MIT Bellows "Cape Wind!"
AEman attended two hours-worth of last night's Army Corps of Engineers public hearing on the Cape Wind offshore wind turbine project. Many bulging brains were present and during their 2-minute presentations all ... and I do mean all ... voiced support for the project. It was splendid spectacle from an AE point of view, though the muckraker bastard in AEman nearly threw out an objection just to break up the love-fest flow a bit.
Many of the speakers were great, but in the interest of brevity, here's a note on one of them:
- A man from the DC-based African American Environmentalist Association (AAEA) pointed out, with no small amount of humor, that since the dawn of time, many pollution spewing power plants have been built smack dab in the middle of minority neigborhoods. Families raise their kids in the toxic clouds that envelop them, yet obviously, the communities don't have the financial or political clout to stop this phenomenon. Here comes a proposal to build a wind farm for the quiet, oderless, nearly invisible, pollution-free production of essential energy and guess what: a few (very) well heeled part-time residents have spent their asses off trying to block it. Judging by the public positions of Kennedy, Romney and other big pols, they have certainly made in impact and have succeeded in stalling it, forcing the developer to spend millions to defend against the attack. Millions which could have been spent on testing and implementation.
- He used a term familiar to some, but quite funny for first timers like AEman and most of the MIT crowd: BANANA NIMBY. NIMBY, of course, is the oft-cited "Not In My Back Yard". BANANA, however, is the 10 megaton grand-daddy of NIMBY, as in "Build Absolutely Nothing, Anywhere, Near Any-place." Way beyond luddite, it calls for the type of engineering productivity you would expect from a practicing Buddhist monk. Of course, it applies to some folks' position vs. Cape Wind and other wind farm and AE projects. AEman, thusly educated, will now in future posts wield this BANANA with mighty force to club sense into the fearful programmed masses.
posted by Andy Bochman at 10:20 AM
 
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