure, some big egos are hanging out there with a position it'll be difficult for them to change, even if the windmills will be a tiny blip on their horizons and more fish will congregate around them than now.

 Global warming, sea-level rise and the doomsday predictions of globalists wanting to use planetary crises to subvert American national sovereignty and subordinate our values and behavior to some ephemeral international agenda notwithstanding, Cape Wind is simply a potentially better way to generate a lot of electricity, with a net carbon reduction, economics enhanced by policy to address a range of problems more pressing than sea-changes a half-millennium into our future. Tying Cape Wind to coastal inundation is, at best, a stretch, if not as disingenuous as some of the arguments raised against the project.

But let's "talk about it," and if you want to play, go and read the Russian article, dive into Google or wherever and dig up whatever other evidence you'll find, then come back and tell us about it, respectfully and intelligently, or don't.

Find the Russian blog site with the "Hot Mars" article here.

40 comments »

Cape Wind's president too nice of a guy?

Jim Gordon should be named the hero of the planet

When Cape Wind's Jim Gordon appeared this afternoon on National Public Radio's "Talk of the Nation: Science Friday," I had an epiphany as to why Cape Wind isn't yet built.

Jim Gordon is simply too nice of a guy! Too gentle. Not angry or frustrated enough. At least, not yet. Me? I'd be steaming! Earth's in the balance, isn't it?

Here's Jim, a successful energy entrepreneur, grew up over a Boston grocery store, went to college, did well and "made good." And now he has bankrolled roughly $30 million into a visionary project to provide maybe 75 percent of electricity to the Cape and Islands, without directly emitting any "greenhouse gases" or atmospheric particulates or splitting atoms or generating high-level rad-wastes.

Pelagic fish would school around the Cape Wind towers, tourists would come from across the world for "windmill and whale watch" charters. It's all good!

What's the problem here? Why isn't Jim an official "Hero of the Planet ?" Why are the majority of Cape Wind supporters not rallying "in defense of Mother Earth?" This isn't a "global future" fight! It more resembles a "garden party."

Again. Simple! Jim refuses to Kennedy kowtow, snort Koch or to dance the hootchy-kootchy with selfish, self-styled "aristocrats" living along the south shore of a sand spit, albeit a lovely one,  sticking out into the North Atlantic.

 And confused political apparatchiks, even true environmental activist types, are thrown by their darling Senator Ted's iconoclastic, selfish harrumphing as he lays his considerable political bulk across our path toward Green energy. It reminds one of 1980, when Ted hung in the Democratic primary campaign to disable the despised Jimmy Carter long enough to help Reagan win the prize!

Jim Gordon had the temerity to site his project and its wee small profile (when viewed from shore, without binoculars) a bit too close to the "sacred sailing grounds" and Gatsbyesque shorelines of some few well-heeled industrialists, powerful pols and self-righteous choir of Cape Cod's self-anointed, myopic, arrogant  "elite." We must stop him, we can almost here them whispering. He is not "one of us." How dare he?

"Energy production? Heah? Nevah!!!" Why, you'd think Mr. Gordon wanted to resuscitate the slave trade that built New England's earlier industrial base, or perhaps even bring back the whaling ships, again to go after that "other oil" which once lit the lamps by which America's most vaunted literati studied.

Even the Mayflower would like it 

And these people lay a claim to having some ancestry among the Mayflower crowd? It was a tiny ship, not a country club or dinner cruise, folks. Whatever their religious fervor and fevers, the Pilgrims did the unthinkable: crossed an ocean and established a COUNTRY! Unimaginable to most. Yet they DID it!

Where is respect for the spirit of discovery, let alone selfless sacrifice of some perceived "exclusivity" to show the rest of our nation, indeed the world, that Americans do retain some of their sense of adventure, of invention, indeed of a "pilgrim's progress" as we are attempting to demonstrate "The Way Forward?"

