Inside the politics of renewable energy

For a few years now the Cape and Islands have been talking about a wind farm proposed to be built off Martha's Vineyard. Now, a book has been written describing the battle between those favoring and those opposing it. Here's an excerpt from a review by Ian Fein of the Vineyard Gazette.

But perhaps more importantly, it frames the project in a larger context — in terms of regional energy needs, climate change and environmental justice — and attempts to answer the question of why the United States has lagged so far behind in developing renewable energy.

“We’re phonies in this country. We say we we’re in favor of energy dependence, but we don’t embrace it if it involves a monetary inconvenience or changing the way things look,” Mr. Whitcomb said this week in a telephone interview from the Providence Journal, where he has served as editorial page editor for the last 15 years. Before that, he worked as a financial writer and editor at the Wall Street Journal and International Herald Tribune.

“Environmentalism out here has largely become a land protection thing for rich people,” Mr. Whitcomb said. “And I think this book nails that sense of possession — that rich people think they own everything, including Nantucket Sound.”

The book also captures the sentiment that people in the region who are opposed to the project feel their energy should come from somewhere else, without acknowledging the impacts to residents in those other places.

“As I listened to the wind farm discussion and the comments of some people here on Cape Cod, it seemed to me like they were thinking of the Cape as a Brigadoon,” said Ms. Williams, an accomplished science writer who wrote for the Cape Cod Times in the 1980s and has lived in the area for roughly 30 years. “The discussion seemed to be occurring in a vacuum, as if the rest of the world out there didn’t even exist.”