The Senators Kennedy

Compound Interest in Hyannisport

By Richard C. Bartlett

Two very different Senators. What a difference a death makes

Back in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s Cape Cod was in an uproar. A 27,000 acre national seashore park was proposed. Town fathers from the Cape’s elbow to its tip were adamantly opposed. The local papers had a field day editorializing against this unwanted intrusion. Realtors, developers, builders, lumber yards all fought it with every means they could think of. The ruination of the Cape seemed upon them.

A bold young Senator, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, soon to become our 35th President, had the foresight to see that a national park would enhance the attractiveness of our peninsula more than environment-destroying build out. He fought for the green cause, even though local newspapers condemned him for taking that position.

Those very same towns that violently opposed the National Seashore Park then are now, these many years later, grateful that the first Senator Kennedy didn’t knuckle under. Today we can’t imagine a Cape Cod where all the oceanfront would be lined with trophy homes with “Keep off the Beach” signs.

Two Senator Kennedys, two moralities

Nantucket Sound is not just a private playground for the privileged. It is a public resource that should be used for the benefit of all Cape Codders, even those who don’t own yachts. Sailboats and wind turbines can easily coexist here as they do elsewhere on this planet.

Now, fast-forward 45 years. Threats to our environment are encroaching on our well-being. The Cape’s air is the most polluted in the Commonwealth. It is killing over a dozen people per year that could survive if the wind farm proposed for Nantucket Sound was operational, and 3,500 new cases of asthma could be avoided annually. Fossil fuel power plants are also degrading the environment of Cape Cod from acid rain and atmospheric deposition of nitrogen and mercury. Our waterways suffer oil spills from barges and tankers headed for Mirant’s Canal power plant in Sandwich. There is reckless, unthinking dismissal of the global warming that will change coastlines everywhere. We could be training and hiring our youth in renewable energy technologies instead of their having to just wrap hamburgers. This is only a partial list of the benefits the Cape Wind project offers us when it is permitted and built.

We are now seeing a replay of that same old “don’t change a thing” Cape reaction to a new idea. Our local papers seized upon the wind farm issue and their news coverage has been an extension of their editorial policies of opposition. They would turn Cape Cod into Cape Fear.

Local politicians fell into lockstep obstructionism, seeking favorable treatment from those editors. Realtors, chambers of commerce, marina operators, all joined forces with wealthy shore-front dwellers to raise $5 million to squelch, by fair means and foul, a project that would benefit all Cape residents.

Profiles in NIMBYism

Senator Warner in happier days (?) with wife #?

The Cape Cod Times, in August 2003, published a major editorial challenge to the second Senator Kennedy to reveal his position on this issue, which the Times had done so much to make incendiary. Sad to say, the very next day Senator Edward Moore Kennedy knuckled under and proclaimed his opposition. Not exactly a profile in courage, and so out of character with all his great work in 4 decades in the Senate. It is puzzling; it is so antithetical to his leadership on health and labor issues. As a half-century supporter of Kennedys, I am dismayed and angered to see their NIMBYism trump their principles.

Most outrageously unKennedy-like was his alliance with Senator Warner (who was ‘protecting’ his daughters’ Osterville views) to try to stealthily slip an amendment banning all offshore wind farms into, of all places, the national defense appropriations bill. How could he be more unlike his older brother?

Senator Kennedy has repeatedly stated that his opposition is due to his belief there needs to be more regulation in place, but as Stephanie Ebbert pointed out in a December 8, ’04 Boston Globe article, Kennedy hasn’t found time in these many months to draft the laws he considers essential. Is this because he knows fellow Senators wouldn’t support it in fear their environmentalist constituents would raise a firestorm of protest?

Hundreds of open acres devoted to golf courses

New friends for the 21st century?

Like a string of lesser obstructionist office holders Senator Kennedy rhetorically proclaims himself a champion of renewable energy. Then they all go on to plan how they might go about making sure our area never has clean electricity. It is insulting that they think voters can’t recognize duplicity.

A frequent refrain of the NIMBYs is that although they are green at heart, Horseshoe Shoal is the wrong site. Would they put it further out to sea where the whales swim? The Cape has hundreds of open acres devoted to golf courses. Maybe a windmill beside each sand trap would be more acceptable? Often mentioned is the Massachusetts Military Reservation, but officials there emphatically say they don’t want to have turbines on the flight paths of Coast Guard and Air National Guard aircraft. Both the Defense Department and Homeland Security have ideas for that real estate. So where is this better place? That is a question that only allows foolish answers.

Others in the famous compound are also disappointing in their obstructionist stances, given the Kennedy family’s admirable dedication to the betterment of the human condition. They are discarding their long held principles to avoid seeing distant turbines 1/5th the size of toothpicks viewed from the compound. Joseph Kennedy II, the admirable purveyor of low cost fuel oil and prescription drugs goes along with Uncle Ted on the wind farm issue. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and environmental lawyer who on PBS’s “Now” program bemoaned the fact that if he took his kids fishing they dare not eat the catch because of mercury pollution caused by fossil fuel burning power plants. He too quite inconsistently opposes the Cape’s chance to reduce that very contamination problem by harnessing the wind.

A rising tide of resentment

Ironically, this usually politically savvy family seems to be unaware of the changing tide of public opinion:

In a recent survey 3 times as many were strongly in favor of the wind farm as were strongly opposed.
The League of Women Voters (130,000 US members; 8,000 MA members) are strong advocates of renewable energy and the 206 local chapter members have specifically endorsed Cape Wind.
The Union of Concerned Scientists (100,000 worldwide; 7,672 MA) is supportive.
The Buzzards Bay Coalition (3,500 members) is onboard for the wind farm.
The Nature Conservancy (1,000,000 members US) supports the wind farm.
Possibly the most proactive group in support of the wind farm is Clean Power Now, with over 4,500 members.
The Maritime Trades Council (50,000 union members) see the breadth of job opportunities and they are working to make Cape Wind become a reality.
Greenpeace’s 250,000 and MassPirg’s 50,000 members are for the wind farm.
Two other important wind advocates are the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Conservation Law Foundation.

That’s a lot of backing, and there are thousands of untold unaffiliated individuals as well who support this wind farm.

Perhaps the time for political timidity is past. A Woods Hole scientist with a global reputation, George Woodwell, has warned those politicians opposing the wind farm that they will, in time, be seen as very foolish. Will this be the 1960s National Seashore redux? Only this time with the Kennedys stranded with the foot-draggers instead of leading a progressive movement for bettering life on Cape Cod?

What we need most now are renewable politicians. Ones courageous enough to retract their earlier, indefensible obstructionism and become the leaders we voters always wished them to be.

Richard C. Bartlett is an fine artist who lives and paints on Cape Cod. His work is represented in the permanent collections of the Library of Congress; the Boston Museum of Fine Arts; the Wiggin Collection of the Boston Public Library; the Bezellel Museum of Israel; Le Bibliothéque Nationale in Paris; the Boston Athenaeum; and other private and public collections. He conducted a 32-program series on printmaking techniques on WGBH-TV while engaged in book design and illustration: first as a designer and art director for textbook publisher D.C. Heath Co.; art director and production manager of Beacon Press; and director of publications at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology of Harvard University His web site is here. P.O. Box 163, 79 Santuit Road, Cotuit, MA 02635 (508) 428-7911