Instead, we see rampant selfishness, backward thinking, grossly hypocritical shenanigans aimed at stifling creative investment and rational development!

Jim's not a member of "The Club." He didn't go to Hahvahd; he didn't sail in the America's Cup; he doesn't genuflect to the Kennedy Klan and their lackeys; yet he cares about our Mother Earth enough to put his money where his heart is!

By what "lofty standards" do the few elite Cape NIMBYs measure themselves?

So now, let's ask ourselves: what have Jim's opponents done for ol' Mom Gaia? Why are they mustering every desperate stretch of a reason for blocking Cape Wind, in the process calling in favors and obedience from kowtowing clusters of Cape Cod obstructionists, obedient unions and uninformed political cadres?

Spending millions to stop renewable energy 

They're spending millions to deny sound engineering and truly progressive policies? Derailing the largest offshore windfarm in the US? Hampering real progress toward less environmentally damaging, American-owned energy?

All over this weekend's news is a report from the global climate community, blaming humanity for exascerbating Mother Earth's atmospheric hot flashes, sounding alarms about sea-level rise and potentially catastrophic planetary changes, calling on Spaceship Earth to go to "battle stations" lest we drown our coastlines and make eventual refugees of billions of coastal dwellers who live along the global ocean's shore. You'd have to be drunk or dead not to hear the din of warnings, blame and even the occasional suggestion for new solutions.

Yet, Teddy is wont to protect sailing grounds where "Jack used to sail," despite the late president's being a solid enough sailor to avoid the shoals where Jim Gordon wants to plant his wind harvesters. What kind of madness is all this?

And it was Jack Kennedy who told us we were going to the Moon, not because it was easy but "because it is hard." Who is showing the "profile in courage" in defense of Mother Earth? Who is "thinking globally, acting locally?" Who will our children's children's children consider a planetary hero in their history?

Well, in the planetary context, it's Jim Gordon. Certainly not Teddy Kennedy, or Bobby the K, and certainly not Hugo Chavez's pal Joey. If it weren't for the pathetic consequences, our fellow Earthlings would be laughing out loud at anti-Cape Windbags. If the obstructionists "win," what will be the real costs?

The Kool-Aide of eco-hypocrisy cup

Local "environmentalists" attempting to block Cape Wind have drunk deeply from the Kool-Aide of eco-hypocrisy in rallying to Big Teddy's "sacred sailing ground" preservation campaign, all but abandoning directions drawn from the preponderance of national and global environmental scientific assessments.

 This at a time when the planetary political and scientific communities are doing their Paul Revere bit, warning us that: "It's probably too late already to make much of a difference for several centuries anyway." Civilization will be changed unavoidably in ways we are as yet unable to predict with accuracy.

But we owe it to future generations to make a try. Defeat Jim and Cape Wind, then offshore wind power may be stifled for an entire generation, as coastal NIMBY's everywhere object to "losing their view." We'll end up doing zilch!

So, here comes that upstart, Jim Gordon, a too-nice guy wanting to do good by doing right, make some honest money and let some of the gas out of America's resource-hogging power grid. And faux-Greenies are painting him like he's a Don Quixote, a pirate or worse yet, a "profit-seeking industrialist" out to rape a pristine ecosystem? Hey! Boston is built on filled-in coastal salt-marsh, yes?

It is inherent when we strive to grow, to make changes, that we balance risks creatively, consider trade-offs and confront challeges bravely and honestly!

"Talk of the Nation" host Ira Flatow handled Jim's presence and kindly manner most respectfully, and while Flatow touched on the opposition by Kennedy, et al., Jim Gordon didn't take the bait and trash-talk Teddy. An opportunity I'd not have missed, having taken part in not a few environmental battles myself.

Instead, Jim calmly and carefully reviewed the benefits, the process and the prospects, where if I'd been he, I'd have hammered Big Ted, "Bobby the K" and their political minions, who wallow like salmon against overwhelming support of Jim's efforts by the Cape and Island dwellers who don't owe a blind Orwellian allegiance to the threadbare, hyper-inflated Kennedy antique mystique and its manufactured faux "environmental opposition," transparently mostly theater.

Kennedy is camouflage for the tightly-knit, usually disparate social elite who've unified to protect their privileged ocean view and sacred shoals, content to let someone else generate electricity they can afford to buy regardless of its cost.

Energy independence will end the threat of terror 

OK, so this is a bit of a rant. But the planet is at stake, isn't it, or at least "at risk," according to scientific consensus? Why knock back an entrepreneur willing to take big risks, endure the federal and state licensing processes? Why blow off a courageous guy who wants to generate your electric power using ocean winds?

How seriously do you too-few self-styled elite NIMBYs, spending ridiculous amounts to gin up tortured rationales while you distort the political process, expect to be taken across America once the body politic at large, yes even its loyal Democrat majority, awakens to perverse Alice-In-Wonderland political and environmental tactics employed to keep Jim Gordon "down" and his Cape Wind exiled to Never-Neverland? Don't any of you ever look in the mirror?

Y'all have got to get a grip! The whole world is watching, and how America confronts global warming will set the planetary tone that will echo for ages!

The new Congressional majority loudly has committed to taking the global warming threat seriously, even "rabidly" according to their climatological critics. Yet  John Warner, Ted Stevens and Teddy Kennedy, employing their raw politics, abusing their power actually, are selfishly stuffing Cape Wind up the noses of Cape and Island dwellers and of countless generations of unborn Earthlings, using every trick in their bags to do it, counterfeiting the future!

West Virginia's Bob Byrd, Nick Rahall (House Resources chair) and others from coal-producing states are quietly cheering them on, as are some Texans, who have sense enough to let a big windfarm into their own state while they sell oil and gas to "backward folks." And the nuclear industry? Christmas every day!

Inquiring minds want to know: who in their right minds will invest treasure or time in offshore wind power along the Atlantic seaboard, or take seriously the American commitment to managing "inadvertant climate modification," as is the supposedly serious battle cry of a new Democratic majority? Who, indeed!

 Did you see today's other wind story, about a report projecting  how much of the US's  electricity requirement could be generated, offshore, from New England to the Carolinas? Real scientists, again, searching for real solutions!

It's a lot! It's the future! But only if we get cracking and claim it for our kids!

 Jim, you've got to stop being so nice. We've got a planet to save, yes?

Being a pioneer is a tough business. Take off the gloves! Speak truth about power to power. Let the rest of America know what you've been up against.

Embarrass 'em!
______________
Editor's Note; See the rest of Dick Farley's reporting here.
See the 4-^1/2 star ward-winning Greenpeace video here.

41 comments »

Request to Robert O'Leary regarding the Mass. Ocean Management Legislation

Editor's note: Dick Farley, CapeCodToday's Washington Correspondent has made several attempts to contact Senator Robert O'Leary regarding the Mass. Ocean Management legislation, formerly S.2308, now reworded as S.2575. Below is Mr. Farley's letter to the senator. 

June 13, 2006
 
The Honorable Robert O'Leary
Cape and the Islands
Senate of Massachusetts
 
Good morning, Senator & Rebecca (press aide)
 
Senator,
My name is Dick Farley and as you may have read or heard, I am the Washington Correspondent for Cape Cod Today http://www.capecodtoday.com/ . I have been writing about the Nantucket Sound wind farm proposal and the attendant policy process.

How your state deals with what are now a number of emergent offshore renewable energy proposals, particularly with respect to coastal and near-shore ocean management policy and regulatory infrastructure, has national ramifications and international consequences.

As you may have read in the biographical sketch Mr. Brooks posted about me, I have a bit of experience helping to translate complicated policy issues, particularly those relating to coastal and ocean management, enabling citizens to develop informed opinions. And as a journalist with several "mainstream newspapers" (as our detractors and competitors put it), I have some years of experience covering statehouse politics and "good govenance" issues.

Indeed, Charles Vinick (currently president of the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound) and I worked together for a time "in service" to Captain Jacques-Yves Cousteau, where I'd been for four years when Charles came aboard (as a Vice President) to take over some of the marketing and membership management. I served as Coordinator of Information and Policy Analysis for the then-200,000 member Cousteau Society and contributing editor for public policy for Calypso Log. Before I departed in 1983, I served as an expedition advance team leader for Calypso's film voyage on the Mississippi River resulting in television programming we were doing for Turner Broadcasting. Thus, while Charles and I are playing different roles in the current set of issues, we speak enough of the same language to communicate well.

All that by way of assuring you that in any article I do, you will be treated respectfully and fairly, in return for your candor and honesty in helping us at CCT do our job for our readers. 

You may wish to know that I have, last night, already spoken with Charles Vinick about the Alliance's retention of Brian Hickey Associates ("four or five months ago," Charles told me) to represent the Alliance's interests and concerns before the legislature regarding your bill.

Charles told me, citing the Alliance's "good and close relationship" with you, that Hickey was retained principally to help "guide us through the legislative processes at state level," and that "because of our relationship with Rob (O'Leary), we can work directly with him." 

We understand from other sources that you have been somewhat disappointed that your friends and former close political associates at the Alliance have hired a lobbyist to "kill O'Leary's bill." So it's very important for us to hear from you before we go with this story.

My initial phone call and voice message to your office, of which Rebecca (O'Leary's press aide) was unaware, to inquire about Hickey's role remains relevant because we're certainly interested in how his involvement -- and the Alliance's "direct access" to you -- may have influenced the wording in your Mass. Ocean Management legislation, formerly S.2308, now reworded as S.2575, the new language apparently posted on the legislative web site only yesterday afternoon. (June 12)

That is the first time we saw it and Mr. Gordon of Cape Wind had not seen it when I called him last night to ask about the implications of any changes, although Charles (Vinick) said he had seen the new wording "last week," when S.2308 was passed out of Ways and Means to Ethics and Rules, becoming S.2575. How effective was the Alliance (Hickey) in changing the wording of S. 2308 to what's now in S. 2575, and what are the impacts of any changes?

We'd like your help understanding why the bill has gone to Ethics and Rules (is this usual?) and whether you believe additional changes in the direction favored by the Alliance are likely. What is the future for the bill, in your estimation? How will it affect the Cape Wind project specifically, as we're given to understand blocking Cape Wind was and remains a primary objective in your past support for the Alliance's stand against the project and for your introduction of the bill, at least initially? And what impacts will the revised bill, if passed as rewritten, have on any other prospective offshore renewable energy siting considerations (like Mr. Cashman's which, because it's broken up into three perhaps "small scale" energy projects, may be treated differently from Cape Wind in a future ocean management plan)?

Charles says he doesn't believe the bill goes "far enough," even as reworded in S.2575, toward the "community involvement" elements of managing Mass. coastal and maritime resources. According to Charles, the Alliance is opposed to the bill as revised, and he said they're going to continue to "work with Rob" to move its language "closer to our position."

Please give me a call or email me your response to what I'm sharing with you. The great thing about this whole "cyberjournalism" technology is that, if it's used effectively, you as elected representatives and we as simple country reporters trying to get the story straight can do a better job of keeping our readers (and your constituents) informed. Inherently we have divergent reflexes when it comes to public policy, but we must build and cross bridges when reality requires it. That's why I'm making an extra effort to reach you and inform you.

Charles has acknowledged that the Alliance has not been public about their efforts to "work with Rob" as your ocean management bill is moving through the legislative process. Other folks might be a bit more cynical, given the Alliance's retention of Brian Hickey (and the contentious Stevens-Young-Kennedy maneuvering with the Coast Guard reauthorization conference report, and persistent ambiguity about how that's eventually going to turn out), to deal with public concerns about "back room dealings," so we are giving you an opportunity to speak directly about the new S. 2575 wording and how you feel about the Alliance's heavy and persistent opposition to the bill, which apparently continues with S. 2575 as rewritten.

Rebecca explained to me that it's difficult for State House people to call "out of state," owing to budget cuts. And while she said you have a cell phone, if "push comes to shove" and you have an inclination to respond to our questions, feel free to call me collect. My editor will gladly reimburse me for the call and consider it a cost of Massachusetts citizenship. If you can't get back to us before our first story on this issue runs (quite soon, actually), we certainly will update it once we have some responses from you to use, or from elsewhere if you opt not to speak with us. 

That's the beauty of "electronic journalism," in that we can instantly inform the citizens without having to kill any trees! Hoping to hear from you soon, Senator.

Regards,
 
Dick Farley
Washington Correspondent
Cape Cod Today http://www.capecodtoday.com/
 
cc: Walter Brooks, Editor

1 comment »

Submerged in DC, blowin' in the wind?

Greetings from what's left of our nation's capital!

If you're already dizzy from riding the merry-go-round of political spin, hang on! It's going to get worse, so take your seasick medicine, don't eat a big lunch and we'll sail on, like Senator Kennedy in Nantucket Sound, keeping the pointy end first and trying not to spill the drinks. "Watch out for that windmill, Ted. It's gonna chop us to bits!"

The buildings are all still standing; it's what's going on inside them, and perhaps more importantly, what's NOT going on inside them, that we deepsea divers of politics are going to explore together. I've got some ideas, but as any guide on a tour wants to insure his participants have a good time and explore something of interest, let's begin by your letting me know what inquiring minds on Cape Cod would like for us to poke around, dig into or excavate from the "DC mud."

Diggin' in the DC Mud: Greens vs. Machines 

Of course, we're going to begin with Cape Wind vs. the Alliance, or rather the Alliance vs. Cape Wind, one of which uses spin to generate wind as the other uses wind to generate spin. Congress is getting dizzy from trying to figure out just "whatinblazes" is going on here. Greens vs. the Machines, in a war of two worlds we once believed were one, or at least more or less on the same side?

Environmentalists all painted up in PMS 349, (um... that'd be Printers Mean Standard ink color #349, "Cousteau green") are succeeding in sabotaging the nation's largest offshore renewable energy project ever tried, and "pro-environmental" Congresspersons are hiding under rocks and behind the Capitol's columns, afraid to speak Truth to Power or insist that we at least allow the MMS's brand spanking new federal offshore renewable energy siting process to have a go at figuring out what we should do, how we should do it and where we can do it?

 The Alliance doesn't have as one of its options in its "matrix of possibilities" for Cape Wind that it's ever a "Go." To me, seems that should leave them out of the offshore siting consideration process. To the Alliance, no criteria MMS is going to develop will ever permit Cape Wind in the federal waters of Nantucket Sound, even if they meet all of MMS's eventual criteria in terms of risks-benefits, mitigation, etc. They have their "view," sorry for the pun. We can respect their green-tinted myopia.

If it's all a  foregone conclusion, subject to political whim or panicked power grabs by profligate pols, then one has to ask what the entire offshore renewable energy siting process is about. Is it only windowdressing? This is dangerous!

How to stop investments in renewable energy

If we undermine the MMS process from the "git-go," as we say out in the Sacred Hills of My Native Land of West Virginia,  the only winners will be Big Oil and Big Coal and Big Gas, who are laughing their butts off at how the Green Painted Politicians and NIMBYs are giving investors in offshore renewables the same sheep-dipping the coastal drillers have gotten for the last half a century, using the same eco-tactics:

1. Erect a shrine to Mother Gaia;
   
2. Sanctify it;
   
3. Focus on every ambiguity;
   
4. Demand more studies;
   
5. Keep moving the goalposts!

Been there, done that. Got the tee-shirt. Or "little red hat," as case may be? We "renowned ocean conservationists" swimming with the dolphins in the shadow of Calypso, with John Denver singing accompaniment, have got to be flexible. We "love" wind power, ocean energy; energy diversity, if there is a paycheck, and if the people supplying that paycheck aren't offended having to look at it?

OK, maybe Cape Wind ought to go "someplace else." Or maybe most citizens of MA actually support being a showcase state, where folks might come from all over our straining planet to see what the forward thinkers and visionaries of where those Pilgrims landed are doing to promote energy diversification? Or maybe the whale watching boats will offer side trips to see the wind farm(s)? If you're sober, you can sail among the turbines on the one day out of six you'll even be able to see the darned things, from shore at least. Let's be realistic?

A little late to the party, the federal Minerals Management Service seem to me like fine folks, even if their "other occupations" have been regulation of oil and gas drilling and production platforms on the Outer Continental Shelf. To hear the Alliance tell it, it seems like putting more oil rigs in Texas or wind farms "ABH," (anywhere but here), or maybe drilling in the ANWR (Arctic National Wildlife Refuge), which Pater Kennedy's staff assures us he didn't horsetrade with Senator Stevens or Representative Young in exchange for their (ahem) little bit of "help" in blocking Cape Wind, is better alternative energy strategy.

 Pol's Ploy: Replace "Process" with "Politics"

Kennedy's, Stevens' and Young's shenanigan have already undermined MMS, because the use of "politics instead of  process" to block Cape Wind through a legislative technical maneuver means that what MMS is attempting to do is unsupported by some of "our"  most powerful legislators, who lack faith in the MMS process and thus are diminishing the federal agency's role in Cape Wind.

This will set a precedent for every coastal community where there is some future potentially harvestable "ocean energy," allowing locals to control US options. What about Long Island? Ocean City (NJ and MD)? Virginia Beach? Outer Banks, NC? Kiawah Island and Hilton Head Island, SC? All of Florida? Not to omit the "ecotopia" of Oregon, Washington and every mile of Governor Arnold S. Kennedy's Kal-i-for-nya!

If Kennedy and Stevens and Young prevail, we might as well tell those nice MMS folks to save their travel money, cancel their remaining nine scoping sessions and head for the barn. America is not energy hungry enough to "get serious." And when we are? We''ll just send out a few thousand more troops!

There are some really good questions that need to be answered, if they can be. And the federal review process is just getting its rules and regulations ready; if you wish to be part of that you can. Read my story elsewhere on this site and jump on in. Keep your comments focused on the "generic," the feds asked me to remind CCT readers. And remember, if the federal process is sandbagged only to block Cape Wind, and if renewable energy investors get cold feet and doubt a fair hearing, what with all the NIMBY kin spread from Maine to Virginia Beach to Hilton Head Island to Florida and all 'round the coastal U. S. of A., where is the future of our nation, indeed of Earth, headed? And how will we get there?

Wannabe communist Venezuelan "liberator" to the rescue

A "new Dark Age" is a fine fantasy for Extreme Greens who hate having to share Earth with too many of their own species, but ask yourself: What is the Peoples Republic of China going to do? What is India going to do? What are the UK, and Denmark, and Scandinavia already trying to do? And what are we going to do, whoever "we" still are, if indeed America has any coherence left? I know Joey Kennedy has faith in Hugo Chavez to bail us out, at least "the poor" among us. Nice touch. The NIMBY's don't care how much they have to pay for power, and "the poor" can be bailed out by a wannabe communist Venezuelan "liberator?"

Chime in, dive in, and share your data, opinions, and maybe a bit of humor? Remember, as a wise one once told me: "Humor is a sign of sanity." It's not for me to opine on the obverse of that, but let's try and be gentle "in here," even if we can't be civil and intelligent "out there." We're trying to save a planet, OK?

A final thought for the day: "The degree of tyranny needed to govern Earth in the future is inversely proportional to how effective we can be as teachers."

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